Have a happy Thanksgiving, y’all

NORWALK, Conn. – My heart glowed this week: our son came into the living room and sat down with us old folks. That’s nice in its own right, as Eric has been gone from our lives on and off for months at a time ever since he graduated from high school more than a decade ago (OMG), but this time he was sitting next to me working on my website, with hubby on the other side.

I felt thankful. We are together; even though times are tough there is an upside.

My mother’s gang is all going to be together today. It’s an event, not to be missed, and it happens much more frequently than it used to, again, because of the economy.

Mark and I saw the sunrise Wednesday morning – and if you knew us you’d know that was a shocker. The thing was we saw it from the other end of the day; we had stayed up late enough to be almost to our South Jersey destination when it started to lighten up. That prompted a “darkest before the dawn” comment from me, and an “old wives tale” retort from him.

So tomorrow morning my brother and his wife will drive up from Virginia to go out to dinner with everyone. We used to live on Cape Cod, then in Florida; they used to be in Illinois. We are all displaced due to layoffs. As a consequence we see each other much more often.

Our son will be here, as will the brother and sister who never left the area. Hail, hail! Brother’s wife and his 6-year-old center-of-attention will attend, as well as the new person in my sister’s life.

So I don’t know what the winds of fortune have in store for any of us, but family seems to be more and more important as you get older, and I am now thankful to be in New Jersey.

I hope you don’t mind but I’m not covering Norwalk for a few days. I’ll put up whatever press releases come my way but I’m staying in Jersey.

There will be plenty enough Black Friday stories without me adding my own version to the pile.