It's a funny thing about holidays. I love them so, yet they remind me of

time passing and the swirling changes that life brings. I think about 

earlier Thanksgivings, that huge crowd of us around the card tables at 

my grandmother's little Cape, cousins spilling out of every corner, 

making mischief, dashing around the backyard, stealing back in for pie.

There was a soft comfort as it grew dark and our parents and grandparents and

aunts and uncles played cards and told tales and laughed and laughed 

before we were all gathered up for home. 

I think of Thanksgivings at my aunt's house, fringed by a beautiful woods. I loved how the house filled up with people and conversation, my grandma's apple pie, my aunt's spinach bread, my mother's clam dip, my father's salad, the turkey.

One Thanksgiving, it snowed and I remember dancing about in that snow for a moment and the boys - more than a dozen of them - tried to get a snowball war going with the merest dusting of snow.

We laugh now conjuring up that first turkey I made in perhaps the world's tiniest kitchen, in San Diego, calling my father 3,000 miles away for turkey tips, my mother for tips on everything else.

Then suddenly, we were the parents and the aunts and uncles and the folding tables and chairs were set up at our house and our kids and the cousins ran about, making a little merry and mayhem, in the best of traditions.

And I want it all back, those moments when our kids were little and when we were, all of those in our family who are no longer here with us. All at once I am wistful, for all of them and for each of those moments.

Yet, here is another one. The turkey's in the oven and there's cider with cinnamon sticks and nutmeg and cranberries in a big pot on the stove; the pumpkin pie is on the counter. Soon enough, the house will fill up and get loud and the kids will run around and we'll eat and talk and eat and laugh.
We'll put the coffee on and talk some more, together.