Poem for Thanksgiving and Brookside in November

Seven Years
By Daisy Fried

These cold days when the insane sky's clear, heat poofs away be-
yond its net of edible blue. My cat folds, flops across the laundry
steps. Flags the size of jeans pockets flip-flap affixed to rowhouse
fronts. The nicest, cleanest hands reach to switch out lights in
stores: futons, ring trays, eyeglasses, dresses, go dark. "The bed is
not very big." Cold or no there are fathers calling mothers and child-
dren walking home or out; also those of us who are neither father
nor mother and have forgotten the complicated unchosen knits and
methods of being somebody's child. Hires Root Beer signboard
creaking, then not creaking. This year Thanksgiving dinner begins
in the afternoon: a moist bird, venison stuffing. Window glass goes
blue-indigo. "Is this the right crockery?" Cold little birds, like knots
of twine, jam the Japanese Zelkova just outside, gabble in the light-loss
hysteria. The Dow Jones dropping. Friends' kids leer from photos I
stuck on the refrigerator. Last night I slammed a door so hard the
mirror hung on it shattered over my back. I was not hurt; moreover
he stopped shouting back, ran in his socks onto the crackling glass,
put his arms around me?

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Wednesday for me was all about family stuff. Rosie is still sick in ways too disgusting to describe here but let's just say I spent a lot of time washing the cat, the bathroom floor, and myself. She is eating a bit more, but she's still not herself, so we are worried. Paul worked from home so that after lunch we could pick up older son from College Park; while we were doing that, my father got a gash in his hand in a parking lot accident and ended up in the emergency room, so my parents did not have a great day either. I finished my DS9 review for Friday so I don't have to work during the holiday.

Older son, at least, is happy with Google Ingress and wanted to watch The Avengers which we have acquired on DVD since he was last home; younger son stayed after school to work on tech for the fall show and is running a 10K tomorrow so we had pasta for dinner (with peanut sauce, mmmmmm). Now we are watching the final episode of Relic Hunter, which I never saw when it aired, and Rosie is fast asleep in one of the cat beds, so hopefully she will wake up feeling better. Here are some photos of Brookside Gardens' glorious autumn outdoors last weekend:

















Have a very happy Thanksgiving if you are celebrating and let's all hope the Middle East cease-fire holds.