The Thanksgiving That Is Not, 2010

It is a cold, beautiful day in London. Tomorrow will be colder; on Saturday, perhaps, even snow.  The leaves that enfolded our flat in green six weeks ago have turned burnt orange and fire red and withered and fallen away.  There is frost on the garden.  Winter is coming early.

The cold reminds me of two of my favorite Thanksgivings.  Stefan’s first, in New York, the city closed down by a surprise snow storm and the Macy’s Parade.  Another spent in an A-frame cabin at Lake Arrowhead, when Stefan and Lucinda were wee small things; just the four of us and the forest and three bags full of groceries picked up along the way.

I had much to be thankful for on each of those days, including that I did not know on either that,  within a year, everything would change, profoundly and permanently, for better and for worse.

On our first Thanksgiving in London , this Thanksgiving-that-is-not, I walk to work along a path lined with stately English oak trees, laid between the gardens of red brick Edwardian mansions. I could not have imagined walking this path last Thanksgiving, during my after-dinner stroll along balmy Manhattan Beach.  I now have a new son, a new home, a new city; two grown children who, in entirely different ways, have made giant strides into adulthood over the past year, and whom I could not love or gloat on more; a marriage that is stronger now than the day we took our vows.  I have much to be thankful for.

But I also feel the losses more keenly today, and I wonder what the next year might bring.  This is the tenth Thanksgiving without my mother. Emma will not be barking for scraps under the table this year.  Stefan and Lucinda and Jazz – and nearly everyone and everything that constituted our daily lives for years – all 6000 miles away.  Heidi’s father faces heart surgery next week.  My father, who once told me he expected to live to 84, will turn 82 before next Thanksgiving.

As I wait for the bus, watching my breath like time condense in the cold moment then vanish, I feel keenly that every Thanksgiving past means one fewer remains.

It is now 4:26 p.m. local time.  I am at work and I receive an email from Heidi that she found and bought a fresh turkey at Waitrose.  We won’t be eating it today.  I think we’re having fish for dinner.