How done is that turkey in the window?

Thanksgiving was fast approaching and I was ready and anticipatory. I was feeling good. I'd had five days to recoup after my surgery and had done small projects around the house at a leisurely pace. Jeff was leaving Tuesday night to start driving a customer's car to Phoenix. He had agreed to this schedule before he knew the kids were coming in. He'd be spending Thanksgiving day with his brother and sister-in-law in Phoenix and flying home late Friday. I was sorry that he wasn't going to be with us for the holiday, but the up side was that I knew with Jeff on the road, the house would stay clean. The dining table would remain the dining table rather than his "office".

Once again I would be ensconced in a frenetic schedule, but this was not work. This was fun. And I was ready for some fun. I had planned every event with our granddaughters in mind. Making memories of good times with grandma and grandpa (albeit, mostly in absentia this time). Scott and his family arrived late Wednesday afternoon and after a quick dinner, we took his girls Chloe, 9, and Livy, 7, to see Jim Carrey's new A Christmas Carol movie. Kind of funny. Kind of dark. Kind of awesome cinematically. It was the kick-off of our activities.

Thursday morning, we all served a full Thanksgiving meal to the troops at my church and then came home to our own Thanksgiving dinner. I had put the turkey in the oven before we left that morning and set the automatic cook timer. First time I had ever used it. Enter when you want it to be ready, how long you want it to cook and at what temperature, and it calculates when it needs to start. How does it do that???? It doesn't have fingers to count on. I wasn't sure I had done it right. It was either going to cook for 3 hours and 15 minutes. Or else it was going to cook for 3 minutes and 15 seconds, in which case we'd be having a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner -- not that there's anything wrong with that. But my friend Linn's husband John would be joining us, as Linn had flown to North Carolina to help their daughter with a health crisis in her household. I knew John was lonesome and worried about his family, so I was hopeful we'd be able to distract him with a good meal, followed by watching Wall-E.

Fortunately, we returned home to a roasted turkey and all was right in our world.

Friday morning I awoke to discover what felt like a small doorknob near the lymph node incision scar. I knew what it was. Lymphatic fluid, just hanging around trying to find the missing three lymph nodes. Eventually, it would give up and move to a new home. Or at least I hoped that's what it would do. It didn't hurt. Just felt odd. I didn't think I had done anything untoward that caused it. Just part of the process.

So Friday morning was: hop on the train to Chicago and go see Santa at Macy's on State Street, have lunch at the Walnut Room and then take the girls over to American Girl store, another highlight of their trip. Back home on the train; grab some leftovers and then attend our town's tree-lighting ceremony that night, with Santa arriving on a fire truck, followed by a drive through the Christmas light show. At midnight, I drove up to Milwaukee and picked up Jeff at the airport and brought him home.

Saturday morning, all six of us went to breakfast and then to the live performance of A Christmas Carol at the Lincolnshire Marriott Theater. From there, Scott and family drove back to Des Moines, IA, and Jeff and I drove home and collapsed.

It truly had been a Dickensian holiday, bookended by a film and a live performance of A Christmas Carol. It was fun. It was busy. It was exhausting.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I couldn't help but think about how much our lives (and our longevity) are impacted by the era wherein we dwell here on earth. If I was fresh off the Mayflower, I'd be a ticking time bomb with no idea my body was cooking its own little evil-doing turkey. No detection. No treatment. No happily ever after. We get what we get when we get it.

In a few decades, the options we have now will no doubt seem archaic. Perhaps they'll implant a device that, while you sleep tight in your bed, zooms toward the tumor like a heat-seeking missile and blasts it into pieces like a shattered window. Then a second implanted little Hoover device will pick up the trail and suck up all the debris. Next morning, you'll get up, hop in your portable pack-and-go helicopter and zip off to work, good as new. And as I relate what it was like in my day, that future generation will look at me in horror and gasp, "you mean they sliced into you, removed that icky thing, then ran toxins through your system and nuked you 'til you were crisp! Good God, woman, and you thought you were lucky?"

And I'll smile and reply, "Yep, I was one lucky Pilgrim."