Thanks

It's a dark Thanksgiving, this year.  Dark literally- winter has begun smudging the mornings grey, staining the evenings almost black.  And dark in its litany of anxieties- some global, some personal, some dull, some bone-saw sharp.  Dark, too, in my increasing cognizance of my life's sclerosis, the narrowing of ability and possibility.

I get up.

It's early morning, my favorite time.  The quiet is here.  The new light streaks the back of night's throat.

I'm reading about death.  And the frantic dance that comes before.

Upstairs, my child chatters.  He is part of my litany of fear- his end, his hopes, his formation, the agony of my relationship to my parents and presumably his to his- but he is also his own sharply delineated self, cackling and whooping and stealing out of bed.

"I'm awake!" he howls.

The most we can ask.