pull up a chair

i know, i know, you’re thinkin, geez, lady, you jumped the gun. it’s not till tomorrow, sweetheart.
either that, or you’re slappin’ yourself upside the brow, groaning. maybe whispering there to your neighbor, “psst. this chick is 386 years behind the times. as every kindergartner knows, ol’ bill bradford called for turkeys back in 1621.”
ah ha, fooled ya then. cuz i am right, believe you me. i know of which i speak. this is my first thanksgiving, people. not the first of which i partake, of course, but the first of which is mine to burn, to under-do, to go mushy there in the brussels sprouts department. or even to, voila, get it relatively right.
because i took an oath of honesty when installed here at the keyboard, and because full disclosure comes with the job i do by day, i must tell the truth, the whole truth. i must explain why the little shining star up there above, indicating a writer’s “ahem,” a little clearing of the throat, on the matter.
fact is, i have a dangling participle on this feast of mine. there is a clause of sorts. a footnote, if you will. basically, a true disclaimer. i cannot claim the whole shebang.
the starring turkey will not be mine. mine’s the backup breast, the just-in-case, though it will be free-range and organic, for those of you inclined that way. in case you’re stopping by, or coming by ’round midnight to pick the bones and nibble pumpkin pie.
yup. the big bird sticks with mama. my mama, i mean. she was willing to surrender the staging site, but not the bird and not the stuffing. she wants her house to be perfumed of the great november fowl.
i get mine redolent with eau de sprouts, and eau de parsnip. hmm. wonder who’ll get out of bed tomorrow. it might be only me at the feast of deep thanksgiving.
mais non. my table will be full. even if they come with noseplugs.
perhaps i should explain. what’s going on here is what happens in the best of families: the boys moved on. there’s no one here, of the clan we call our own, ’cept me and mama now.
she and i are holding down the city by the lake–okay, so toledo, too, is a city by the lake, but yours is dirty, little brother, or at least it was, it caught on fire, and ours is sort of clean, or at least pretending to be so. if i must, i’ll compromise, let’s say, she and i are holding down the stomping ground of al capone, a claim with universal translation, as folks around the world hold up their thumb and pointer finger, as if a g-u-n, and say, in any language, “bang bang,” when they mean chicago.
ah, yes, from here on in, me and mama dearest are taking turns on holidays. we split the wishbone of the bird to see who got which one, and i am, this year at least, the poster child for the feast of many gobbles.
for a girl who’s never done this, i am feeling a little challenged by the notion of 14 coming to my door, and coming rather hungry.
how, you ask, do you get to be half a century, here in the united states, and still claim turkey virginity?
the answer, friends, goes back to mama. and before that my grandma dear. i come from a long line of turkey cookers. and both have ruled the second-to-last thursdays in november, as long as i’ve been breathing.
ah, but this year, all has changed. the turkey wing, if not the leg, is passed to me.
wisely, we are doing this in stages. i will take beginner steps, try not to kill the breast. meanwhile, i’ve got brothers far away, who’ve been flinging stellar brining formulas and full-blown saline theories all around the country. one in maine started days ago, i think. the one in old ohio might be smoking his, even as i type, in authentic smokehouse.
me, the only girl in the bunch, i’m more concerned with setting tables. and making something fine of all those sprouts and all those parsnips.
blessedly, for it is the feast of many blessings, i’ll have help. someone’s bringing pies. someone else is bringing mashed potatoes. that leaves me decidedly underwhelmed. it leaves me basically to not mess up the forks and knives.
but still, just because i think i should, i’ll spend the day today clanging pots and pans. it is, i’ve heard, part of the equation. i’ll muss my hair to look the part, of the harried hostess. perhaps i’ll spritz a little perspiration on my brow.
at the moment my main concern is the fridge that will not close. i’ve taken to pretending i’m a pilgrim, and stuffed half the goods out in what i’m calling the coldhouse (otherwise known as the garage.) long as the critters don’t break the seals, or bite the clementines, i’ll be struttin’ pretty.
my mate, the one who took the whole day off, perhaps in sympathy, or just to watch me clang around, just mentioned that perhaps we want to “neaten up.” his shorthand for holy heck, it’s a mess in here.
so regardless of my turkey duties, i’ll be mighty of the mainstream. like cooks from coast to coast, i’ll be spinning plates and tossing forks. watch out for carrot peels. and beware of over-simmered pears.
i wish you all the best of luck, as we plug our noses all together now, inch to the edge of the flapping board and dive in deep where the waters of the pilgrim feast dare to pull us under.
even if some of us are wholly wimps, and not yet taking on the big bird. but merely clinging to a starter ring of bits of unassuming white meat.

people, what’s your game plan, if you’ve got a minute here to pound out the keys? do you have a tale to tell of your maiden turkey voyage? and what of brussels sprouts? and what about the brining, boys? forgive me, while i stumble through turkey lite, a class for poultry punks….

