Are the Holidays a Wind-up?

I sit this morning in the early dark drinking my strong black coffee with just enough sweetened cream to take the edge off.  I slept over seven hours which is my regular routine. While my sleep is filled with dreams these days, I do feel rested.  Hubby is still deep in slumber and will sleep closer to ten hours.  He is an energizer bunny with projects during the day and that activity coupled with his slight dementia means he will sleep through a long night.

The home across the river and a few houses up from us already has its holiday lights along the dock.  The weather has been cold for days with just enough of a breeze to make it feel much colder.  We have been putting off stringing the outside holiday lights hoping the weather will moderate somewhat.  While we have no snow and do not face the drama and hard work the folks north of us have endured, we are older and feeling it in our bones more each year.

Today I have to plan which pies I will bring to my daughter's house for Thanksgiving.  My three grandchildren and my son-in-law do not like fruit pies and so I am left to make some cloying sweet pies such as an Oreo cookie monster.  I will probably go ahead and make a key lime pie because I have a dozen kafir limes from my tree that need to be used while they are somewhat fresh.  I will also bring a side dish of sausage stuffing which they claim to like and which I make each year with Italian sausage and lots of herbs.  My daughter is ordering the rest from the local grocery.  We seem to be doing it lighter each year.

We cannot arrive the night before since my daughter has close friends that are using their guest room as a stopping place on their way north to visit their own family for the holidays.  So, we will arrive mid-morning and quickly say hello and goodbye to the guests which we know, eat our Thanksgiving dinner with the family, and then head back home mid-afternoon because my daughter and her family are then heading north for Thanksgiving with the in-laws the rest of the weekend.  My daughter's father-in-law has a form of MS which now requires he be placed in a care facility.  It is a sad time for all.  

My son and his wife are spending Thanksgiving out of state with his wife's family this year, so our long weekend will be quieter.

Ooops, my son just texted and said they may not be heading through the nasty snow to Erie after all.  Their little baby is fighting a long-term cold.  I invited them to join us at my daughter's and then come down here for the weekend where I can wait on them.  Seems everything is up in the air.  

I am an old lady and will certainly handle it all with aplomb (that is still a word, right?) as I am not going without electricity like those in Ukraine, and I am not facing grief like those who lost a child, significant other, or brother or sister in Colorado in the recent "mass shooting", and I am not spending the day in a holding shelter like so many that are homeless or those around the world who are refugees waiting for a reprieve.  I am winding up my one precious and privileged life slowly, ever so slowly.

I look for the light because the perception of where we are and who we are and where we are going is dependent upon finding light each day.