Thanksgiving Trauma Trifecta....

href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rrJDZzpjOgg/R0-Dyqx1RhI/AAAAAAAAAAw/Iob91Pal_6Q/s1600-R/IMG_5207.JPG">




And How I Breathed Through It.

Last time I talked about how the greatest gift we can give friends or family is our attention--well, the venerable Dad, now 81 and getting around on a walker and gumption, visited for a week at Thanksgiving and it was chock full of tender moments.

Dad, Norba (my great friend since 9th grade; they're pictured above) and I drove up to the Asheville, NC, area where my artist cousins Deana & Chuck create their award winning stained glass & metal art at Selena Glass and Metal. Their place off Hwy 19 on Sweet Hollow Road is a bucolic green valley paradise, surrounded by lavender hills.

Picture Norma crammed in the back seat with Dad's potty chair (skillfully draped with a windbreaker)as we drove through the Blue Ridge, singing "Over the river & through the woods..."

The feast, at a purple & white gingerbread Victorian on J.R. Pate (which they pronounce Junior Pa-tay, as in goose liver paste) was a potluck populated by poets, artists and madmen, and we contributed the 24 lb. organic turkey.





Chuck shook up some mean martinis.




Deana enjoyed catering to her cousin Joe, my father, last in our family's "Greatest Generation."


And when we got back to Atlanta, Dad and I attended the "Frogmore Stew and Bonfire" party of "Writers In Focus" TV host James Taylor and his lovely, lively wife Lynn Myers, while Dad sat next to liberal talk radio personality Mike Molloy and they agreed to disagree about Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter (two of Dad's faves).








I hosted a SingAlong Soiree for several "graduates" of "Get the Life You Love" and singer/songwriter Julie Austin led us in great old standards like "Down by the Old Mill Stream," "If I Had A Hammer"and "You Are My Sunshine." It was a hoot--and heartwarming too!


The next day, Dad's last on this visit, we were headed for the very uplifting "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (a perfect holiday film about several ways to kill off your family members-- but Roger Ebert had given it Two Thumbs)came the Trifecta.

Within the span of 1/2 hour, I got word on the cancellation of a major project that had been perking for six months; opened my email to discover that not one but three friends from Garden Club plus one other friend had lost loved ones that very week; and then, the house began to clank and clatter like the Titanic going down!

Pipes rattled, twitched and shuddered--the garbage disposal gurgled--things clanged in the basement--the place sounded possessed! (Dad was reading the paper).

Thank God it was actually raining (in the midst of Atlanta's horrible drought). When I heard a strange noise and rushed outside, I saw something the likes of which I've never seen in ten years of life in the Enchanted Forest-- an air vent was spewing water and debris out onto the Lido Deck (the lower deck of my screened porch, where the hot tub lives--thank goodness the tub was covered). It was wild! Every 30 seconds a fresh gusher, until it finally spent itself--and the sump pump cut off. And the rain was helping wash it away.

Mercy!

Of course it took a plumber's visit to figure out what happened--the air vent had been clogged with the nest of some little critters that we screened out last winter-- but as it was, the pipes WEREN'T BREATHING PROPERLY-- and so the whole thing exploded!

This is when I got to practice my three-part yogic breathing, and managed not to explode too.

Moral of the story--breathe deeply all the way into your abdomen, and keep those pipes cleared out!