Late Term Weaning

It occurred to M, just a few days ago ... just before Thanksgiving Day, that this would be the first such Thanksgiving Day when we would be eating with friends but no relatives.

Over the past 16 years, our parents have left. And now: #1 child is in Bangkok on business (his wife and child, invited by us, but eating elsewhere); #2 lives 330 miles North and none of us (except the kids) are up to travel, this time; and #3 and her three kids are eating with our son-in-law's family. All seems at peace with the little (middle-aged) ones, but life changes. The breast becomes a bottle; the bottle a sippy-cup and then you get forked. 

M's Sister and my three sibs are all 300-350 miles away. We'll eat with my Soul Brother and Sister, Milt and Ruth. Milt had been my graduate school professor in the 1960's and we've stuck together, since. Ruth has found me to be an acquired taste. Their oldest is 2000 miles away; their second in Sub-Saharan Africa; and their youngest will attend with child. Indeed, most of my visitors this week have talked of abandonment issues -- abandonment through death is prominent in their conversations. Weaning in the Last Quarter hardly seems like an adventure ... more of a heartache ... but certainly more of reality. 

The fantasy that family will live forever must rest, today, on my pillow on which I've left many dreams. I will miss our three and Milt and Ruth's older two, today, and will enjoy Deo volente their youngest and her child, their oldest's oldest, and a niece of Ruth who won't be going home to (is it) New Mexico, this year. 

An Old Hungarian lady who spent most of her last years in London postulated that one of the splits in life is between Envy and Gratitude. Maybe, Miss Klein -- as she came to be known -- was right. Thanksgiving in whatever Quarter is about accepting what is ... what you have ... 

The healthy wean. They don't deny but accept that "the breast is best" but the bottle ain't so shabby, either.

2,000 years ago, the Ethics of the Fathers, an old book of wisdoms, proclaimed:

                   Who is wealthy? S/he who celebrates what they have.

My tribe began with an innocent flirtation with M in 1965 and has now proliferated about the Earth to build their own. Maybe, it's time to ramp up the flirtation with M, aye?

Happy holiday!