Dreading or Loving the Season, It's Here

, Friday afternoon 3:45pm: As I sit writing up a story about a fire that thankfully did not cause injuries or any serious damage I am surrounding by patrons drinking in the intoxicating smells of hot soup and fresh coffee and talking about one thing. Thanksgiving. What's on their menus, what route they are driving to get to Thanksgiving dinner, how much work they have to do to get the house ready for children returning from college or work in far off places.

There is a certain feel that this time year has. It's both comforting, and dread-inducing. Your stage in life often determines how you look at Thanksgiving,

At one table two women discuss the memories of childhood stuffing and the homemade ice cream someone only makes once a year.  Behind me, two people talk about the anticiapted nightmare of driving on the New Jersey Turnpike on Thanksgiving Day (been there, hated that) and whether a complex labrynth of back roads is worth the trade-off to avoid the construction projects that seem to have consumed the main road between here and the New York suburban communities.

For college freshman returning home, it's often the first time back with the "'rents" since living completely on their own. There are two sides to that coin as one parent a few tables over was excitdely looking forward to everything but the logisitcs of getting her freshman home on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

For many of us in the "sandwich" generation the challenge is to find menu items that will delight our kids and our parents at the same time. And for many in our generation there's a silent bracing for the ineveitable dinnertime asides about how "'Aunt Betty Lou' made the turkey better than anyone else ever could" just as the bird we got up at 5 a.m. to stuff and roast is being brought to the table. So what if we won't get a bite before the first relative is ready for seconds?

As the sun begins to sink down into the big picture windows overlooking Swedesford Road, I am jolted out of my musings to realize I've got housecleaning to do, and a lot of grocery shopping too. Fortunately is closer than my next deadline.

This time of year brings joys and challenges. While it's not all like the classic Folger's commercial where "Peter" slips into the house at sunrise and makes coffee (so many years have passed since that classic commercial that by now Peter's kids are probably coming home from college and bringing sacks of laundry instead of cans of coffee) it's time to gear up for what can be for many, including me at least, one of "The Most Wonderful Time(s) of the Year."