Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
―Mary Oliver
Once again it is Thanksgiving week. The trees in my neighborhood are dropping their beautiful red, yellow, and gold foliage, the trees ready for their winter bareness to prepare to sprout again next year. This has been a crazy year for many reasons, and often, when things feel their bleakest, I do my best to strive for gratitude. I do have a lot to be thankful for. A job that I enjoy. The opportunity to purchase my own. home. My writing. And my writing.
I’m thankful for the million-dollar view from my bedroom window that I’ll miss when it’s time to move. I’m thankful for baking chocolate peppermint cookies (and more thankful for eating them). I’m thankful for a warm, snug bed when it’s cold at night. I’m thankful for my two furries who never cease to make me smile. I’m thankful that the weather in Southern Nevada has finally broken and I can wear sweaters and walk in cool-crisp air that makes me happy to be alive. I’m grateful that I’ve learned to seek the magic in ordinary days. I’ve been binging on Mary Oliver’s poetry lately, and I love how she reminds us to pay attention to the beauty everywhere around us.
I decided in 2023 to pursue a more deliberate life, as Thoreau beckons us to do. Seeking magic in ordinary days means paying attention to everything. Instead of always feeling like I need to have exciting experiences, I find joy in making tea and drinking it, feeling the comfort of the warm cup in my hands as I enjoy the scent of the bergamot oil. Seeking magic in ordinary days means living with intention as well as attention to the world around me: basking in the sweet fragrance of chocolate chip cookies as they bake, diving deeply into the worlds of the stories I read, sitting in the park enjoying the trees and the green.
Even shopping for produce can be a joy. There’s a small farmer’s market near my favorite coffee shop. The farmers come to Nevada from California and they sell organic produce that I love to mull over. I needed carrots for a recipe I cooked recently, and I took great joy in choosing from the purple, yellow, and orange organic carrots. Before, I would have grabbed whatever was handy at the supermarket. Now, even shopping for carrots can be a way to appreciate the moment. Cooking for the Thanksgiving holiday means returning to old family favorite recipes, but it wouldn’t be the holidays without them. I love the smell of the turkey roasting, the green bean casserole simmering, the tangy sweetness of the cranberry sauce. There is always something special about a holiday meal based on tradition.
Being out in nature is one of the best ways to find magic in ordinary days. Feeling the warmth of the sun, seeing the flowers in bloom, watching the birds fly in graceful swirls, and watching the wind sweep through the desert landscape can be wonderful ways to experience natural beauty. Seeing the foliage change from green to red, orange, and yellow in the autumn and allowing the brisk air to wake you up in winter—there’s little that can top that. Wherever you live, whatever the scenery, learn to see the beauty in it. Just as it took me years to appreciate the desert sunsets, it also took me years to appreciate the desert beauty, and now I love the red-rock canyons, the sprouts of green, and the bright-light sun. If you live near hiking, go for a walk, even a short one. If you live near pretty neighborhood parks as I do, then make a point of visiting as often as you can. Leave your electronic doo-dahs behind and allow yourself to take in the beauty around you. Allow nature to excite your senses. What do you see, hear, smell? Enjoy all of it.
To celebrate Thanksgiving, I wanted to share the holiday with my favorite paranormal family, the Wentworths. Here is Chapter 7 from Her Loving Husband’s Curse. Enjoy. Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. Remember, there is always something to be grateful for.
* * * * *
In November Halloween was gone, ghosts and ghouls replaced by stoic Native Americans holding pies and smiling, buckle-hatted turkeys unaware of their fate. And pumpkins. The trees were bare now, the burst of temporary color gone, leaving their sugar and crimson behind, the leaves raked away. The branches, now naked and spindly, shivered in the poking, colder air. Storm after storm wet Salem, riding out to the ocean on the crashing waves of the bay. Heavier coats were found, scarves and mittens pulled from their summer hideaways, and people walked closer together, huddled in preparation for the real cold to come. It was calmer in Salem after the summer tourists and the Halloween partiers cleared away, and the locals stretched their legs and walked the quiet streets in peace.
Sarah paced the wooden gabled house two steps at a time, rearranging the autumn harvest centerpiece on the table near the hearth, straightening the Happy Thanksgiving banner on the wall. She paced again, now three steps at a time, down to the end of the great room and back, dusting the bookshelves again and back, checking the baking cookies in the stainless steel oven and back. When she heard the squeak of the front door, she sighed with relief. She ran to James and pressed herself into his arms.
“She’s not here yet,” Sarah said.
“I told you I’d be back in time.”
She pushed herself away and paced again.
“Maybe I should have put out some Pilgrims,” she said. “What if she notices there aren’t any Pilgrims? Everyone has Pilgrim decorations at Thanksgiving time. What if she thinks we’re not good Americans? What if she thinks we won’t know what to do with a child because kids love Pilgrims at Thanksgiving time?”
“First of all, those Thanksgiving harvest plays the kids do aren’t factually correct. If she wants to know why we don’t have Pilgrims in our house, I’ll explain it to her.” He pulled Sarah back into his arms and kissed her forehead. “We are Pilgrims.”
“We didn’t come over on the Mayflower.”
“No, but we were here when Massachusetts was a colony. We’ll bring down our old clothes from the attic and show her.”
“That’s not funny.”
Sarah walked back to the oven, checked the cookies with a spatula, decided they were brown enough, and pulled them out, placing them onto an autumn orange cake platter with green and yellow leaves.
“Cookies?” James asked.
“Chocolate chip cookies.”
“They smell sweet.”
“That’s why people love them.” She pulled one apart, then licked the melted chocolate dribbling down her fingers. “Do you want to try one?”
“I’d love to, but I can’t.”
“You can’t eat at all?”
“Honey, I haven’t eaten solid food in over three hundred years.”
