Thanksgiving Sniffles

Thanksgiving ended with dinner. No midnight shopping at Best Buy this year. I have a cold which colored the holiday for me. Some people want attention when they’re under the weather. Me, I just want to be left alone.

I went along for dinner, though I offered to stay home. We went to the restaurant on the beach as we’ve done for th past number of years. It is less about the food as much as it is about renting the space in the restaurant. We watched other diners come and go while we took our time. We were there for close to three hours and watched the sunset and then the sky fade to night.

There is something about looking out at the iridescent blue water to where it meets the sky that wipes the slate clean of stress. Sniffles or not, I came home feeling refreshed.

A cold forces me push back from everything. The idea of drinking tea while watching TV and knitting the blanket for my grandson-to-be sounded appealing, but then reality hit. I need to send changes to the guy who does my website. There is stuff I have to figure out for tomorrow, so no knitting in front of the TV, at least for a while.

At dinner, we talked about that next Thanksgiving my soon-to-be- born grandson will be with us. How the world is about to change for all of us.

When my son was born we had three dogs and two cats. I remember him waking me and the animals up at dawn. He’d be crying, they’d be barking and meowing and I’d be thinking who do I take care of first.

Then there was the time I was making a carrot cake shortly after he was born. My son was taking a nap and I was mixing everything. Then he woke up and started crying and I froze not accustomed to be interrupted while I was baking. Do I keep mixing the cake and put it in the oven or do I stop midway and take care of him? He won out.

I worried about stupid stuff like what if one day I just freaked out and said I couldn’t possibly change another diaper (It never happened.)

I had the advantage of having baby sat for years and even been a nanny for a summer. This is all a totally new thing for my son and his wife. Boy, are they in for a surprise.