Turkey Stress

I've forgotten it: the frantic calls to mom, the anxiety over whether to open the oven and check on it. Thanksgiving is a holiday I've always kind of liked--I like how there are rules but it's not religious, kind of like Festivus--but looking back on it, most of my TG experiences have been at best a mix of good and bad. Thnking about this makes me feel like I have permission to feel sad today, which is good, because I do.

There's that moment in your life when loss stops being hypothetical. I guess some people never get to go through the hypothetical stage at all, but if you do then that stage itself is something else to mourn. Sadness used to be an entirely pleasureable feeling for me; now it's still pleasurable, but I no longer feel the anchoring assurance that everything will be all right in the end and that makes everything different. Especially reading. Which is why I don't buy the idea that we have to teach students that relating to poems out of their life experiences is wrong, even though, in a crude sense, it's an unsophisticated way of reading.

Well, time to baste and make an autumnal centerpiece.