Cold Thanksgiving
November 25, 2010
Yikes. Winter has apparently arrived in Coldwater: It’s currently 16 degrees outside. Grant and I set the thermostats in all the empty rooms to 60 degrees this afternoon just to make sure the pipes wouldn’t freeze.
Cold weather notwithstanding, we’ve had a nice Thanksgiving. Grant and Sandy don’t like turkey any better than I do, so I made a big batch of chicken and dumplings instead, which was nice and warm and satisfying on a frigid afternoon.
We braved the cold to walk down to Casa de Jesus this evening. As usual, Jesus got out the karaoke machine. Just for Sandy, I worked up the nerve to try one of Dad’s old songs. When I finished, she cried a little bit and told me Dad would be proud of me … which, in turn, made me cry a little bit, but it was a good cry. Jesus was a little puzzled. We just told him the song reminded us of someone we used to know.
We capped the evening with big bowls of menudo — courtesy of Jesus’ wife — and then another short walk through the cold to get back to the Tumbleweed, where we found Joey checking in a pair of travelers all by himself. Add that to the list of blessings I can count this evening: Joey has come SO far in the past year. The first time I met him, he was completely dependent on Miss Shirley. He couldn’t read, his speech was barely coherent, and the most complicated financial transaction he could handle was the purchase of a couple of cans of tuna and an orange sherbet push-up from the convenience store. A year later, he’s waiting on guests and checking them into their rooms in my absence. I’d love to take credit for that, but Dr. Scherer, Grant, and the grade-school librarian have had at least as much to do with it as I have.
Hope you’re warm and happy and counting plenty of blessings this evening.
– Sierra
