Pallid turkeys are really weird. So, this year, my dad and I basted ours with clarified butter and sage. It was browned, but not brown; it looked like aged, stained wood; certainly not cherry, maybe an oak dresser from the 30s, maybe a maple wardrobe made by the Amish some time in the early nineties -- golden, browned, but in no way brown. My aunt actually said, "Wow!" and stood still for a minute when she looked at it.
It was a golden day. I woke up to my Meme's voice in the kitchen; I thought I must be dreaming because it was 7:30 in the morning, but then her dog licked my face. I think that, in cartoons, I have seen people leap out of bed so quickly the blankets swirl up in the air, and I think that happened on Thursday morning. This is surprising because most of the night before I had been tossing a few back with some people I've known since elementary school. Amazing. Have you ever drunk tequila purchased for you by someone you played video games with in the third grade? You should. It's great.
Thursday was a golden day. People filtered in all day long. As the sun rose and then sunk, the occasional flurries of activity got more flurried. The day lost its chill but kept its nip. The trees that still had leaves were reddish, but most of them didn't, so the sky was everywhere, and everywhere blue.
Leaves are wonderful things.
The weather might be warmer in Texas than in Virginia, but the people back home made me feel so welcome I felt like I was in a big blanket. My brother even taught me how to drive stick. I asked, and then he remembered that I'd asked and made sure to find me and teach me. How sweet is that?
A list of other things that made me happy: thai food with a dark & stormy and a friend, breakfast in a bookshop, raking leaves until they swished like optimism in lawn-form, long drives, Gordonsville, friends who sobered me up with cheesecake, a conversation on Marx in a bar, my amazingly chill parents, friends and wine and circular stairs, apple picking up mountains which take a different gear to climb, cider and brandy, my Popop's family tree -- complete with pictures of people in their fancy overalls in front of their teensy cottages. The list could go on.
I have a propensity for weird maladies; on Saturday, I choked on an aleve and now the abrasion in my throat is infected and I have to take antibiotics. Also, I'm not allowed to talk. So I'm just going to sit here in the early evening breeze, drinking tea and knitting. The chill in the evening air here is just the same temperature as the middle of the day was back home...
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