i am pulled into the darkness like a leaf in a river, tossing, drifting, not able to stop, really, the ride down the current.
i rise, though, tear off the sheets, kick out my legs, grope, nowadays wince at the argumentation coming up from the soles of my feet, the soles that don’t seem to agree with the notion of carrying the weight that descends as soon as i’m upright, moving forward, because i love nothing so much as the morning.
and not just any old slice of the morn. oh no, i mean the start of it, before the beginning, in fact. the dawn, by definition. the gauze-edged interlude between the depth of the night and the harsh of the day.
the re-awakening, once again, of the sky, and the trees, and the world all around. the slow peeling back of the layers of black, the reveal once again, of the seeping-in light.
i am, for the start of my vigil, mostly alone. house after house, out the window, is dark, is asleep. the moon, depending on the day of the month, and the depth of its shadow, is casting a glow, or is not.
but round about 6, round about the hour when the fingers of light are reaching, are stretching, beyond the horizon, papa comes.
papa is my cardinal, my red-feathered companion who makes do for the lack of a rooster.
he comes first to the highest of limbs. he surveys. he chirps in a series of short little bursts. that’s my cue to dig into the seed bin, to scoop up the sunflower, to march out to the place where the light is spilling, is washing, is dousing the start of the day.
“g’morning,” i call, and he does answer back.
since no one’s around, i can’t prove that he does. and you’re welcome to spy, or you can simply believe me, take my word, we converse, dear papa and i.
i dump his gruel for the morning, he offers his thanks by flapping right down. it’s gotten so cozy here in the morning, he doesn’t wait any longer for my feet to shuffle away. he’s darting down before i am back in the house. if i stand very still, if i say not a word, he’ll get on with the business of breakfast and pay me no mind.
it is some something, i’d say, to have a friend who joins you for dawn, except for the days when the rain is descending in buckets.
it is especially something when that friend is a true early bird.
he’s there, as am i, a good chunk of an hour before the choristers, the brown-cloaked sparrows, arrive.
and it all makes me think, as i keep watch on the flocks, on the comings and goings of singular scarlet and long rows of brown upon brown, as i take in the chirp of the red bird and the chatter of sparrow, that this all reminds me, very much, of matins, the morning prayer, the vigil, kept through the centuries in so many abbeys.
as long as there has been a church, and before that borrowing from the synagogue of jerusalem, believe it or not, there has been a particular order of prayer at the dawn. there were readings from the books of law, the singing of psalms and various prayers. there was a cantor and there was a chorus.
in early christianity, the prayers went all night, peaking just before dawn. it was all part of the nightwatch of the guards and the soldiers, either due to the secrecy of the nascent church meetings, or the notion that the middle of night was the hour par excellence, the time most likely to find God available for listening.
according to the fourth-century apostolic constitution, it was the prayer to be offered at cock-crow. the word itself, matins, is from the latin, meaning it is of or belonging to the morning. in the traditional monastery, it was the prayer to end at the sunrise.
now i am no scholar on medieval church. but i do find sublime the notion of the cloister, the far-off godly place, where the peeling of a potato, or a rope sandal slapping the stone walkway of the candlelit corridors, might be the only sound save for the matins and the evensong, and the gathering winds of the monks and the nuns filed in rows for back-and-forth chanting.
nothing so shivers my spine as the prayersong of monks rising like a mist from the pews of some abbey.
i feel the pull of the cloak of the quiet that blankets the whole of you as you close off the world, let click the great wooden door of the monastery, tiptoe in where the hallways are hallowed and hushed.
how sacred then, to wake up here in the very house that by day is so very bustling, to step out into the fog or the dew of the night lifting to morning, and be greeted first by the red-robed cantor, and, soon after, the ranks of the speckle-frocked sparrows.
it is my own matins that i keep. i whisper my thanks for the night and the day, and the great flash of scarlet there at the altar of seed. i keep watch on the coming of light. i step inside so the brothers and sisters all will descend as one winged chorus, make alive the limbs and the branches with all of their chirped incantations.
it is holy chatter they make. and i get to partake. because i, like the cardinal, am the earliest bird.

i know i’m a nut for the morning. are you too? what hour do you find most holy? what do you do to carve out a space upholstered only in quiet? any medieval scholars who can shine more light on matins?

i have a hunch that i’m not alone. i have a hunch there are kitchens all over the city, all over the country, all over the world, where there are tears, and telephones that don’t ring quite so much.

where there are kids, good kids, great kids, kids without twitches and warts on their noses. kids with big bold ideas, and marvelous senses of humor. kids who are dear, kids so amazing you would like to bottle them, copy them, fill whole conveyor belts with them. kids you’re convinced could take over the world, right now, if handed the keys and told to start driving.

but for whatever reason, whatever twist of the popular culture, whatever roll of the die, the phone doesn’t ring. not nearly as often as anyone wishes, hopes, crosses their fingers. not nearly as often as some heart-aching mother gets down on her knees, begging for just a wee dose of mercy.

maybe you remember the feeling. maybe once there was a saturday and you called the gaggle of kids to whom you were most closely connected. and you asked if maybe they wanted to play, and you heard, in the background, the giggling. only the person there on the phone made like no one was around, and they weren’t so interested in playing with you.

so you hung up the phone, there in the upstairs where you’d gone so no one could hear you laying your shame on the line. and you stared out the window, into the yard, while you felt the sting singe you in a way that, even now, even 40 years later, you still remember. it still makes you twinge.

you wondered, through eyes burning with tears, what in the world it was that made you so very uncool.

and going to school the next monday was the hardest thing that you ever did. looking them in the eyes, knowing they spent the rest of their afternoon, maybe, laughing about how they dissed you.

and so it’s been off and on through all of the years, when someone you love, someone you birthed maybe, comes down in the kitchen and wonders out loud why they’re so all alone. you suffered through sixth grade where the stories were awful. where you heard of the girl who called your kid names. who shrieked as if he was poison when he happened to take the seat next to hers.

and now you field questions like these: “shouldn’t it be more like 50-50, you approach kids, they approach you? shouldn’t other kids sometimes wanna call me?”

or observations such as this: “i’m realizing there’s a distinction between kids respecting you, appreciating your ideas and the way you express them and liking your sense of humor, and thinking of you as someone they’d want to hang out with.”

you listen to a kid you love tell you he’s heard all about the parties and getting together that will go on throughout a long weekend. and then you watch him call one, then two, then three kids. and each time you hear him say, oh thank you, as he hangs up the phone, and reports that the kid who he called was already out, already hanging with friends.

and it rips you, really it does, from one end of your heart to the other. so you pile in the car, you go get a movie. you pop popcorn. you laugh. and you sit very close.

but it’s a saturday, for crying out loud. a saturday night. and the whole time you’re watching scene after scene you are wishing you could do something to fix all the pain. you wish you could call other mothers, or put up a billboard. hello, great kid sitting at home. any chance you’ve got one to spare? one who might care to spend time with just another great kid on the planet?

but you can’t do that, not really you can’t. so you sit and you suffer in a way that you haven’t since back on that saturday, long long ago. when it was you who was drowning in a bath of pure pain.

and now, 40 years later, you realize you’d take a double or triple or a quadruple hit, if only, maybe, please, that darn phone would ring.

someone, turn off the silencer.

