A Very Merry Pandemic Holiday
Thanksgiving came and went a few days ago. We usually invite a few friends and neighbors in for turkey and dressing, cranberries and sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and plenty of libation … but not this year. Just us chickens, Ma and me, plus a turkey, smallest one I could find, too much for two people by double.
These are the dark days of Northwest winter, rain and wind, the dreary beginning of months of northern latitude, early sunsets and late sunrises. The urge to hibernate beckons seductively from under the quilts. Like it does every year. Add to that Covid, be nice to sleep until the vaccines are ready.
But, in all honesty, the holidays find us healthy, still here on the remote South End, busy with our projects, retired or not. Our Thanksgiving was a nostalgic flashback to those first years down here when we knew virtually nobody and nobody knew us. Anonymity, thy name is bliss. We had each other after losing that for a few years, so to reunite was a small miracle and one to be thankful for, not just those early years, but every year. So to spend a Thanksgiving by ourselves during the plague, well, we’ve learned how to celebrate that long long ago. The only difference, I suspect, is we have so incredibly much more to be thankful for.
Sometimes life surprises you with lucky rolls of the dice. We’ve had more than our fair share. But none, if you ask this old codger, as lucky as the year we got back together, two broke kids holed up in a shack at the end of America, on an island far from anywhere, just the two of us and a future we hadn’t yet dreamed.
What more could anyone ask for?
Hits: 87
Tags: Covid Christmas, Ghost of Christmas Past, Holiday Hell