Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft - dying day
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue.

         After the leaves come down, the countryside has an open look. New vistas appear, hills unseen when summer's wealth of green is spread, now stands, blue and hazy, in the distance. In the cropped fields the browns and copper and smoky tan make a sober symphony, not as dramatic as the blaze of October but lovely to look at. If you had the right plug-in, you would be hearing nice music now.

We stay outdoors as much as possible for winter will soon sweep in, and the warm air is doubly precious. We like to eat down by the pond, which mirrirs such a pale still sky, and just a few late - fallen leaves drift on it like upside - down stars.

    Then the November rains come, so steady, so determined and so fearfully grey. It can rain so hard in our valley that it looks as if a wall of water advanced, you can not see a hand's length ahead. They sky is pewter. The roads run with water and the brooks make a thunder down the hill. George's barnyard gets flooded and he wades hip - deep with his boots flooded, his oilskins dripping.

    This is hard weather for cockers and Irish, particularly for Irish. Holly keeps sloshing in and out, racing around the yard, racing in the house. she reminds me of a child "what can I do now , Mama?" And I wish I could get her interested in a crayon book or cutting out paper dolls.

Thanksgiving is gay with massed greens in the big copper bowl, with harvest vegetables piled in the old wooden dough tray, with red corn hanging against the mellow pine by the fireplace. apples and raisins and nuts brim the bowls on the coffee table by the fire, the cheeseboard is decked forth with pale Swiss, bright cheddar and creamy Port Salut.

    Jill blisters her fingers on the chestnuts for the dressing for the plump turkey, but decides chestnut stuffing is worth it. When the turkey roasts, the savory smell of sage and chestnuts drifts from the kitchen and the onions glazing in honey and catsup add their fragrance.

    The children are all at home for the week end, plus Jill's exquisite granddaughter, rosy and sweet as a young apple blossom. she is now over a year old, and busily absorbing every detail of this strange and wonderful world. We naturally see signs of a very surprising genius in her every gesture, and I am reminded of that doting mamma who kept saying "look at my baby breathe!"

    Well; it is pretty wonderful to breathe, at that.

   The children sit quietly while I talk over with God what blessings we have, but I note they lift knife and fork the instant I raise my head. They are, I reflect comfortably, just as hungry now as they were when they were very little, and went out after dinner in bunny suits.

    A family holiday, such as this, gives one a chance to estimate the changes in the children. As we pass the plates heaped with the crisply crackling turkey, mellow and delicate under the skin and golden brown on top - the conversation seems like a montage of their lives.

    That serious young interne, surely only yesterday he was asking, "who is the leader of the stars?" The gay young mother, yes, she was the very one who fell off her bicycle and flew through the air a mile a minute. And Connie, as she relates some riotous happenings in her class at Columbia, must be the same little girl that came home from kindergarten and said, "Mama, T.J. kissed me. You know he's the one with the lavender up - top."

    Sometimes one wishes they were little again, yet on the whole I think it is so rewarding to know them as equals that I would not really wish the romper days back. Every mother must feel the occasional ache for her child's baby days and in retrospect even pushing spinach through a sieve seems fun. Nowadays, I think a baby would be no bother at all. Everything is pureed before you get it and what bliss! disposable diapers or diaper services, nylon, dacron, orlon and what - not to wear that irons itself as you shake it out, whole meals from soup to nuts in little sterile jars - what a change.

    As I was pondering this, however, it came to me that Jill's daughter spends all the time there is in the baby, and Papa's time is added to it when he is at home. This is a mystery. For all that timesaving seems to have gotten them exactly nowhere!

    When the baby naps, they wash things, mix things, collect and wash toys, shake blankets. Get the medicine dropper ready for those miracle drops. And run up and down stairs every five minutes just to be sure she is not too warm or too cold.

     So I finally decide things haven't really changed so much. A baby is a time - consuming affair even now.

    After Thanksgiving dinner, the house simmers down to quiet. It seems cosy and natural to hear muted voices from all over, the baby upstairs waking up, Connie and Don talking, Don's wife tuning the quitar and humming. With all the food around, I reflect comfortably, we won't need to get another sit - down meal, they can raid.

    Naturally in a very few hours, there is a kind of stir.

    "Is it almost supper time?"

    "Mind if I eat a little more chestnut stuffing?"

     It is very much as it was on Christmas when I said to Jill, "we can have the leftover turkey tomorrow," and she said, "what turkey?"

    It turns out there is just enough to slice thin and have cold, plus extra dressing, then reinforced with a casserole of home - baked beans nobody perishes of starvation. "And all of them as thin as pencils," I mourn afterward, "it just isn't fair! They can just eat alarmingly and never gain an ounce. Whereas I - no, no justice at all."

    Thanksgiving is far more than a family dinner and national festival. I know all people have always had harvest celebrations of one kind or another, so there is nothing distinctive about a feast time after the crops are in. but our Thanksgiving seems very close to our relation with God. It has a deep religious significance not always spoken of, but I, thank, felt.

 I like to slip away for a brief time and sit by the pond on the one bench left out all winter. If it is a warm hazy day, the sun is slanting over the hill with a gentle glow. If it is cold, the wind walks in the woods. I think of everything I have to be thankful for, and it is a long list by the time it is added up. I am thankful for love, and friends, and the family gathering together. for starlight over the old apple orchard. for the chilly sweetness of peepers in April. For my winter birds, so brave, so hungry, particularly for my little chickadee with the bent wing that bangs away at the suet cake right while I type. He cocks a shining eye at me and seems to say, "life is really what you make of it, eh?"

  I am thankful for music and books. And for the dogs barking at the gate. Well, there are so many things to be thankful for that the list is infinitely long.

And it is good to take time to be thankful, for it is all too easy to let world's trouble sweep over one in a dark flood and fall into despair.

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