“That’s too bad. Life isn’t worth living without chocolate chip cookies.”
“I think I’m doing all right.”
The cauldron in the hearth caught Sarah’s eye. It looked like it should bubble, bubble, toil and trouble while the three witches in Macbeth cast spells and foretold the future, hysterical with evil visions and dastardly deeds. She looked inside, checking to see if the heavy black pot could be unlatched and removed, shaking her head when the seventeenth century fastenings held strong.
“I never should have left this,” she said. “I should have had it taken out during the remodeling. She’s going to think it’s a child hazard, and it is.” She jumped at the hollow knock at the door that echoed like a loud No! No! No!
James stroked Sarah’s hand. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “Relax.”
He opened the door, and the social worker walked in, stiff and stoic, underpaid and overworked, an unsmiling woman in an ill-fitting purple jacket with linebacker shoulder pads and a purple flowered skirt. She looked, Sarah thought, like a summer plum. She was slump-shouldered and long-faced, like this was the fiftieth home she had visited that day and it was always the same, smiling faces, fresh-baked cookies, guarantees they would take care of the child whether they would or they wouldn’t.
The plum-looking woman entered the great room without saying hello. She didn’t acknowledge James or Sarah. “You have a lot of books,” she said finally, writing in the spiral notebook in her hand.
“My wife and I both like to read,” James said.
Sarah stepped aside as the woman nodded at the flat-screen television and shook her head at the three hundred year-old desk, scratching more notes. James looked over her shoulder, trying to see what she wrote, but Sarah shook her head at him. She didn’t want the woman to notice anything odd about James, though his curiosity was human enough. The plum-looking woman stopped in front of the cauldron.
“Are you witches?” she asked.
“No,” James said, “but our best friends are.” When the social worker didn’t smile, James stepped away. “The cauldron came with the house,” he said. “We thought it gave the place character so we kept it.”
“How old is the house?”
“It’s from the seventeenth century,” Sarah answered.
“How long have you lived here?”
Sarah and James looked at each other.
“Two years,” James said. “We both work at the university.”
The plum-looking woman nodded. “If you’re approved you’ll have to have that thing,” she gestured with her pen at the cauldron, “removed. It’s a safety hazard.”
“Of course,” Sarah said.
“Does this place need an inspection? Sometimes these older houses have bad wiring, or improper plumbing.”
“The house is up to code,” James said. “We made sure of that when we had the place remodeled.”
“When was this remodeling?”
“They finished during the summer. I have the paperwork here.”
He handed the social worker the forms that said the house met the qualifications of a twenty-first century inspection. She glanced over the paperwork and nodded, writing more notes. She looked around the kitchen, the bedroom, the smaller room in the back. She scowled at the wood ladder that led up to the attic.
“Can that be removed?” she asked.
“We can take it out if it’s a problem,” James said.
She nodded, scowling more at the cauldron as she walked back into the kitchen.
“Would you like something to drink?” Sarah asked.
“Thank you. Water would be fine.”
“We have some cold water in the fridge,” Sarah said.
“No need to trouble yourselves. I’ll get it.”
Before Sarah could protest, the social worker opened the refrigerator and eyed the groceries before pulling out the water pitcher. Sarah dropped into a chair, unable to hide the horror on her face. What if the social worker saw James’ bags of blood? But James nodded, pointing to his temple, an I’ve got this look in his eyes. He pulled a glass from the cupboard, poured water for the plum-looking woman, then joined Sarah at the table, smiling the whole time.
“What do you do at the college?” the social worker asked.
“I’m a professor, and my wife is a librarian.”
“What do you teach?”
“English literature.”
She sipped her water as she glanced over the application in her manila folder. “I think you’re my son’s English professor. Levon Jackson. Do you know him?”
“Very well,” James said. “He took two of my classes last year, and he’s in my Shakespeare seminar this term. He’s a bright young man, and a very good writer.”
Mrs. Jackson clapped her hands, her mother’s love everywhere on her round cheeks. No longer the plum-looking woman, now she was Levon’s mother.
“You should hear how he raves about you, Doctor Wentworth. Every day he comes home saying Doctor Wentworth said this or Doctor Wentworth said that.”
“It’s a pleasure teaching a student who wants to learn,” James said.
Mrs. Jackson’s round-cheeked smile lit the room. “You’ve done a world of good for my boy, Doctor Wentworth. I was so worried about him after that back injury meant he couldn’t be considered for the NHL draft. Going pro is all he’s talked about since he put on his first pair of skates. When that was no longer possible for him, he floundered. He didn’t have plans for anything else, and now he wants to be a professor like you. I’m pleased to meet you, Doctor Wentworth.”
“Please, call me James. It’s my pleasure.”
As Mrs. Jackson looked over the paperwork, James winked at Sarah.
“I don’t see any problems here, Doctor Wentworth. Everything seems to be in order. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll have the rest of the paperwork approved by my supervisor.” Mrs. Jackson looked at Sarah. “Mrs. Wentworth, you have a lovely house with a lot of history here. Any child would be lucky to have such a home.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said.
James escorted Mrs. Jackson to her car, said good night, and waved as she drove away. Back inside, James walked to Sarah, put his arms around her, and pulled her close. She felt the invisible fairy-like thread drawing them together again, only now it was looser, stretching out, over there to where someone else waited, someone they didn’t know yet but someone who was loved unconditionally.
Just because, Sarah thought. Whoever you are. We love you just because.
She pointed her chin up, and James kissed her. When she opened her eyes, he was smiling.
“Was that your idea to move the blood bags?” she asked.
“I thought she might look in the refrigerator,” he said. “To see how clean we are.”
“That’s why you’re brilliant, Doctor Wentworth.”
“I know,” he said.