there’s a great kid who i know, a marvelous kid who makes me laugh harder than anyone i know, and he’s sitting alone, just doing his homework. it’s a saturday, or a sunday, or a monday or tuesday, and there’s no one but us in this house, it sure seems, who realizes how sorry that is.

and i have a hunch, really i do, that he’s not alone. that in kitchens, and bedrooms, all over the city, all over the country, all over the world, there are kids, there are tears spilled by the ones with no one to play with.

it’s not so easy to say i know a kid who is quite rather lonely sometimes. not always, mind you. but often enough. too many saturday nights. do you know a kid like that? do you wish, sometimes, there was a worldwide registry for really good kids who just weren’t finding their groove? do you know kids who are going to make really fine grownups but these kid-hood, it sure can be bumpy? are you a grownup who once heard the giggles on the other end of the line? what wisdom would you share? who wants to start a saturday night club for the coolest kids in the world?
p.s. cool photo above taken by really cool kid i happen to know…

my mama walked in the door, looking a little more pale, a little more drained than she usually does. how are you, we asked, as she lugged in a 20-pound sack of seed for the birds.
“oh, i’ve been better,” she said, just a little bit softly, just a little bit as if the air had been sucked from her lungs.
mind you, this is a mama who mentioned, after washing a tall stack of dishes, after being at my house for nearly an hour one long ago time, that, oh by the way, they found a tumor and it is malignant.
my mama is not, unlike her daughter, inclined toward drama at all.
so when she answered so softly, we all leaned in closely.
“you didn’t get my email?” she asked, this being the age of talking through digital wires.
we had not. so she told us. “al died,” she said.
now al, like don and arthur and rita and ruthie and gracie and jane, is one of the players, one of the first-name-only cast, who populated all of the dramas, all of the stories, the legend, the lore, of our youth.
they were the ones, each of them, slightly larger-than-life in the way that anyone with a mr. or mrs. in front of their name is, when you are a child sent off to bed, to spy from the stairs, to catch only wisps of the deep conversations.
they were the ones who, you could count on, were in on the comings and goings, the giggles, the laughter, of all of our growing-up years.
al was the tall skinny guy, the lawyer by day, but tennis commando by evening and weekend. he’s the one who wouldn’t eat cheese, and loved the cheapest bottle of wine he could find.
don, he was the biochemist with the voice that awakened the sleeping. he, too, was the one who inspired rather grand and cosmic ideas about God. he made a mean egg nog. so mean you needed to run for the sink after sipping, just to spit out whatever small bit you’d inhaled for good show there in his living room, where he urged you, he did, just to try some, really, you’ll like it.
rita was al’s wife. blonde and gorgeous and gracious from the first time i spied her, there in her little white skirt, slapping tennis balls clear across courts at tennaqua, the club with a pool and tennis and the greasiest cheeseburgers you could get for under two bucks.
gracie belonged to don. she was the small-boned irish wit. she could fling big words and twists of the language the way rita flung tennis balls. she flung ‘em best when at the net across from my very own papa. to watch geno and gracie go at it in the language department, the outdo-’em department, was to take a life-lasting lesson in lingual gymnastics and sparring and laughing out loud.
al is gone now. died this week. at 88. don died a few years ago. somewhere up in his 80s.
one by one, a season is passing, an era is closing, a chapter is ending, the pages are turning, one by sorrowful one.
since my papa died first, since my papa died when everyone else was hitting their stride, that hurt in a way that nothing else will ever come close to. his was the death unexpected. wholly, completely, take-your-breath-away news.
not so now.
the folks who made up all of the stories of our youth–the ones signed up for the courts and the burgers on wednesday and saturday nights, the ones whose cigarette butts i could identify there in the ashtray, the trademark strains of their voices seeping in through my window, the one just up from the terrace, where they’d be out sipping their scotch on the rocks, telling their stories over and over again–they are old now, they are white in the hair, and, some of them, slow of the gait.
the news from my mama these days is mostly of life draining away. she brings dinner to friends who are housebound. she sits with her friends as their husbands are dying. one dearest friend can’t remember to come to bridge anymore, first wednesday of every month, same as it’s been for dozens of years, and when she does come, she can’t read the cards.
slowly, a world once bright and seeming to go on forever, is now fading to gray, and, every once in a very sad while, it is pierced with the awful sad news that one of the heroes, one of the ones you could count on for wisdom when you needed it, or wit when you just plain wanted it, they are no longer.
there are holes now all through the story. like pieces of chess there on the board, they are falling. whole canyons of emptiness fill the space in between.
it’s a dull ache now. and a deep seeping sense that life as we knew it, expected it, licked it straight off the plate, is passing.
i can’t imagine the depth of the grief for my mama. my mama who loses not just a friend, a lifelong friend, a friend who she leaned on, a friend who stepped in, who kept her going and laughing and filling her long empty evenings there in her too-many years as a widow, my mama is losing not just the players but the whole story around her.
i imagine it’s starting to feel, there on the stage, that it’s getting quite sparse and the lights in the wings are dimming.
as a once-child who peered up onto the floorboards where all of the players were swirling, were spinning their lines, i get a chill, a draft blows down on my neck, making me shudder. the theater is emptying out.
but i sit keeping watch on the few players left. and i miss all the ones whose lines are now cut.
not that any one of them was a someone to whom i told all my deep and dark secrets. no, not at all. i was merely there in the audience. i didn’t play on their courts. wasn’t down on the terrace. i sat off to the side watching, up in my room listening.
but i always just knew, i believed, they would be there, and now that they’re not, now that they’re leaving, one by one, slowly, i too feel the turning of pages. i too feel the thinning out of the crowd.
before the stage goes to black, i just want to say it’s been one helluva show. and i’m sorry as you are to see it now ending.

have you too shared this sense that the grownup world that once wrapped around you, kept you safe, kept you warm, or at least kept you paying attention, is thinning out? that even though they might have been minor players in the intimacy of your life, they were, out on the big stage, rather looming, and their absence is chilling? do you get news, one sad bit at a time, that reminds you an era is slipping away? who were the players in the cast of your life? what did you learn? did you, like me, love to keep watch? did you like me think it would never end?

