Thanksgiving...À la recherche du temps perdu...

This morning I met A for breakfast, and after eggs benedict at Deli News (not the best place for eggs benedict) I drove my Fiat across the street to Kroger, where we went shopping for Thanksgiving groceries: sweet potatoes, but also Yukon golds; also fresh cranberries and oranges; canned pumpkin; fresh celery and onions; Pepperidge Farm bread cubes for stuffing; preserved, grated horseradish; ginger preserves; sweetened, condensed milk; and of course, an 18 pound turkey. We got the 18 pound bird because we're optimists, and also because we love leftovers. So far as I know, there will be just 3 of us for Thanksgiving in Dallas this year: Katharine is the only one of our children who's said she'll be here. Alex, Chris, Silas and Callum live in Fairfax, VA, so of course they'll be there, and Mike and Tami, his sweetheart, are flying from Tucson to Hawaii to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Xander is in Austin with Brenden. Chris and Caitlin are here, but haven't said whether or not they'll join us for the meal, or whether they'll just stop by for pie and coffee afterward. Although I would love to have them here with us, I don't impose that on them. They're young, and the young always have so many invitations. I remember those days very well, when we were young and broke, but it didn't matter, because everything was ahead of us. We were bright and beautiful, although we didn't have any idea or understanding of that, but because of that, when we went out, everyone wanted to talk to us: to ask us what we thought about things, what our plans were, because we had plans, lots of them, and lots of energy to carry them out. Our lives were exciting. We (I'm referring to young people in general) might get engaged, or we might break up. We might decide to move across the country to go to school or get a job, or we might move overseas, or halfway around the world. We might decide to have a baby, or two or three! We were learning to cook, and there were always new recipes we were trying, new stores where we shopped, new restaurants where we went out to dinner. If I bought a new pair of boots I wore them to show them off and everyone admired them. If I made a pie and brought it for desert, everyone fussed about it as if that were something incredible. Those were such heady days, and we thought, or at least I thought, they would last forever. But of course they don't. Things wind down, for everyone. Now, incredibly, A and I are old; it's light years since we were young, with our lives ahead of us. How did this happen, I wonder, and then, in a moment, I think, well I know how it happened, but how did it happen so fast? When I drive over in my little Fiat to pick him up, my hands hurt sometimes when I grab the gear shift, because I have arthritis in both hands. I pull up in front of his house and take out my cell phone and call his land line. "I'm outside!" I announce cheerfully. "OK," he says, "Will you call my cellphone?" He doesn't have to say why; I know why. He's misplaced it. I do the same thing, and use my land line to call and locate it. He finds his cellphone and walks to the car. Both of us move so much more slowly than we did when we were young. He gets in the Fiat and looks at me. I'm dressed in red and black: black pants, black over the knee boots, a black long sleeved knit shirt with a J Jill loose red sweater on top of that, and silver earrings and a black and red scarf at my throat. I've let my hair go completely grey, which completes the effect. He says, "You look like you're going on a sleigh ride!" I laugh and respond "I am, with Santa, right after breakfast!" He chuckles at that, and fastens his seat belt, and I start the car and drive the Fiat to Deli News.