Giving thanks.

This is the first year since I moved to London in 1989 that I haven't celebrated Thanksgiving. Even when I lived in a teensy hovel in Deptford, we always cooked a turkey and invited all the foreigners we knew, and in more recent years it's grown into a huge sit down extravaganza -- with all the trimmings.

I love Thanksgiving, love the idea of pausing to give thanks for not having broken my neck falling off a horse, for my thirteen-year-old still speaking to me, for the book being nearly finished, for not being a turkey...but this year I'm giving thanks for a peaceful weekend.