that beautiful, haunting photo above is from my sweet will. will kamin would be the cutline. that’s photo shop talk in the big leagues. and i think he can, if he wants to, head for those leagues. he and i talked last night about what sort of photo i was thinking of. he executed and delivered. took my breath away when i opened my email this morning. thank you, sweet will. it is gorgeous.

excuse me, ahem. we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you the following emergency broadcast announcement: you must, i mean must, go directly to there in your corner, where you keep your bread that is old, that is galloping swiftly toward stale.
you must grab it before it goes furry and green. that is a color not to our liking, not here in the emergency announcement department.
now rip it in bits. big bits are fine, if that’s the bit of your choosing. little bits work as well. so do bits somewhere, sort of, there in the middle.
we are en route, people, to bread pudding, that soft mushy pillow of comfort, the one with the cinnamon-sugary crust, providing just the right edge to your puff. the pudding that one spoon of, turns us all back to babies. yes, cooing and all, it is the original reversion equation.
you’ll have, if you’re so inclined, visions of nurseries and prams, and old english nannies, with considerable bosoms, leading you on with a ladle. if you’re not so inclined, you’ll simply swallow and hum.
either way, people, get rippin’.
the reason we’re rushing is this: the recipe i concocted the day before last seems to have cast a sort of a spell. i think it’s a pudding possessed.
so much so, i tell you, i can’t keep it just to myself. i must proselytize, attempt to persuade you, so hold onto your seats while i tell you the tricks that it played.
the little one, who spooned it up for dessert, then again before bedtime, and then, not 12 hours later, once more for breakfast, looked at me dreamy-eyed from under his curls, and inquired: “will you make it for christmas?”
and the man-child, one not in the groove of sending me love notes, sent this email in the dark of the night, yes, he did: “the pudding was great. i needed it today. i know we get grumpy at each other sometimes, but life wouldn’t be worth living without such a supportive home to come to. i really mean it.
“love, love, love.”
he then signed his name, and sent off his dispatch, down the stairs, round the bend, to here where i found it next morning.
excuse me while i sigh a few sighs.
what i want to know is who mixed the elixir in with the eggs and the butter and bread-on-the-verge-of-bread-crumbing?
i saw no one there in the kitchen, but surely some little elf was messin’ with me and my bits.
what happened is this: there i was minding my start-of-week business on one of the days when i’m not due at the keyboard. the red bird had just flown by the window, and that alone can get me all weak-kneed. the leaves from the trees, all golden and glowing, were raining like stars from above. and the air was unseasonably warm.
suddenly i heard a whisper from there in the corner, from there in the basket where old bread sits before dying.
“come, come,” it called. i swear that it did.
and before i knew it, i was off to the bookshelf, hauling my friend, good old mark bittman, he who claims to know how to cook everything. well, of course, braggart that he is, he was right on the money. right there, page 662, bread pudding, in three easy pieces.
i know, i know, some of you are snickering, thinking now why in the world did she need to look up something as simple as bread-ripping and bathing in butter and milk. well, yeesh, when you hear the bread calling your name, you do what you’re told, and besides, here’s a confession, i’d never before ripped bread into pudding.
i could have vamped, which is my usual style. but this here baking and rising, well it had me thinking there might be a chemistry i’d not want to disturb.
so i followed instructions, then i vamped. i grated some apple into my pudding. i tossed in whole fistfuls of raisins. oh, yum.
and the results, as i mentioned, were utterly stunning. revolutionary. never before seen.
you see, most of my kitchen inventions are heavily vegetable-loaded. and so, i am more used to these sorts of reactions: screwed-up little faces, hiding under the table, lots of “um, i’m fulls,” and, of course, that age-old attempt to forever hide the braised cabbages and all of their cousins there under the fork. it is a sad fact that we have hauled out the napkins, a day or two after a particular meal, only to find semi-mummified broccoli there in the folds of the mouth-wiping cloth.
so to come up with, on a whim really, a something that had my boys starry-eyed, all goo-gooey even. well, heck, that is a red-letter day in my not-so-fat book.
i can see now, why so many bakeries stay in business. there is nothing so sweet as tickling the sweet and the soft spot deep down inside the ones who you love. there is a pull, is there not, to try it again. to concoct the concoction that fills up their bellies, but more than that, stirs oozy thoughts in their heads. it is, for the baker, i tell you, rather addictive.
i come late, i suppose, to the notion of comfort food. i’ve spent so many years denying and fighting with food, i’m only just starting to know, deep inside, that to be fed is to be joined in a holy communion where worries are lifted, at least for a while, like some sort of host held up to the heavens.
hmmm.
the irony there, as i see it, is it’s taken so long to arrive at that knowing, as it applies to feeding myself. all along, my one aim in mothering, in life (the two are somewhat indistinguishable really, at least as i aim to do both), has been to ladle great heaping dollops of something divine into hearts and to souls all around.
now it seems i’ve stumbled on a fine way to fill tummies. and, to stir googoo-eyed looks from the children i live just to baste in a knowing that life, at its best, is mighty delicious.
here, friends, is the sure-fire route to what we now know as elixir pudding. may the coos and the starry eyes at your house be many.

elixir pudding,with a little help from mark bittman
3 cups milk
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, plus some for greasing the pan
11/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 Tbsp.
pinch salt
best old bread you can find. (mr. bittman calls for 8 slices, i went with the remains of a hollowed-out challah)
3 eggs
1 apple grated
fistfuls of raisins, or cranberries, your choice in the dried fruits dept.

