Susan Senator

Turn on your love light
Let it shine on me
–PigPen, GFD

Close up of cheery, twinkling Christmas lights. Camera pans from lights to inside Batchelder/Senator family dining room. Three laptops open, cereal boxes and cereal crumbs strewn across large black dining room table. Empty coffee cups sit, open-mouthed and drying.

Enter Nat, pacing quickly from dining room window in back to row of windows, and back again, like a caged tiger:

“Want the lights to go off!!”
Close up of Ned, sleep-rumpled hair standing up, glasses off, black sweatpants on: “Natty, everyone has lights on. They are Christmas lights. We’re going to put our menorah up today, too!”
Nat: “Nat will turn lights off!”
Ned: “Natty, we can’t. Should we go see the lights?”
Nat: “Daddy will hug me.”
[Hugging, back-thumping, back-scratching]
Ned, to me: “Getting alot of hugs here!” Close up of me, pink striped pajama bottoms, black top, hunched over computer, smiling worriedly.
[Nat scans the dining room window]

Lights go off.

“Natty what happened?”
“Lights are off.”
Exit Nat.
Silly talk resumes. All is well in the state of Denmark and Massachusetts.