6:22 AM Turkey day, been up since 4:00. Don’t feel sad or mad. Came down and worked in my studio right after I consumed my coffee and toast. I did a few more pieces in my Recycled Journal Project and a couple pieces in the GAP colab Project. I am pleased with the work I did this morning.

The house is still quiet, everyone is sleeping. Thanksgiving was my mom’s favorite holiday. It’s been so depressing on this day for years. I don’t feel that depressed today, maybe I’ve passed that hurdle. Her presence is still here somehow, her spirit. A thought just crossed my mind, a relative posted a picture today from a Thanksgiving long ago, taken in New York, I was just eighteen years old, had just got off crystal meth and hitchhiked across the United States. I borrowed clothes to wear to the Thanksgiving dinner. She had commented on how so many of the people are gone now from the picture. There’s three of us left. We don’t talk or see each other. No one looks happy in the picture except my grandma. My uncle has schizophrenia, man that’s a strange word, but everyone was always upset about Tommy. He would self-medicate with alcohol and Listerine.  Sometimes he would just break off into another world. One time we went to Jones Beach, I had a boyfriend with me who I told about Tommy beforehand. Anyhow we are walking down the beach and Tommy broke into character, “And the lord Jesus himself can wipe the dirt off my shoes” Eyes big, mouth going, wet, animated. My boyfriend got scared, I laughed and said,  “Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you” Maybe everyone was on edge about something like that happening. Tommy didn’t come to many family functions. He usually disappeared right after dinner. I’ve had so many dreams where I’m driving on the windy roads of Sea Cliff looking for Tommy. Going into the old house, looking in the trees, “Tommy” We were pretty close. The thought I had though, when I saw her post was that the people missing are just as important as the people present. They’ve left their mark, their stain on us. I can’t stop thinking about a lecture I heard, and I can’t remember the artist’s name, but I’ll figure it out and add it. She said “The air we breathe is the same air our ancestors breathed” It just gets recirculated. My mom’s ashes were thrown in the Irish Sea, my grandma’s on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn Zoo, all my dogs in the Pacific Ocean. The ones missing from the pictures of holidays past are not gone or forgotten. We breath their air and feel their presence.