I have pies to bake and cleaning to be done, and a family Thanksgiving coming up to enjoy, but I can hardly think about those things because…puppets! Tickets went on sale yesterday for the 2019 Chicago International Puppet Festival, and I can’t wait to sift through the whole lineup, plan a schedule and get my tickets. And I really, really, really (really!) can’t wait to see some puppet theatre.

I adore puppets in almost any variety: hand, shadow, human, larger-than-life. Puppet theatre takes many, many creative forms, and for reasons I don’t try to explain they pretty much all captivate and mesmerize me. I’ve seen some wonderful performances over the years, from comedy to tragedy, from biographical to the absurd. Puppets with poetry, with music, puppets as cartoons, puppets in languages that required English subtitles for translation.

I’m conflicted this Thanksgiving, my first without my son in the house. Faced with horrifying news every day—murdered journalists, wildfires and eco-disasters, mass shootings and a nation that refuses to do what it can to stop them—I find myself thankful every day that my loved ones are unharmed, if not all together. It’s hard to think about being happy sometimes, and this holiday season has come upon me too quickly. It’s hard to believe it’s fall already, let alone early winter and time for the feast of Thanksgiving followed by the consumerism of the holiday season that follows.

One small gift for which I feel thankful, though, is the email that I just opened alerting me that puppet festival tickets have gone on sale. I’m tempted to keep this little secret to myself, but too excited not to scream it for the world to hear. Now I’m headed to the mailbox to see if a printed program has arrived fro help me sift through the offerings.

The puppets are coming! The puppets are coming!