The neighborhood looks different today, this Friday after Thanksgiving. There are scarcely any cars traveling on the roads, as travelers have arrived at their destinations and hardly anyone feels like rousing themselves, even the day after Thursday’s sumptuous meal. On the other hand, there are extra cars parked in driveways and at the curb, having delivered family and guests for the holiday.
Slender orange dowels have bloomed like flowers along the sidewalks, placed there by snow-removal companies in anticipation of winter’s work. Christmas lights and trees are going up. One yard even has decorations that combine dowels and Christmas lights, with short little green dowels, each topped by a light, around the edges of the yard. Quite festive.
It is a crisp, sunshiny day, today. The temperature must have been in the teens overnight, as it was twenty-two degrees on first check this morning. As we push on toward winter, getting dressed involves choosing from more columns. We’ve already added the warm socks, turtleneck, and sweater columns, for indoor wear. And heading outdoors today meant choosing from the jacket, hat, muffler, gloves, and hand warmer columns. Plus, of course, the doggie column. We always choose from that column.
Rascal was in fine spirits for this morning’s walk. But then, that’s his default mode. He was downright frisky in the cooler weather. We walked a path we haven’t walked before, which always pleases him, and it was a good day for listening. There is frequently a light plane in the sky during our walk, and it was flying today. I was vaguely aware of its presence when I glanced up at the Canada geese honking on the wing. They can form pretty big flocks in the fall, and this group was coming our direction. All except for one.
How odd, I thought. The big white one’s going the wrong way. Then reality reasserted itself. Everyone in the sky flew on, the Canadas drawing closer and the other one moving into the distance. The big white one was, of course, the airplane, the pilot presumably unaware of having looked like a goose in the backlit brightness.
It’s been a fine week for bird sightings. The path that leads into Thurston Woods from the schoolyard is a fine place to observe, as the underbrush acts as a screen and the birds may not see you coming. That happened on Tuesday, when I surprised a group of cardinals. They weren’t alarmed, but did decide to move from the flowers up into the trees. Cardinals fly distinctively, using their wings and then tucking them against their bodies, wing action, tuck. Add the cardinals’ color to that pattern, and what you get is slipstreams of red, afterimages that linger in the eye. No wonder one of the collective nouns for cardinals is radiance. That was definitely a radiance of cardinals.
Yesterday, there was a different group of birds in the same place, a mixed group. Goldfinches, olive in their subdued autumn plumage. House finches with touches of reddish orange. Black-and-white downy woodpeckers, a bluejay, some sparrows, and quite a few juncos, which have such perfect little shapes that one of our daughters used to call them cartoon birds. Like cardinals, juncos take the flap-and-tuck approach to flying, and their white, outer tail feathers flash as they move.
Turkey was the star bird, yesterday. Our wonderful neighbors came for dinner, and the meal was festive, with a range of dishes and, especially desserts. Cory made a Hungarian pasty called a dios beigli, a yeast-dough roulade with, in this case, walnut filling. The bread portion of this confection requires two egg washes, one using just the yolk and one using just the white, and a cold rise. The end result is distinctive, a rich mahogany brown marked with a pattern of cracks.
What’s more, the recipe Cory used makes two loaves, and he gave us the remains of the dios beigli that he had brought. Lucky us. It’s sitting on the counter alongside yesterday’s pies, a Dutch apple that my husband purchased at the store in a moment of weakness and a homemade cherry pie. The array of desserts and the fridge packed with leftovers are the remaining signs of yesterday’s dinner. All the accoutrements have been washed and returned to their usual locations. We have quite a lot of happy eating ahead of us, and the warm glow of Thanksgivings-past behind us. Thanksgiving’s grace was short and, like the desserts, sweet. It’s my favorite, learned from the late Gordon Jones, rector of our church. “For good food, good friends, good fellowship, thy holy name be praised.”
Amen.
24 November 2023