I feel young again when your favorite song popped on the radio, and that’s all it took to make your day. For Mom, it was Steve Winwood, Higher Love. She’d blare it so old Nellie would shake, and all the other cars on the road could see and hear it too.

Think about it, there must be higher love

Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above

Without it, life is wasted time

Look inside your heart, I’ll look inside mine.

Steve Winwood, Higher love

I see my back leaning against the car window and my legs splayed across the back seat–making me an expanse of wasted time. But I had nothing better to do than to grow old enough to drive myself.

Sometimes I’ll pop out of it and come back to reality: say they still can’t agree about elections? Never mind that. My hair looks more like a toupee that an alligator took a bite out of.

Or, Covid still exists, and we have to take precautions for Thanksgiving? I probably won’t be able to eat anyway. It’s the day after chemo round #3, and I’m collecting photos for my gratitude board (hint! hint!). But I can tell you some fun stories of Thanksgiving’s past.

The governor mandated that the kids stay home and have virtual school? It’s not like I’ve been driving them to school anyway or making their lunches or cooking dinner. Could you please change the channel? I hate this song.

Before motherhood, I spent 30+ years writing a fictional book about a pioneer who weathered the first Aspen winter only to die that spring of strychnine. It amounted to a great title, Pioneer Park–only pioneers don’t park, so what an oxymoron–a research trip and my picture at the Continental Divide in the Rockies between Leadville and Aspen.

A sign marked the divide called Independence Pass; otherwise, you’d have no idea. One side looked identical to the other. However, the invisible line’s magic was in what you couldn’t see but knew to be true: the reservoirs on the west side dump into the Pacific, and on the east side, they flow into the Atlantic.

Independence Pass marks the divide where the rivers change course. It was a fact that was lost on me because I hate change–I did even then. So I never finished the book.

I had to wait for life to teach me that even if I can’t accept it, change is always flowing. No day is ever like the last.

So it all came crashing down on me when I was about to turn 50, and I realized my kids were no longer kids. They were all part of this progression of change.

I devoted a portion of my life to raising my kids. I had my family, and that’s all I wanted and would still desire if I could hold onto the past forever.

Bring me a higher love

Where’s that higher love, I keep thinking of?

steve winwood, higher love

But the past stopped being real yesterday. I needed to be more than a has-been Mama trying to turn up an old ghost from the 1800s. So I tried out for Mamma Mia instead. I auditioned two years ago this November.

It got me out of the house where I felt sorry for myself, anyway, and onto a stage. I wrote about it–non-fiction this time.

But wait! Was I going to spend another 30 years writing about Mamma Mia?

Truth? When I looked inside myself, the way Steve Winwood could only make me do, I didn’t want to get published. I could fail and make a fool of myself, and everyone would know what a dinosaur I’ve been.

So I started my blog to put my neck out in the world again (real slow like a turtle) and laugh at life. I needed to find a bigger stage than my home.

Only Covid hit two weeks before I was going to be in my second community theater musical and got everybody so scarred and sent everybody home again anyway.

Things look so bad everywhere

In this whole world, what is fair?

We walk blind and we try to see

Falling behind in what could be

steve winwood, higher love

So I laughed and stayed positive to see where that would get me.

And when I got cancer? I had to make it fun and games, too. If I can’t pull this off, then I really will be that washed-up good for nothing dinosaur.

Worlds are turning and we’re just hanging on

Facing our fear and standing out there alone

A yearning, and it’s real to me

There must be someone who’s feeling for me

steve windood, higher love

But I discovered that I’m not doing this alone. I’ve got you. You’re encouraging me–making my world, which seemed so flat and linear, seem whole again.

I could light the night up with my soul on fire

I could make the sunshine from pure desire

Let me feel that love come over me

Let me feel how strong it could be

steve winwood, higher love

So here we are at chemo round number 3–the day before Thanksgiving with all the detox horrors I know enough to expect. And all I can say is bring it on. I’ve got a higher love to transport me and get me through this.

Just like for Thanksgiving, we can’t be together with our loved ones the way we have celebrated in Thanksgiving pasts. This year we must be pioneers on this front, too. We must love them even more by staying apart.

As we bring love to a higher place, we’re seeing that family means more than the small nucleus we once thought it to be. Our family is in you and me.

No matter where we stand or what we believe, no matter how we change and the rivers flow, there’s no great divide where Thanksgiving is concerned.

Feel young again, pretend your favorite song just popped on the radio and hear it the way you would have back then. May it transform you to a higher love and may you feel whole again.