Thanksgiving 2000: dawn and dusk

That year Peter Jennings was with us. His charm was like a force of nature. I got to spend several hours with him over the weekend, and he was among the most interesting men I have ever met. Early in the morning, I was in the kitchen and since there was an oven available, threw in coffee muffins while I fiddled with some dough.

After two bites of steaming muffin, Peter came into the kitchen to say, "Madame, these are outstanding muffins!"

"Madame?" someone whispered. Every student in the room burst out laughing.

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So glorious had that turkey feast been that I let the procession of pies pass me by. There were a lot of guests, mostly students' families, but with my husband gone to a funeral I found myself alone in the cottage that evening. I loaded up a tea ball with loose leaves and headed for the Boarding House in search of pie, expecting to find it deserted.

It wasn't. A single student was puttering in the kitchen, a friend since his application interview.

A student by himself is honest in an entirely different way than he's honest while another student is in the room. I saw this over and over again. Getting to talk to a student alone was always terribly precious time.

He was trying not to cry. I listened while the tea steeped in subtle clouds, and said,

"The trouble is that you change a lot in a short time. But your parents don't seem to have changed at all. And that's sad, because it's like you're free and they're trapped, and they don't have to be."

"Yeah. That's it."

"Yeah. I just got off the phone with mine. I'm only ten years older than you."

I don't remember what else we said over pie. I'd like to think I told him it wasn't inevitable or permanent. Did I tell him my mother had had cancer while I was in the Valley and told no one? Probably not. It matters more, I think, that I listened and I was there. We finished our pie dry-eyed, turned off the lights in the boarding house, and went home. He went to the residence, still aglow with visiting parents and siblings. I walked to the stone cottage in the middle and turned on the porch light in case anyone's mother wanted to talk to me. Mostly, I missed all the men who were not there: my husband, my father, my best friend who had left at first snowfall, alumni scattered. Gratitude for everything in that Valley that I wasn't responsible for, gratitude for the beautiful desert and thundering ice.