Home for the Holiday

After last year's "bye," we are again playing host to the family Thanksgiving celebration. The party is getting smaller and smaller…only eight of us will be in attendance this year. And in a few more years, the last few of the younger generation will be off into their own lives, and they will also disappear from the family table.

This year, I won't have to replace my living room furniture with a hospital bed and a portable tv, won't have to tear the door off the guest bathroom the better to accommodate a walker. But this is one of those things that is at once a liberation and a burden…

And this morning, I am feeling frustrated with the procedure of readying my house for guests. One of my favorite parts of having company, since I was a young wife working fifty hours a week, was taking one whole day before the event to just…prepare. A day of lonely toil—no help from the husband…puh-leeeze!—to touch, rearrange, primp and preen over all my things that I never much get to enjoy any other time. Twenty-four hours of solitude and sanity to prepare myself for the madness of the party. Unfortunately, in the world of the small restaurant owner, that kind of indulgence is not on the docket. Sigh!

I know. You're all thinking, "Charlie Brown! You're the only person I know that can take a happy season…and turn it into a problem!"

This IS Thanksgiving. And, yes, I am thankful for so many things in my life. Too many things to name, really. But I wish, I just wish I had the luxury of that one day of nesting and grounding before the hubbub begins. I needed that twenty years ago. I need it so much more now.