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees. over low heat in a saucepan, warm milk, butter, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt, just until butter melts. meanwhile butter 1-1/2 quart baking dish, or 8-inch square pan. cut and tear bread into bite-size bits.
1. place bread in baking dish. pour hot buttery milk over it. sigh as you pour. let milk sit for a bit, occasionally dunking any recalcitrant bits not willing to tread milk. beat the eggs, and stir into bread mixture. add 1 cup grated, drained apple. and raisins. mix remaining cinnamon and sugar, and sprinkle over the top. set the baking dish into a larger baking pan, and pour hot water, into within an inch of the top of the dish.
2. bake 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until thin-bladed knife comes clean from the center; center should be just a bit wobbly. run under the broiler for about 30 seconds to get that yummy golden brown crust. serve warm or cold. with whipped cream. keeps well for 2 days. but i don’t think it’ll stick around even half that long.

do you have some elixirs tucked in your old recipe files? ones certain to draw out the deep satisfied sighs? do you have someone nibbling out of your palm, following you starry-eyed when you whip up this thing of their dreams? did your mama, or papa, make some sort of elixir for you? or a beloved? do spill the story….

there is a semi-infamous story of me, told once in a while in the murk of the newsroom. it’s from back when i was a just-off-the-truck nurse-pretending-to-be-newsgirl.
i, like every starter-outer, got assigned to the obits one morning. back then, there were pages to fill and obits to fill them. i was handed a name, told to get digging.
so, dutiful and just a little bit scared, i made rounds of telephone calls, tried not to bother too much the newly bereaved. i dug and i dug. sad truth was, not much newsworthy on the poor chap who died. best i got was: “he was a darn nice guy.”
so that’s what i wrote for the big kaboom of the obit: joe so-and-so, “a darn nice guy,” died blah blah blah.
a crusty old city editor looked over my shoulder, barked in my ear, “you might want to kill that before anyone sees it.”
that’s news talk for: “get out the eraser, sweetheart, your big job’s on the line.”
oops. seems, in their book, darn nice didn’t cut it. didn’t make for an obit to fill up the pages. even back then when the pages had room, and folks simply died to get in.
i didn’t say it’s a hilarious story. it’s just one of those stories they tell to get a big yuck out of me.
but really, i think, when the giggles die down, when we get back to business, it’s the reason i am at my hummingest when i’m writing an obit. the whole lot of them, to my ear, are the nuggets of gold buried there in the news of the day.
the fact of the matter is, there are in a newsroom many stories to tell. we spend our days and our nights and our years telling all sorts of tales.
but right up there, up there where it’s poetry, gospel and epistle, all rolled into one, it’s the obit, high and almighty.
it’s the talking to souls fresh to the news that someone they love, or at least spent some long years with, has just died. the probing beyond all the tears and the heartache back to the glory. back to the stories that capture the essence, the glint, of who someone was.
one of my favorite ways to get at the glint goes like this: close your eyes, i tell them, paint me a picture of the person you see, tell me the story that captures that someone in one single snapshot.
sometimes i hear hemming and hawing. sometimes, a laugh, then a launch into story. time after time, though, i get a picture that neither they nor i will ever forget. i know i won’t.
it’s a job, every time, that gives me the goosebumps. it is, in some ways, like being a nurse, or a doc in an ER. you can’t be blinded or bound by the sorrow there in the room, you must get to work, clear a path, to get to the heart of the story.
the best part is when the ones telling the story forget that you’re there in the first place. they get to laughing, telling stories, remembering one thing that leads to another.
pretty soon, the notebook is full. and so is the room. and not with just tears.
the whole point of the obit, the page some wise guy once cracked was the first thing he checked in the morning, to make sure he wasn’t yet there, so he could get on with his day, is to move beyond death, into the crux of the matter, into the thick of the life.
to mine for the stories that will be remembered, held up like crystal to shafts of the sunlight, forever.
it is to trace back to the forks in the road, to study who and what are the forces that shaped not just one life, but all of the lives that changed, or became, just from that one.
it is to hear, often through tears, the very best that a soul had to offer.
and for the one listening, the one probing, it is, guaranteed, a spine-tingler every time. like so much of life when you’re listening, when you’re paying attention, you wind up there in the desk at the front of the classroom, frantically scribbling some very fine notes.
it is, many a day, the one page of the newspaper that i find worth not only reading but studying rather intently. and not just due to my irish.
mostly, because it’s an exercise in condensing the broth. boiling down to the best of the essence.
if we are, each of us, a composite of molecules, dreams and deep aspirations worth understanding, a great place to start is the lives of the recently died.
it’s why many a funeral, i think, is really an uplifting thing. you gather and listen to what in the world made this one imperfect creature such a show-stopping story.
the point here, of course, is not to drape us in black this fine day, nor to hang us with tangles of crepe.
the point here is that there at the back of the news, there in the lines of tiny gray type, is in fact one of the quietest ways to get wise, to pick up a few tricks that might nudge us along on the path to nirvana.
we are, all of us, lessons in living. we have soft spots and bruises. we’re dinged and we’re messy. but really, deep down inside, we each are that snapshot that won’t be forgotten.
sad thing is, too often, we don’t even know it.
and that’s where the obit comes in. it is the gift of the dearly departed. and i would propose that to partake of that gift is to sift through a life, to mine and collect and absorb. take in, chapter and verse, the story of who we all are at the best of ourselves.
too often, it seems, we don’t realize the whole of the people around us. don’t realize, even, the best of ourselves. don’t understand, not till too late, there are lessons to teach and stories to tell that will change us.
ah, but that need not be so.
the point of an obit, the page of the paper that gathers the dead, is to pause, and to take in the story, before it is buried away.

oh, geez, hope i didn’t just cast a pall on your day. maybe it’s just that i’m thick in the midst of writing an obit, remembering how sacred it is to sift through the whole of a life, and pull out the parts that are lasting. that will make us never forget the ones who once walked among us. the ones whose heroics, the everyday moments that reach for and grab the divine, can shine quite a light on our trails. do you find yourself making a study of what’s there in the obits? or, can you think of stories of someone you didn’t learn, didn’t fully realize, till after that someone was no longer among us? there is of course a fine way to learn before it’s time for the obit, and that is to gather the stories, to look at a someone and think: what is the snapshot id’ carry forever? not a bad way to fill up your back pocket, or your heart for that matter. would you agree that we might do well to practice the art of getting at the best of our essence–and that of those around us–before it’s too late? to live with the snapshot, rather than clutch it after someone we love is no longer?

