As we here in the United States are preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, I’m giving thanks for all the people who visit my blog, especially those who have stuck with me despite my irregular posting as I deal with personal and family health issues. ❤
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For people in Broome/Tioga County NY area, two opportunities to hear the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton‘s iconic Lessons & Carols for Christmas over Thanksgiving weekend.
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Wishing everyone celebrating Thanksgiving today a meaningful experience. We are lucky to have my older sister and her husband here visiting for the holiday. For various reasons, we are forgoing the traditional turkey in favor of roast beef and popovers. B, however, did make the traditional apple and pumpkin pies.
B’s nod to turkey was to craft one with his knife while venting the apple pie.
Daughter E is making a more traditional Thanksgiving meal “across the pond” in London where she lives with her family. It’s nice that our dual-citizen granddaughters are growing up with the tradition of Thanksgiving from the United States, even though it’s just another autumn Thursday at school there.
Here, we are having some wet snow for the holiday. It’s been a strange fall with an unusual level of drought, relieved some lately by wet snow and rain. Not sure what will come next.
Wishing everyone some special moments today, whether you are celebrating a holiday or not.
Because spouse B had contracted COVID and needed to isolate at home and daughter T and I were masking around each other in case one of us was infected, we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving last Thursday – or, I should say, we celebrated with a nice, but not fancy, dinner of roast pork with roasted vegetables with T and I eating in the dining room and B at the kitchen table where we could talk to each other at a safe distance. Instead of the traditional pie, we had (the also-traditional) Aunt Gert’s Indian pudding for dessert.
That Thursday was Day 12 of B’s COVID experience and the first day he had tested negative. On average, Omicron infections last for eight days, so B was on the long side of the spectrum but someone has to be to balance out those who have a short infectious phase. Because he needed to have two negative tests 48 hours apart for us to be unmasked around each other, he decided that our fancier Thanksgiving dinner should be on Sunday.
While, for many years, I did the bulk of the cooking at our house, I don’t especially enjoy it. B, on the other hand, likes cooking and baking, so he chose the menu and made the meal. We enjoyed a delicious dinner of individual beef Wellington with roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon and a Braeburn and Cortland apple pie for dessert.
One of the things for which we are most thankful is that B’s bout with COVID was relatively mild, even if his infectious period did hang on longer than expected. We are also thankful that T and I remained uninfected. The pool of people I know who have never had COVID has dwindled to just a few, so I know it’s likely we will contract it someday, but, for now, we are all happy to be able to spend time together at home unmasked in the same room, whether or not there is a fancy late-Thanksgiving meal on the table.
Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash
Our then one-year-old granddaughter ABC enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with her great-grandfather Paco in the background; I’m missing both of them today, one due to distance, the other to death.
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Spouse B is still testing positive for COVID on Day 11, although the line on the test kit is fainter so maybe he is getting closer to the two negative tests 48 hours apart to be ready to be unmasked together without worry.
Not sure yet what we will do about Thanksgiving. It will just be the three of us and we were planning to do something other than the traditional turkey dinner. Maybe we will just postpone until we can all eat together in the same room. T and I have been eating in the dining room while B sequesters himself in his office at mealtimes.
We all remain grateful that his symptoms were relatively mild and short-lived but we are anxious to actually spend time together again. We are also grateful that T and I aren’t infected but we want to make sure we remain cautious. B would feel so badly if his case spread to us because we got tired of following protocol. Given the length of time that has passed, we all realize T and I dodged catching it when he was infectious before and in the early hours of the symptomatic phase.
So, at least, three more days of masking in our future.
I might need to order some more KF94 masks…
(COVID Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash)
This wasn’t the plan.
I expected right now I would be in a plane somewhere over the Atlantic after a month in the UK visiting daughter E and her family, meeting granddaughter JG, walking granddaughter ABC home from nursery school, celebrating US Thanksgiving in London on what is there just the fourth Thursday of November.
I thought I would get to attend mass for the first time since March as we celebrated JG’s baptism, wearing the white dress that I, E, and ABC wore before her, as well her Aunt T and great-aunts.
Of course, there would have been two weeks in quarantine before any of the visiting, but still…
It was a blessing in disguise that the news of the UK lockdown leaked early, before we flew out, so that there was time to cancel. It took most of the month, but I finally got all the charges refunded.
I had planned to get a lot of writing done while we were in quarantine and to do a long-delayed, self-guided retreat, neither of which happened this month as the usual things that needed doing were before us here and the inevitable bumps in the road appeared that needed attention. I was also impossible to ignore/escape the maelstrom of news on the election and its aftermath and of the horrifying, continuing escalation of the coronavirus pandemic.
Enter the first Sunday of Advent, with its message of watching in hope.
I’m struggling with that.
By nature, I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I try to be more of a realist. I know that with over 13 million confirmed cases so far and a seven-day average of new confirmed cases of about 160,000, compounded by Thanksgiving travel, the United States is going to have further acceleration in COVID cases in December and most likely into January, as well. There are also going to be spikes in hospitalizations and deaths flowing from that. Although there will likely be some vaccine administration starting in December, there won’t be enough to make much of a dent in transmission. The exception is that, if health care workers are vaccinated first as expected, we may be able to keep our hospitals staffed well enough to meet the surge in cases this winter.
