They say that your life flashes before your eyes just prior to impending doom.  Well mine flashed on Thanksgiving Day 2000 in Raleigh, but there was no impending doom.  In fact, it was a joyful day, mixed with just a little trepidation.  It was the date I first glimpsed my own mortality and the future held in store for those left behind.

My husband and I were formally invited to Raleigh for the holidays by my 23-year old son and his bride-to-be.  They lived in the upstairs apartment at 116 Forest Road.  He was finishing school down the road.

This wasn't my first trip to Raleigh.  Just over a year earlier I had spent a long weekend in a blur of apartment-hunting, household-furnishing, school-enrolling, book-buying, and basically money-spending.  This trip was different from the very beginning.

For the past 25+ years, Thanksgiving had been celebrated at home in Jackson, Mississippi, our home.  I was the mother and the hostess.  My job was to have a clean house, fresh linens, and a traditional dinner complete with turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, etc.  This year I was invited to be the guest, and it was with strange, mixed feelings that I boarded the plane.

He picked us up at the airport and settled us in at the Velvet Cloak Hotel, right across Hillsborough Road.  At the designated time we walked across the street to the dinner party.  The future in-laws were there, as were a set of parents of the downstairs neighbors.  A makeshift table was set on the patio with Christmas lights and lawn chairs.  The weather was perfect, the food delicious, the hospitality impeccable.  The wine flowed freely, and the conversation was amazingly clever and sophisticated.  It was a perfect evening.

As we walked back to the hotel, the flashing of the life occurred.  It dawned on me - I've been the mother for a long time but I'm not the mother anymore, at least not the same mother.  I'm no longer in charge - of Thanksgiving dinner or of him.  Furthermore, I won't always be around.  Times have changed, in particular my time has changed.

So you could say that on Thanksgiving Day, 2000, I had my first glimpse of my own mortality.  It was not sad, though, and there was no regret.  He would be left to carry on and much more ably than I would have predicted 5 years earlier.  I caught a glimpse of the future, his children and their children and many more Thanksgiving Days in the Triangle.  It was a future much more than bright.  It was brilliant.