1) Thanksgiving was lovely, thank you. After our early-afternoon we paid a visit to the cemetery to see the new marker for my Uncle Bill. They did a good job.
1a) We then inventoried the contents of the little cedar chest in The Room, which contained things we knew about (mohair and wool blankets, lengths of wool) and things we didn’t. Those included my great-grandfather’s fez (he was a Shriner), some exquisite handwork carefully preserved in blue paper, and . . . my mother’s and my uncle’s baby books! These even included tiny locks of their hair.
1b) One of the things that made this week particularly special was our commitment to daily Scrabble. We both love to play, and we didn’t get in even one game back in July. Thanksgiving night, however, poor Mother didn’t stand a chance. The luck of the draw brought me first the Q and then the Z, so that I was able to make QUIZ on a double word score. But then the greatest move of the week was the flash of lightning that revealed to me that I could make FRINGED by using a blank for I and making Mother’s LINT into GLINT. Double word score + 50!
1.b.1) The next best was the two of us tying scores at 284 on Tuesday night.
You see why Daddy always said Mother looked like Ingrid Bergman?
2) Departure morning is always a bit rushed. From rising at 6 AM to departure around 10:30 I was able to a) list all the political organizations and charities from whose mailing lists Mother needs to be purged, b) unloaded the dishwasher, c) cooked up more avocado toast for our breakfast, d) put a sheaf of “Please remove from mailing list” envelopes in the mailbox, e) took in the pottery pumpkin and the autumnal wreath from the front door and hung up the Christmas wreath, f) stripped and remade my bed and washed the sheets, and most important, g) stopped to let Mother show me a time capsule in the garage. This was a box of letters to her from the 1940s, including from a junior high boyfriend and from her parents, and some great photos of her (see above)
3) Travel back home to Boston uneventful - which in the air is always to be wished. Wrote nine or ten pages in my journal from LCH to DFW, wolfed down a cheeseburger in half an hour at DFW (alas, no visit to my beloved Pappadeaux!), read a lot of the latest Economist from DFW to BOS, and got a nice cabbie from Chelsea to taxi me home. Thanksgiving 2018 ended for me (unsurprisingly) with a late dinner at Doyle’s looking up train schedules for NYC after New Year’s.