i assure you, when the boy came bounding in the door with a bolt of cotton the color of marigolds, i was intrigued.
what’s that, i wondered, trying to tamp a mother’s too-keen attention on the hard-to-pin-down adventures of a young budding teen.
except for the chest wall of campaign buttons, some now historical relics, and anti-war slogans pinned to his signature fleece, i cannot say that i’ve ever caught a whiff of an interest in what you’d call fashion, not from this boy at least.
oh, it’s for young democrats, he informed, starting to forage for after-school sustenance. settling into some sort of concoction involving triscuits, cheese and a microwave, he circled back to his backpack, pulled out a sheaf of six stapled pages.
we’re draping the courtyard with the names of everyone who’s been killed in the iraq war, he explained.
the boy now had my complete attention.
so did the six pages of names.
he had in his hand 259 names of 259 soldiers and sailors, mostly men, but plenty of women, from the army, the navy, and the marines. a roster of each one who died, in the case of his slice of the list, from jan. 24, 2005, to may 8 of the very same year. may 8 that year just happened to be mother’s day.
i flipped to the last names on the list, the mother’s day names, and i counted. eight. pity the eight mothers who live with the knowing their sons’ very last breaths came on the day just for mothers.
i looked through name after name. i looked at the ages: 21, 22, 24. 24, 20, 26. the oldest, by far, 51. the youngest, 19, again and again.
i was looking, merely, at numbers and letters spilled on a page. it doesn’t take much imagination, though, not much at all, to realize these are lives, were lives. had sweethearts at home, maybe. young children, too, who now go to sleep clinging their pillows, stuffing their cheeks in the folds of the cotton to soak up the tears.
each one of those names had a mother. had maybe a kid brother or sister. had someone for whom they were–forever are now–some kind of a hero. now, they’re a war hero, too.
the one soldier i know who did die, not one on these pages, but one who went off to iraq, one whose story i know, one whose story could be that of any of these combinations of letters and numbers, he was more than a name and a date, and some commas and slashes.
he had a guitar. he played for the men of his company. played and sang there in the desert. made them laugh, made them forget where they were. he had, back home, a cherry red ford mustang, parked now by the side of his ma’s barn. she drove it to his funeral.
the sign still hangs in their farmhouse, welcome home beau, after his first tour had ended. his medal, slipped in his mother’s hand along with the folded-up flag after the funeral, keeps watch from the fireplace mantle.
that story, or a story just like it, i’m sure is repeated and repeated with each of the names.
so what an honor, for us, for my boy who is lifting his pen, printing out in precise 4.65-inch letters, name after name after name.
what an honor to pause for as long as it takes to write all the names, consider the stories of those whose lives would otherwise have wholly escaped every one of us.
but maybe not now.
i am thinking, hoping, that as his wrist starts to ache, as his fingers cramp, from printing the names on yard after yard of marigold cotton, the depth of the truth will sink in, will seep down to a place not normally visited by a boy in a part of the world where not a single kid worries that his day in iraq is coming, is on the horizon.
to make the curve of each letter, to line up the dots over the i, to cross all the t’s, really, is to silently honor the dead and the fallen. it is to etch, one more time, a trace of their existence onto a swatch of the planet.
we don’t know the story. but tracing name after name, date of death, age at death, is to circle in on the outlines of who someone was.
there is a long tradition in this country, in this world, of keeping the list of the names of the dead. it is, for many, a blur of the alphabet. but to be the one scanning the list, feverishly narrowing in on the name of the one who you loved, it is a last shout not to forget, not to go on, leaving the dead unmentioned.
the idea here, to pen all the names and drape the whole courtyard in marigold cotton, to unfurl and to read the names of the ones who are gone, is to prick, maybe, the everyday thoughts of the teens who are, by accident of geography and economy, not so bothered by news from iraq.
the impact alone of the marigold cotton, all over a courtyard of brick and of stone, might jostle a few of their souls. at our house alone, there are 12 yards, that’s 432 inches, to be spun into a roster of heroes.
it is a joint effort of two clubs: young democrats, and young republicans. young kids, either way, who care just a bit about the politics outside those of the lunchroom.
and i, as the mother of one of the ones who will be up in his room, till late in the night, night after night, putting the name of the fallen to fabric the color of marigolds, i got to sit for a while with those names in my hands.
i got to imagine the moments they laughed and they frolicked as children. i got to picture the tears as they shoved off to war. and i imagined the silence after they died.
i too was touched by the names of the dead on the day set aside for remembering.

do you ever pause, as you hear a particular newscast, to think of the circle of rings left in the water, after that pebble is cast? do you know anyone off in iraq, anyone we should remember? hold in our thoughts and our prayers? or should we just try as hard as we can to consider the hell and the heart of those who are off in iraq, and anywhere else in the world, on this day of trying to remember?

perhaps you should know: no one else was home.

it was an otherwise ordinary morning. the sun was golden, was pouring in in that way that sunbeams, come november, pour like molasses on a tall stack of flapjacks.

the birds, just out the window, were chattering like schoolkids on a bus on a fieldtrip.

i was trying to write. i decided, maybe, a backbeat would help. my brother, one faraway now, one off in maine, came to the rescue, as often he does. he knows music, has a collection as eclectic as any i’ve ever known. global music is his thing, africa, ireland, new orleans, brazil, guinea-bissau, india. water drops pouring through copper pipes, he has made it be music.

i slipped in a disc, one he’d once made. sao paolo ripped through the speakers, and there on the rug, i was twirling, was clapping, was flowing like some sort of teenager who wasn’t afraid, wasn’t ashamed, was lost in the bass and the backbeat, and the forest of sound that came crashing my way.

did i mention that i was alone?

and then as the volume rose, and so too the sense of abandon, it hit me how home–that place that after a while, after we pay some attention, haul in the art work that stirs us, lace it with blankets and pillows and odd sorts of collections that remind us–home is not only four walls and a roof.

not at all.

home is the ultimate intimate relationship we all yearn for. it is the space where we can be naked, and i don’t mean without clothes, although that’s possible too.

what i mean is it’s the place, the rare sanctified place, where we can be the wholeness of who we were made to be. we can pull back the armor, the shields, and the shell. we can be the turtle undressed, if we so choose.

