Many tables with room for all. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
While one might disparage the white colonialism that birthed the holiday along with the bowdlerization of its history, I like to think time denatures these things and leaves us with a Norman Rockwellesque secular day of family travel, over-eating, discontent, and infighting. Our American tradition.
But pointed opening aside, the season in general, along with the coming year’s end, does — if we but take it — give us a chance to pause and reflect on the past year and what it meant to us. And, if the soul is gentled and still, to find things to be thankful for.
My mom would have been 90 today. She almost made it, but her path ended three months short of that goal. 
Seven billion flames flicker in the night. Some burn bright and fierce, some soft and steady, some jump and dance. Every turn of the world, 350,000 tiny new flames begin to shine.
Death Watch. A vigil over a dying person. Waiting. Not knowing which tick of the clock brings change. Tick. This one? Tock. This one?
The strange attractor that centers my universe for now is the growing certainty my parents won’t see another winter. Even the fullness of summer may outdistance them. The spectre came as slowly as time and a well life permits, but a thousand similes paint its implacable gait. Ages turn into years become months, then weeks, days, finally hours and minutes. All clocks stop eventually.
Yesterday I managed to avoid turning on the A/C, although it was borderline most of the day. At one point I looked at the thermometer, and it was 82. “One more degree,” I thought, “And the A/C comes on.” In fact, it did hit 83, but either I’d acclimated to the humidity, or it had dried out a little, so I resisted the temptation.
Logos con carne 