Post the link to your blogged slice to schoology.com before the start of class Friday.
Let the pausing to –
the pause on the third Thursday of November –
be a quiet invitation
to blank out the constant commercialism,
techno-addict,
24/7 connectivity
of phones, news, internet.
The constant knowing makes us not know,
know that quiet whisper of what I’m lucky to have:
a mom, dad, brother, husband,
supportive petaling flower of care
like a peony opening ever wider than we could imagine
in a cascading slo-mo eruption
of the palest
white-pink
or the richest framboise red.
And it’s a day I want to protect
like a quiet, secret love not inside me:
a day to know all together,
to know as a country,
to know in the abandoned roads,
closed businesses,
a butter-colored light hovering halo
out the windows
where family and friends, some closer than family,
sit together
laughing, talking, eating, playing scrabble, being.
And, this beckoning of ‘the holidays,’
the first note of the song we wait for all year long,
whirlwind time of visiting, eating, busying –
busy mostly in a good way –
chaos of self-imposed standards
and cultural compass
has morphed
of late
to swallow, erase, eclipse
the special day of pause.
There used to be something special
even about the evening hours of waiting
before
people sprung out
to “bust the doors”at 6 a.m.
for discounted dish towels, electronics, toys, DVDs, and s.t.u.f.f.
But now,
the ravenous, voracious, gluttonness, leacherous, bottomless MAN
wants our time.
Our too-few-times-a-year moment
when we are all home
to sit around the table
laugh, eat, be. Be. Be.
I and 81% of the other respondents
want out time back.
Make Thanksgiving a holiday.
Case closed,
stores closed,
people with their families,
not at work by necessity or choice,
not sitting in a lawnchair
in the cold for hours to get a T.V.
Let’s make it a holiday
of common sense
and what it is at the core.