we can rock. we can spin. we can pound on the floors with our toes.

we can slip into skin that feels at once selfish and stripped of the self. we can indulge in the rhythm of being wholly alive, to the point we lose track of our selves.

then, we think, oh my God, please not let there be a reader of meters, who just got a glance in the window.

i’ve seen it, i’ve caught it, with children. tiptoe down in the basement, and there, behind a door that’s half-closed, a 5-year-old boy is pretending he’s there in a stadium. he’s throwing and cheering and running the bases all at one time.

and then, the second he sees you’ve arrived, he flinches and turns into stone.

the magic is dashed. is over. is gone.

it’s back to a dingy old playroom where the heat never comes.

when we’re home, truly home, and no one is watching, we get to try on our very deep selves. not deep, mind you, like some kind of a far-reaching thinker, but deep like down to the place where the wires run straight from our soul. where we are, maybe, as close as we get to the being God once had in mind.

a creature who twirled with all of the rhythm and nuance, and reckless abandon, deserving of a hand-made design. an original, in every which way.

what a magnificent thing then if there is one place in the world where we feel back to the womb. where we allow our home to be more than merely the place where we eat, where we sleep, where we soak in the tub.

how amazing that home is the place where we get to practice. get a taste of the feel of being, well, completely at home. we can dance, we can sing, we can pretend we’re some sort of a hero. we can give speeches, if that’s what we please. we can write, and recite, poems. and we don’t have to wince or to blush.

for that is the gift that, in the end, we’re all seeking. it is eden without all of the apples. it is, i would think, the point of this whole exercise, really.

it’s what we are seeking, time after time, in most every relationship that matters: a place and a space where we don’t have to explain. where we simply can be, can unpeel the layers, and not be embarrassed.

the more we undress, the closer we are to our life’s truest love. and how blessed it is that the place where we live is, in some ways, as close as we get to that place of total abandon.

no wonder we get through the door with a key that unlocks no other place.

it is a sacred thing, i would insist, to come into a space where we can dance with abandon. where we can be not diluted, or half of the plan of the God who imagined us.

but where, with every inch of our skin, and all the room in our heart, we can fill out the shadows and cracks. we can be wholly at home in the soul we were meant to be.

talk about dancing naked. eek. would someone please tell me if this made one ounce of sense. i write with my eyes closed sometimes. pretend i am all alone, which i am. only the minute i hit that gray button, kapow. i’m not so alone with my thoughts anymore. but this whole thing here–the chair, that is–is an experiment, an experiment in exploring the homefront, the near and sometimes the far, searching always for grace in the everyday. we’ve never touched on anything close to the joy of dancing unwatched. for me it’s dancing (the undulations of dance undo me, but i was always afraid of the stage, of moving my body). for some it’s writing poetry. there is a something all of us love, but we’re too bashful, too shy, to indulge with an audience. how blessed that home, like a love that is wholly accepting, that rarest of love, allows us to be our nakedest self. i find that, frankly, exhilarating. how about you? and to connect an even larger dot–isn’t that what it’s supposed to feel like to know you are wholly accepted, loved to your core, by God, most of all? take it and dance, people…..
p.s. i wish i was such a techno-wizard that i could weave in here the same backbeat from sao paolo. so you could dance while your read along…..apologies….

it was a wisp of a thought, really. it came as i stood there stripping leaves off the mint i’d just cut from the garden. i know–because someone once told me, and these are the bits that make up the compendium of all that we know, the vast storehouse of knowledge acquired through a lifetime of listening–that before dunking the stems in the water, i needed to pluck off the leaves at the bottom, or else, sooner than otherwise, the water there in the pitcher will be yuck, will be green verging toward goo, will stink like a not-so-nice pond.
and that very thought, the thought about stripping the leaves, leapt right to a thought that was not such a wisp, really.
it was the notion, the realizing, the gathering of so many wisps into one undeniable ball, that that bit of wisdom might well be lost, disappear, vanish when i do.
you see, i have no daughter. no girl standing right by my side, taking in all that i have maybe to teach her. just as i, over the years, have stood by my mother’s side. by her ironing board. by the place where she folded the clothes. by the edge of the mattress where she taught me the crisp edging and folding known in our house as the hospital corner.
i realized that, yes, i have boys to whom i can and i do teach many things. i teach them the bits that i know about feeding the birds, and catching the firefly. i teach them to look in the eye of each someone who asks for a dollar. i teach them to sit and to listen as long as it takes after dinner. i teach them to pray.
but there is a whole realm, a whole world that was passed from mother to daughter to daughter. and it’s not that i’m gender specific, or pre-disposed in some old-fashioned way.
it’s just that the fact of the matter is they, those two blessed boys, couldn’t care less.
one is trying to gather all the knowledge there is, from all the radical, not-so-conventional thinkers. the other is trying to master the punt.
neither one gives a hoot for the so many things that keep this house ticking, the invisible wad of things that i know, and things that i practice day after day.
for instance: the hospital fold; the rotation of foods in the fridge and the pantry, new to the back, old to the front; the sprinkling of water before ironing; the need to mop under the bed; the cleaning of hair from the hairbrush; the washing of blankets in spring; the keeping of napkins in rings.
and of course, old newspaper, not paper towel, when cleaning a mirror or a window.
these are things that i’d file, if i kept a big alphabetical drawer, under H for housekeeping. or maybe HE, for housekeeping esoterica.
not earth-shattering. not even essential. but not bad to know, and quite rather dear when you can hear in your head the instructor who taught you.
whole tomes, ones stuffed with so much they could break your big toe if they fell there, have been written of late–cheryl mendelson, martha stewart, to name only two–on the care and the tending of home.
perhaps it’s to fill in the holes and the tears in the sheets of a nation whose grownups were quite very busy and not so concerned with transferring knowledge on, say, how to get rid of popsicle when it melts in the rug, or know when the eggs have gone bad, or manage to walk out the door without looking as wrinkled as pants left in the dryer for, oh, close to a week.
it is, in the end, so much ephemera. it is here, and it’s gone. and no one will notice.
it’s not the loss, i suppose, of the knowledge, so much as it’s the end of a line. some of these bits, and some of these home-keeping legends, i’m sure, go back as many generations as there have been girls born to mothers.
in my house, i can trace it, i think, from a wood-sided house on brierhill road, to another, covered with ivy, on north cliff lane high in the hills of old cincinnati, and before that, still cincinnati, to a tall skinny brick place on ludlow.
before that, to a village somewhere in germany, i know nothing. but i’d not be surprised if somewhere, in the unspooling of my housekeeping day, there’s a trace of some hausfrau’s instruction in something i just always do. why? just because, it’s the way i was told that it’s done.
with me, though, it all ends. i’ve no niece. and no sister. and my one little girl, she didn’t make it out of my womb.
it’s the voices that swirl in my head, the ones who are whispering over my shoulder. that’s what will be gone.
there is so much that makes up the whole of our soul, and so many threads, some merely wisps, some fat silken cables, that weave through the self as it spins through a lifetime.
only we know how crowded the highway of thoughts that course through our days and our years and our one blessed crack at this game.
only we hear the chorus, the racket of so many instructors inside us.
and it’s just that as i stood there stripping those leaves i was struck by a thought that has nowhere to go. the last of a line. so many whispers silenced at last.

