Gathering

Time heals all wounds. She Who Was Left Behind came close to starting a few unhelpful conversations. But she restrained herself and instead let love rule, recognizing that I'm on a journey and that I mean to do no harm while I pursue it. Because everything is about her ultimately (true for all of us one way or another) it has been helpful for her to realize that I did not leave because she failed. My departure was not about her, and finally, after a year and change, she is coming to understand that.

So my mother and my boys and their mother and I gathered in our house, our collective house, and did all the Thanksgiving things we do such as set the table and make a salad and slice bread and pay scant attention to a football game that is on for background; and then ate too much while talking about everything and everyone (except me). I was thanked for making time for my family. A very small barb, that one, and easily smiled away.

Even now when they live hundreds of miles away, my boys are becoming more like me in some ways, enjoying classical music and conversations about science for example, and these tickle my mother, of course, for that was my father's gig too.

I took everyone to the movies (Muppets have a new one) and after cleanup went home to bed because soon I will go back and we will go get a Christmas tree, as we did every year for two decades, except for last year, when I explicitly was not invited.