My children do a wonderful job of informing me after the fact when it is “opposite” day. You can imagine what it’s like, being asked a bunch of loaded questions, answering in the negative on every occasion, and then being told that it’s opposite day, and I’ve just given them the right to eat a gallon of ice cream, stay up until midnight, and install a surround-sound dvd stereo system in their room.

Of course, none of these things actually happen as they might wish, and they know they won’t. They just like to offer a good “Gotcha!” whenever they can. It’s in that moment, though, when the possibility exists for them, and the suspended belief occurs for me, that is priceless. That transition of thought, that split-second of Just Maybe.

This is the way I feel on Thanksgiving day. Every year, I enter this four-day break feeling like I’m in that transition. Possibility exists for so much to happen. Reality as I have known it is suspended indefinitely, and myriad thoughts of a simpler life rush through my mind.

This must be the same experience a turkey feels when it flies from one feeding place to another. A good turkey flight can top speeds of 50 miles per hour, but they are not built for the long run; endurance is not their thing. Flying is a matter of survival for them, or at the very least, a quick bus that carries them from lunch to dinner.

Today, I am flying. There are three more days ahead of me, and a good lot of hours remaining in this first day. In mid-air, I imagine the possible ways to simplify my life, to be with my kids more, to lose the weight I absolutely must, must lose.

I imagine the life I always dreamed I might someday have.

And in that flight, in these days that will pass, all things may seem more possible than ever before. Every ounce of me will believe this. I will believe this flight to be forever. The endurance flight, if you will. Destination: Eternity.

But in a few days my kids will come up to me and pull a “Gotcha!” They’ll tell me the ride’s over, it was really opposite vacation after all, and there are no real ways to simplify right now. There are no possible ways to lose weight, despite the myriad meaningful reasons to lose a good 100 pounds.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll be the turkey that doesn’t stop for dinner and goes a little farther into the night, facing daybreak head on.

Maybe these four days are the beginning of that enduring journey.

All I can do is hope, keep flapping my wings, and stay in the air…

May all of you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Love to all,

Rus