do you have odd bits of knowledge and wisdom and facts that dictate whole strings of your life? what are some of the things that you do, simply because some voice once told you? can you still hear the voice? or is much of your wisdom now marked, author unknown? i would be curious, because i always am, to hear your housekeeping esoterica. think of this: if we all say it here, it will never be lost. and if you’d like i can try to explain how to execute that hospital corner….

that there bucket, the one with the coffee-can scoop, it’s the back-up for my all-you-can-eat buffet. it’s insurance, i’ll never run out.
might as well be the grease bin, there at some 24-hour joint by the side of the highway. or in the bowels of the city. a sling-em-up, serve-em-up someplace that fuels the folk who deliver the papers, haul out the garbage, criss-cross the country with tables and chairs and wires and widgets. and, of course, always, the cops and the hangers-on at the cop shop. you need buckets of grease when you’re feeding the hungry, the growling, all through the day and the night.
but my all-day diner takes a snooze in the dark. my all-day diner feeds all the chirps in the ’hood. and they go to bed when the night comes. tuck beaks under wings, hum lullabies.
those dozers don’t stir till the dawn. and that’s when i’m at it again. me and the all-day buffet.
i’ve just opened back up for the winter. slowed things down a bit in the summer. didn’t shovel quite so much seed till just now, when the mercury dipped, yes it did, to the wee little lines in the 20s. (that’s all i could make out through the window, where at last–it took only five years–my thermometer hangs; couldn’t get more precise of a reading what with all of the shmutz there on the glass. or maybe it’s only my eyes.)
it feels like old home week, out there at the counter. out where i rustle up grits and sunflower flapjacks for all of my friends. they’re flapping their wings, depositing feathers all over the grass. might be their idea of a tip. sort of a thank you for all of the trouble i go to. scooping the gruel, dumping it out in all the contraptions hung just for them.
all the chains and the hooks, the slides and the wee little holes hung for one purpose: to keep out the fat wily squirrels.
oh, they find their way anyway.
there was one, chowing away, just yesterday noon. i’d looked out the window and there were no birds. only the squirrel. elbows up on the counter, paying no mind that the words on the box promised: no squirrels allowed.
dang. maybe that squirrel can’t read.
so, of course, i put in a call to my very old friend, t.j., the bird man. squawked into the phone: “i’ve got a problem.” no hullo. no how are you. just pure distress.
polite one, he is, he didn’t mind. got right to the source of squawking.
“well, you know, a squirrel has nothing to do all day but plot how to vex you.”
oh, swell. now i have squirrels who are not only hungry, but vexing as well.
so it goes in the seed-flinging business. if i’d wanted no headaches i’d never have put out my shingle. or all of my feeders.
there’s nearly always a nuisance at most every diner. the jack nicholson sort of a character who can’t take his tuna without angling his way through the order. my squirrels are my nicholsons.
ah, but my birds are my devoted, my faithful, my tried and my true. they come year after year. and when they’re around i am whistling. i hear them just now, chirping away.
every once in a while there’s a squawk. the old jay making a fuss. over the eggs, maybe. maybe he wanted them over easy and i overed them a little too hard.
all in all, though, there’s hardly a ruffle of feathers. i sling out the seed. they fill up my limbs with their flutters and all of their chatter. i’ve a whole civilization just out my window. and it’s mine for the price of the seed.
i’ve gotten to know them over the years. the mamas and papas. and all of the youngins. i am soft for the red birds. not so keen on the blue jays (i find them quite stingy and mean, despite the hue of their feathers). the sparrows i love for their humility, pure and simple. a more unadorned bird i’d be hard-pressed to find. and they strut not in pairs, like the show-offy citizens, but come in a flock of 20 to 30. they even take turns, demonstrate manners.
i don’t think i’m wrong, by the way, to think this a two-way acquaintance. i’m fairly certain they know me as well, know i’m the kook who calls out “good morning,” when i step out to flip the seed flapjacks.
my guru, and my guide in these things, ol’ t.j., tells me there’s even a bird, a red-breasted nuthatch, who will nibble right out of my hand. i can stand there, i can, he suggests, like some modern-day frank of assissi. all i need are shelled peanuts and patience. the peanuts i pick up today. and i promise a story, with pictures, if i manage to muster the patience.
not a bad way to limp through the winter. matter of fact, it’s as close as i get to heaven here on the earth. and, unlike the jay, i am not stingy. i do want to spread this here glory.
so i beseech you: if you do nothing at all this long winter, i urge you to open a diner. we could have us a nationwide chain.
all you do is you hook up some seed. maybe a trough. or a wild-eyed contraption to keep out all of the nicholsons. i mean squirrels.
if you want i can give you the number for t.j. fact, here it is: 847-729-4688. he’ll do birds at a distance.
just tell him the squawker, she sent you.

anyone else got the seed slinging? anyone willing to try the nuthatch pose of serenity? sign up if you’re game. and do tell if you’ve got tricks of your own.