Red Room Where the Writers Are

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Ireland as we might if we were living in the US.  Here it is just another Thursday and there is school and jobs to be done and driving back and forth with errands.  Ofcourse over breakfast we wish each other a ''Happy Thanksgiving'' but that's as good as it gets.  Life, the daily trawl goes on.  The stars and stripes that we hung outside the porch to celebrate Obamas' victory is still standing though a little weather worn at this stage, a few gales later and a little more threadbare! My son came home from high school tonight to tell me that several teachers wished him a happy thanksgiving, a big change from a few years ago when being an american translated into a dirty word.  That makes me happy and proud and relieved more than anything.  There is nothing worse than being perceived as something negative, especially when that something is nothing that you have control over! Hub and I went to a charity event tonight, a food and wine fair from one of the longest established family businesses in Galway, McCambridges. There was wine from Spain and france and some amazing Chateauneuf du Pape at close to thirty euro a bottle, which is expensive for me! Still it was fabulous, some great smoked salmon from The Burren and local and Irish cheeses, breads, dips, coffees, chocolates, crackers and pates and all kinds of tea.  We did not stay too long because we wanted to have dinner with the boys, albeit salad and pasta, rocket and pesto, but still a Thanksgiving dinner of sorts nonetheless, a thanks for being together, for surviving what we've survived, for the  giving of  thanks that we are still sitting at a round table in a kitchen in the West of Ireland with the wind and the rain lashing the window panes, still able to talk and share and celebrate how we all came to be one, sitting around a table, in a perfect circle, reaching out  for the basket of bread.