Last night I took my walk after dark. We emerged from our Thanksgiving cocoon of turkey and television, husband and I, into a night still warm from an Indian summer that had lasted far into autumn. The pavement was damp but no drops stood on our windshield. Less a light rain than a heavy fog, now gone, had passed over us while we, unaware, had dolloped whipped cream and sipped hot Turkish tea.

I stood on the sidewalk, momentarily alone. I looked across to a neighbor, and immediately all her lights snapped off. We walked the empty streets. It’s late November, he murmured to me, his tone low, in keeping with the softness of the evening air.

After a while, I turned to him. That’s the third house that’s gone dark when I passed. He looked up at the nearest street light. It had dimmed at our approach and was now completely spent. Halfway down the block, he turned to look back and chuckled in surprise. I turn around. The light was full bright.

We finish our walk. We cross two women walking a dog. At our porch, I hesitate, one foot on the bottom step.

Under the blind of the next door neighbor, the blue light of a television flickers.

I’ve spread the dining table with the Thanksgiving tablecloth, orange and maroon turkeys on a black background. Last night we had roast chicken and afterward, while the children and their guest cleared the dishes and set the table with rummikub, I sliced pears, ripe but firm, and cut butter into oatmeal.

After husband had won the the game and the children had thundered upstairs, I made a pot of strong tea and brought in the crisp, studded with small points of cardamon. Together we watched “Bad Education” by Almodovar.

I watched the beginning twice, so struck was I by the opening credits. “Woman on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown” too had striking credits. The final credit in the opening sequence is on an image of women printed in Technicolor – the camera pulls back to reveal the wall on which the image hangs, the room in which the wall stands, the dwelling of which the wall is a part.

Everything is part of a whole.

This weekend I went to see a play, Las Nuevas Tamaleras, a funny and touching story of three friends and cousins who set out to make tamales — and create a link to past generations of women. From the great-grandmother who spoke only Spanish and who had known only one man, one who had not treated her kindly, to the great-granddaughter, who moves easily between two languages and finds happiness with her husband, we see more than the exchange of recipes, more than a discussion over whether to spice the masa, the cornmeal paste that holds the meat filling.

We see both the hard work and the deep satisfaction of preparing that which sustains.

Yesterday I was late in picking up my son. When I got to the school, the playground was nearly empty. I saw him at once. He waved at me but continued to swing. Leaning back, his feet strain for the sky. When the swing begins its backward descent, he drops his head forward, his hair a curtain over his knees.

Just as I begin to lose patience, he makes a flying leap from his perch at its apogee. His legs pump air for a moment, then break his fall in the soft mulch. He rolls neatly onto his side and climbs quickly to his feet. He brushes his clothes and hoists his backpack to his shoulder.

As he comes toward me, the sunlight of the late fall afternoon catches in his hair.