A brief, distracted note on Thanksgiving
Yesterday Thanksgiving, & then & now, yawning out for a week ahead, we are in a hotel room two miles from our friend’s home, where we were not welcome. Turkey dinner was replaced with a trip to Safeway for greens & some deli chicken salad. We toasted, Stef her cabernet in a Styrofoam cup, me my winter ale, & we ate our dinner in our king bed here at La Quinta. I jawed the ears off my family prior, & took the weight of the situation, & balanced its circumstances with its calendar day. In the end, gratitude stands out in stark relief against the unfortunate backdrop we’ve been given here. But we’ve this roof & this bed & each other, & we neither enduringly suffer the abuses of the other, we neither acquiesce, we neither will resign ourselves to the venom we’ve seen here, or the sheer thoughtlessness, or the disregard for the fragile carriage of a friendship. Our values, these days, are shaken to their core, & we continue to mine & furrow into d