I do have hope that the incoming Biden administration will have staff and appointees who are capable of improving the lives of people here and beginning to repair our international relationships. However, I am disheartened by the efforts of the current administration to undermine the chances that Biden’s team can implement changes quickly and easily. There are a number of last-minute rule changes, treaty withdrawals, troop withdrawals, and other measures that will make the transition even more difficult than anticipated in this time of public health emergency, economic downturn, civil rights protests, and general distrust in government.
Sigh.
So, one foot in front of the other. Doing the best I can manage under the circumstances.
Stay tuned.
The fourth Thursday of November is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day in the United States. It’s traditional to gather with family and friends for a big dinner, usually turkey with lots of side dishes.
This Thanksgiving will be quieter for many of us because of the pandemic. Cases are rising across the country and in many states are already so numerous that hospitals are running out of space for patients. Frighteningly, millions of people are not heeding the advice of public health experts and are travelling long distances and/or gathering in groups larger than ten or with people outside their household, thus increasing the danger of even higher case counts in December.
Our plan for the day is for spouse B, daughter T, and I to go to Paco’s apartment in his senior community where we will have a Zoom session with my sisters and daughter E. In that way, Paco will get to see his great-granddaughters ABC and JG who will be celebrating American Thanksgiving on an ordinary (lockdown) Thursday in London, UK. B,T, and I were supposed to be in London with them near the end of a month-long visit until the lockdown there cancelled our trip. Once I have Paco set up with the Zoom session on this laptop, I’ll go to another room with another device so he can take his mask off.
After our video chat, Thanksgiving dinner will be delivered to the apartment and we will eat with Paco on one side of the room and B, T, and me on the other as we will need to take our masks off to eat. We will leave expeditiously after dinner so as to limit our contact time.
It won’t be the usual Thanksgiving, but it will be special in its own way.
The point of the holiday is to give thanks but the gratitude this year is tinged with sorrow and regret. I am very grateful that our family is weathering this very disrupted year. B is able to work from home and we are able to stay safe at home for the most part. We certainly miss being able to visit Paco every day and are sad to not be able to travel to the UK to visit for all of 2020, but it would be so horrifying and dangerous to have inadvertently exposed someone to COVID that the separation is necessary.
I am grateful for Governor Cuomo and all the medical personnel and other essential workers who have worked so hard to keep as many of us safe and well as possible. At the same time, I mourn the millions of people in the US and around the world who have been impacted by the coronavirus, either by illness or death of themselves or a loved one or loss of work, shelter, food security, medical care, etc. I am also dreading the coming weeks, which are projected to see a steep rise in cases on top of already soaring rates in the US. There have already been over 12.8 million confirmed cases and 261,000 deaths and the thought of millions more is overwhelming.
I am grateful that the Biden /Harris administration is starting to take shape with the announcement of well-qualified people to key posts. At the same time, I’m sad to see so many not accepting the facts of the situation and not being willing to join in the efforts to come together to fight the pandemic, revive our communities, and unite as one nation.
I’m grateful for the ideals of our country but sad that we are so far from embodying them.
I feel similarly about the Catholic church. I’m grateful for the moral grounding, social doctrine, integral ecology principles, and primacy of love that it has taught me, but sorrowful and penitent about the many abuses of power done in its name, including war, torture, colonialism, racism, sexism, clericalism, sexual abuse and cover-up, and oppression of other religions and peoples over centuries.
So, yes, a very different Thanksgiving. With widespread vaccine use possible by November 2021, maybe next year will be more “normal.”
Or, maybe, there will be no going back to what used to be considered normal.
I pray that we can finally build institutions that live up to their high ideals for the good of all creation.
The fourth Thursday of November is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.
With so many changes in our family in the past few months, our Thanksgiving was quiet, with just spouse B, daughter T, and my dad Paco here for dinner. B did all the cooking – turkey, two kinds of dressing, mashed potatoes, rutabaga, acorn squash wedges, baked onions, and cranberry orange relish, with apple and pumpkin pies for dessert. It was a lot of food for four people, but we all enjoy having the leftovers. We are in the process of making turkey stock with the carcass and vegetables, something I learned from Nana growing up which has recently come back into food-fashion.
We ate midday here and, at almost the same time, daughter E was eating a Thanksgiving dinner, five time zones away, in London. She had made turkey and trimmings and pies for her daughter ABC, spouse L, and his parents with whom they are making their home. It’s nice that E and L want to keep some United States traditions to pass on to ABC, along with British ones. She is a dual citizen, at least until adulthood. It will depend on the rules in place when she turns 18, whether she will have to renounce her US citizenship to remain in the UK.
Still, she will always be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and remember the Thanksgiving celebrations of her childhood.
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. We were able to bring Nana from the skilled nursing unit over to the dining room in the Village Center for Thanksgiving dinner, which was delicious.
For years, Nana had been the unofficial goodwill ambassador of the retirement community. She used to make the rounds of the tables after dinner, visiting with everyone and catching up on them and their families. After she went into hospice care in early summer 2017, she wasn’t able to be out and about. Now that she has been decertified by hospice and has done some rehab, she was strong enough to come over for an hour using a wheelchair outfitted with portable oxygen.
A number of people stopped by the table to say hello. There was lots of good food, conversation, and warmth, all of which counteracted the blustery day outside.
Last year at this time, I hadn’t thought it possible that we would have the privilege of another Thanksgiving with Nana and Paco. I am so grateful that we had this day together.
Joanne Corey 