Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Such a beautiful day today.  I am currently occupying that blessed space between cleaning the house and the commencement of holiday everything.  Yesterday I finished all the boring work (vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathrooms) and now have a bit of time before the fun work (linens! tableware! food! relatives!).  With so much to be thankful for.  I could kneel down and kiss the ground, or wrap my arms around a tree or a giant glacial erratic, as I have been known to do.  How I love this earth, and a quiet day like this, full of peaceful little nothings gently coming and going.  How I value solitude, as a necessary bookend to shore up other times full of people and talk and busyness, as wonderful as all that often is.  It is during solitude that I catch glimpses of the clarity and calm which help me weather the times of not-so-much.  My past two Thanksgivings were spent in and around hospitals, for days that felt like years, with relatives dying and not-dying, so this year, this ordinary/extraordinary quiet time is more appreciated than usual.  The moment when nothing much is happening, and it feels full and perfect just as it is.  Thanks be.

My stack of books has changed and grown a bit since last we spoke.  I am setting Nigel Slater aside for the moment, half-finished, so as not to leapfrog over Thanksgiving and on to the next holiday too quickly, before it's even happened.  It does sound like he agrees with me, though, about the necessity of solitude:

"Our lives cannot always be about other people, love them as we do.  We need some time for ourselves. "  (The Christmas Chronicles p.10)

That's all I've got for now.  I'm going to go sit in my studio and watch the afternoon light move slowly across the wall, and count my blessings.  Long live the quiet moment.  Happy Thanksgiving, dear friends.