Sunset, Thanksgiving, 26 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

At sunset a few drops of rain began falling on my brother Steve’s face as he napped in the hammock, in two blankets.

Inside, my sister Emily, here from Indiana, told everyone about 350.org.

We called our brother Mike, camping with his family and his father-in-law in Seminole Canyon, in Texas, and left him a raucous Thanksgiving voicemail.

Laura called her sister Mary Scott, who was in Lynchburg, Virginia, with the rest of their family.

My niece Jody missed her fiance, Jason.

My niece Ashley and her husband, Erik, were texting with their friend Dan, anchor on a local newscast, while he was trying to cope with a program cut ever shorter by the Cowboys-Raiders game.

Sandy, my sister-in-law, had just come through a grueling several weeks of medical tests, results of which she and Steve got just yesterday. Thanksgiving was thanksgiving. Sandy did an impersonation of the turkey that gets saved by the White House.