Thanksgiving is close.  

Close enough to taste creamy mashed potatoes. Thick gravy. That uncle’s dripping sarcasm. 

Please. Everybody has that uncle. 

I’m sharing what I’m grateful for. 

Willie’s taxes are done. 

And it only took 19 months. 

Nineteen months of looking for five years’ worth of tax documents. Nineteen months of calling government agencies. Nineteen months of finding documents in folders marked “Taxes.” Documents I wish I never found. 

Oh, they weren’t tax documents. They were emails and canceled checks and receipts for purchases.  

Let’s just say Willie —

You know what? I don’t even want to give you a quippy summary. 

It was that bad. 

I mean, sure. Nobody was murdered.  

And I only know that because Willie never called me to bury the body. 

Because that 100 percent would have happened. 

Finishing the taxes is a relief for me — considering the two years I spent selling that property prior to the tax debacle. 

Nearly four years of my life.  

Gone.  

Huh. I’m going to pretend like I didn’t just say that. 

I’ve read research on the effects of caregiving. A few studies say caregivers are happy for the experience. They learn so much. 

I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I could go my whole life without knowing how to hire a backhoe operator. 

Or how the IRS punishes tardy tax filings. 

Or that Willie borrowed against her retirement to finance a trip to the Kentucky Derby. 

Yeah. That was one of those things in the “Taxes” file. 

I updated Willie on her taxes while taking her to the doctor. 

Now, if we’ve learned anything about Willie through the years we’ve talked, you and I, it’s that Willie does nothing the easy way. 

This includes her doctor. 

Every three months, I schlep Willie to Lansdale. 

From Hatboro. 

And no. Willie can’t go by herself. She tells the doctor she’s never fallen and has just a little memory problem. 

The truth is that Willie falls like autumn leaves and nearly had two flu shots because she forgot about the first one when she was offered a second one. 

Now, door to door, the trip to Willie’s doctor is roughly 35 minutes. 

I pick up Willie an hour before the appointment. 

Because here’s the thing about Willie. 

If I tell Willie I’m picking her up at, say, ten o’clock, Willie waits in her apartment for me to call at 10 o’clock to say I’ve arrived. 

Then she uses the bathroom, puts on her coat, walks down to the elevator, waits for the elevator, stops at the front desk to speak with her friend staffing the desk, then continues to my car. 

Willie will never, oh, I don’t know, start all that stuff a half hour before I pick her up. Or wait for me out front. Or have the chat with the front desk friend another time since they live in the same exact building. 

On this day — the day I told Willie her taxes were done — this ritual was on its usual timetable. Willie was just about to slide into my car when another friend — a dead ringer for the actor Geraldine Chaplin — stopped to converse with Willie. 

In front of my car. She stopped in front of my car.  

Even if I gave up on getting Willie to the doctor, I couldn’t leave without running over Charlie Chaplin’s daughter. 

Well, her doppelgänger.  

But still. 

Willie and Geraldine Chaplin — I’ve seen marriages shorter than their conversation. I’ve seen cucumbers turn to pickles. Humanity has circumnavigated the globe in less time than this exchange in front of my car. 

Just as I was about to point out we had what was rapidly becoming a pressing appointment, Geraldine Chaplin asked if I was Willie’s granddaughter. 

Granddaughter?  

Do go on, Ms. Chaplin. Do go on. 

Loved you in the second Jurassic World, by the way. 

Once at the doctor, Willie and I sojourned the narrow sidewalk between the parking lot and office door. 

Another couple — husband and wife — were coming down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. 

Willie and the couple stopped, face to face. Neither yielded the sidewalk. 

Now, if I have to school people on both the physics and courtesy of traversing sidewalks, someone had better call me Willie’s granddaughter again. 

I navigated Willie through the impromptu game of sidewalk chicken. We rounded the corner to the office. 

We were 20 feet from the office door.  

Fourteen.  

Eight.  

That was when Willie and I came face-to-face with yet another sidewalk traveler. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Willie said when she realized she was blocking the woman. 

Why? Why this woman? Why does this woman get an apology but the couple was roadblocked? 

“No,” the woman said. “No. Do not apologize. Never apologize. Why would you apologize? You’ve done nothing wrong.” 

“I,” I thought, “am never making it to this appointment. I am going to grow old and die right here on this sidewalk.” 

Huh. Maybe I’m the sarcastic uncle. 

Pass the potatoes.