“Can I help with the turkey?” Dad inquired at 8:00 a.m., approaching slowly, barely able to stand, with his thrift store not-a-walker, which has become his favorite walker.  “No,” Mom responded definitively.  Of course not.  She has planned this Thanksgiving turkey bake for weeks.  She bought the frozen turkey a month ago, placed it in the refrigerator a week ago, and dressed it an hour ago.  “Should we turn the oven on now?” he queried, wanting to helpful, but much to late in the process to be helpful.  “No, the turkey isn’t going in until 9:00,” she explained.  The more Dad tried to help, the more he intruded on her well-made plans.  “If we turn the oven on now, it will be pre-heated by 9:00,” he ventured again.  “That’s too early,” she barked.  “The oven only takes ten minutes to pre-heat.”  Dad slinked away slowly, unable to be helpful, because he had not made the plan and did not know the plan, and because his too-late suggestions interloped on the well-established plan.  He had been good-hearted, well-meaning, but extraneous.  I watched this collapsed negotiation and felt an ache.  Mom and Dad have navigated their relationship for 62 years.  Are they any better at it now than early on?  Are the negotiations any easier than at first?  Relationships are always a challenge, always a negotiation, always a struggle of overlapping egos and an accommodation of disparate wills.  Even the good-hearted and well-meaning work to exhaustion nudging those two wills to one purpose.  After my 27-year marriage, I was beyond tired, and I wonder still these seven years later if I would ever find the courage and strength to take up anew the dance of negotiation and compromise.  Being alone is so much easier, having only occasional arguments with myself.  But at times I pull out the scales and examine the platters hung on chains, weighing the ease of aloneness against the terribleness of loneliness, watching them teeter on the fulcrum of elusive equilibrium.  Dad asked me to string the bushes with Christmas lights, since he cannot do it anymore, with particular colors in a particular order on particular bushes, and I invited my capable creative son John to help me.  He suggested a fun variety of colors for adjacent bushes, nowhere close to Dad’s plan, but I figured Dad would not really notice, not being able to walk anywhere near that far, and rarely seeing his yard after dark.  Just then Dad shot through the front door on his power wheelchair to come inspect my work.  And I figured it would be better, in this case, to ask permission than forgiveness, so I intercepted him en route, told him of John’s color notion, and asked him if that would be alright.  Of course, having been asked, he said yes, and sat in his chair on the sidewalk, cheering us on, expressing his excitement and gratitude.  “I just love seeing Christmas lights on my bushes.  This is important to me, and makes me happy.”  That negotiation worked out well—I love happy endings—and did not even leave me feeling taxed.  The job done, he wheeled and we walked into the house for small slices of very rich French pear almond tart.