Everyone else will be gathering with their families next week for Thanksgiving dinner.
My thanks and feasting will come this weekend, when, for the first time in more than six years, my offspring will both be here with me — along, of course, with my son-in-law and my grandson. And — unless something happens between now and then — my 88 year old mother.
I’ve been cleaning and cooking — pierogi — three different kinds; chocolate cream pies; potato salad; cooked Chex cereal; beef, bean, and macaroni soup — all the comfort foods from their childhoods. Well, not the soup. That’s a more recent addition to my menu.
b!X will meet his toddler nephew for the first time. He zig-zagged across the country in a 12-hour trip today (that’s what happens when you get a cheap flight) and should be arriving at his dad’s soon. His sister and her family will actually drive from Massachusetts to New York for the first time since they got their first drivers’ licences and their first car over the summer. This family reunion is a big deal for all of us.
I am thankful for the graces of this odd-ball family of mine. Thankful that we are all getting together while my mother can still enjoy their presence. Of course, I have lots of presents for them. And food. Lots of food. Love, you know.

She wants to smell lilacs — the kind that grew all over her family’s farm in Poland when she was a girl. But we had snow showers here last week. The lilacs have been long gone.
She can’t remember to take her pills or if she ate lunch or that she’s supposed to set the table for dinner. She drinks instant coffee because she can’t remember how to work the coffee maker. She only listens to the radio or watches tv because she knows how to turn them on and off. She can’t remember how to use the audiotape or CD players.
But she remembers the scent of lilacs. She wants to smell lilacs.
So, we stop and the Health Hut and I buy some Lilac essential oil, fill up a spray bottle with water and pour in some of the oil. I spray the air, her clothes, her bed.
And so, I sit here smelling lilacs.
Actually, I prefer lavender.