So far I have celebrated Thanksgiving by sleeping hard and late and waking up to coffee, a good way to enter a long day of traveling and feasting. As of now no rain is falling, but I expect it will start any time. I have no illusion that this will be a pleasant drive, but at least we will be heading south and the traffic should be fairly quiet.

Maple chess pie is done, tiny chocolate tarts are done . . . I have fulfilled my baking assignments, and let's hope they taste okay, as I've never made either of them before.

In a moment I'll hoist myself off this couch corner to deal with various loose ends, but I'm lingering a bit, curled here with my hot coffee, warmth rising from the registers: click and tap of the household, furnace and refrigerator, miracles of modern living. I seem to preserve a naïveté about appliances. I never quite take them for granted.

In a few hours, holiday! Our boy and his partner, in-laws and nephew, bustle of kitchen, card games and chat, walks to the reservoir and football muttering in a faraway room . . . the whole nine yards of Thanksgiving.

I hope you have the day you long to have.