Snow

All day it has been falling.  At seven this morning, it was light rain; by eight, white...drifting down like a Hollywood scene, covering us fast and lovely.  For a while, the children across the street were out, trying to rescue their dad's car, which had slipped sideways at the end of the drive, and some neighbors walking dogs or walking to town, booted and scarved and enjoying the kind of snowfall that feels good...crisp air, wet refreshing flakes, still manageable underfoot.

It kept up long past what we were led to believe...an inch or two, over by early afternoon, said the weather people, like last week's fall more a gesture than a storm.  The plows came and went, but all the tracks were soon covered, as if no one, no car, no sand, had ever passed this way.  All day we'd heard from the north, the west, the south and southwest...chilling cold, bright sun, the precipitation stopped after a few inches, promising better tomorrow.  But it's late afternoon now, and here the snow still falls, lighter, thinner but equally persistent.  Now and then a branch, overloaded, snaps and crashes.  At first we heard them, but now, we see only after the fact the deep impression it has made on the heightening cloud over the ground. 

At noon, I gathered some hazelnuts from the basket we keep for Alexander on the dining table, and threw them outside the front door under the sheltering eaves.  If the chipmunks and squirrels dare to come out of their hiding places, they'll have dinner, of a sort.  The birds haven't shown themselves yet either, but I know, as they do, where their repast will come from:  behind the ivy growth on the bark up the tall trees in the back yard, they'll peck out bugs enough for days.

Tonight, since it's my birthday, and no one else can brave the foot or more accumulated by now, not to mention our town's infamous steep, iced driveways, to help celebrate, my next-door neighbors are wading through from their kitchen door to mine for a winter dinner...a sort of curried rice and shrimp thing, a salad, some apple crisp.  They'll bring wine.  (I wish I had a fire to welcome them, but alas, it's the one thing this house is lacking...a fireplace...and I'm at cross-purposes trying to figure out where to put one, without losing a bank of windows.)

Meanwhile, the snow rises into a silence unmatched, cushioning us from all outdoors.  As I watched a movie to spend the quiet, it seemed as if there were no other world except the rooms of this house, its windows showing only snow broken now and then by the criss-cross of hyphenated tree limbs and high wires.  Snow falling in the air, snow lodged in the elbows of branches, snow piled high on what might be, underneath, rocks or cars or hibernating creatures.  Not eerie at all, just the long black and white emptiness of winter.

It's a sort of gift, I suppose, that bears waiting a while to unwrap.

Ordinary

All I wanted out of this new year were a few ordinary days to begin again.  But opening the drapes this morning, I found out my window the snow the weather people said was coming.  Scorning them, I had disdained all those shoppers I found late yesterday afternoon at the grocery, who were practically looting the milk, egg and cereal shelves.  I was just there because really and truly I had run out of milk, eggs and orange juice, and, happening to be driving right by, thought I'd save myself a trip on the morrow.  Darting through the melee, I managed to snag the last gallon of milk and a carton of jumbo eggs that weren't broken, and the cashier and I made a joke of the panic people get into when the weather threatens to leave them at home too long.

Those of you in northern climes will no doubt roll your eyes at an inch of snow (that's how much we had) causing such hoarding, but here in the land of relatively rare snowfall, one could be holed up inside for a few days until the sand-and-brine trucks get around to one's street.  Even I, who live right off the main road through town, a road already cleared and well-traveled, am not about to risk life and limb dodging the (let's say politely) less experienced drivers who rev an engine jauntily over a patch of ice and don't expect the spin or the slide downhill. I hate driving (or walking, for that matter) on ice anyway, no matter how many of my youthful years were spent spinning on it.

But no one will argue that the sight this morning wasn't beautiful, the landscape shining jewel-like in the brilliant sunlight.  There were already tracks of birds, deer and something else I couldn't recognize across the driveway, and pretty soon I added my own, making up errands to enjoy the air and sun, even the crunch of snow under my feet.  Ordinarily all this white stuff would melt before noon, except that this week the peak temperature will just barely break the freezing point and nights will dip into the teens...not ordinary.  As I mentioned, we might be stuck inside a few days.

Beautiful winter scenes outside put me in the mood to do something warm inside.  Making breakfast, I pulled a package of English muffins from the freezer and discovered too many bags of bread-ends accumulating near the back of the shelf.  Ordinarily, I save them to dry and grind into breadcrumbs, but this morning that seemed too mundane a fate.  Bread pudding...a treat on a cold day, both the aroma as it bakes and the taste thereafter...sounded much more palatable. My copy of Craig Claiborne's classic tome, The New York Times Cookbook, is, after forty-five years, approaching the look and feel of an antique, but its Orange version is still the best recipe for that homey dessert.

As it came to fruition in the oven, I headed to the workroom to made a card for a friend's birthday, and when it was finished I began to play around, pulling stuff together to make a new one, collaged like the first, this time with leftover bits of a page from an arty style magazine, a rag of cotton and a few handmade paper ends.

Somehow, though, shapes of a deeper significance began to appear as I tore and glued, inked and painted and overlay.  The pile of folded rugs seemed now like a temple; the beginning of an ancient invocation occurred to me, and after I'd inscribed it once, twice, ten and more times, I reached under a pile of scraps and out fell a tiny square with the message, This life is a gift.  I suppose the same words had been nesting in my mind unrealized behind every move of my hands.

What I was building with those scraps was a talisman against worry.  My poor grandson has had a fever that has enervated him for several days now.  Those of us who know from experience about fever in children know that with some medicine, some cool cloths, a lot of liquids and rest it's likely to run its course and shake off lethargy soon enough, but we still can't help remembering all the things that could go wrong.  We also can't help feeling sorry for their parents, remembering what it was like when we were first faced with a little one, usually so full of energy, waterfalls of words tumbling minute by minute..."Dad, Mama, Nana!  See this?  I can do...", now way too quiet and droopy and hurting, his favorite blanket comforting him as he curls into a corner of the couch.   We'd do anything to make him himself again. It's only the flu, we think, but it brings with it a vulnerability we don't want to be reminded of.

So here before me is this collage unfolding from distress but insisting on turning into the bigger picture.  I'm thinking it will probably now be the cover of a book instead of simply a card.  Though I'm still pondering the right frame for it, I think I know what it's about, this piece.   It's the way the making of art turns those deep-hidden emotions we are too old or stolid or iron-willed to admit, into images that overcome vulnerability, even though they are born of them.

We busy our hands with work to reinvent anxiety and uncertainty, creating the outward expression rather than eroding the sense within. 

The bread pudding, by the way, my uncle enjoyed for lunch with a little cream, while the sun flooded the dining room and the snow glittered outside.  Comfort made against the cold, usually by hand. 

Celebrations

Today is the day before the new year, a Sunday this time.  I walked into Whole Foods this morning, and was politely arrested by the cashier for trying to buy a bottle of Prosecco before 10 am.  (If you're not from this state, don't ask.)  This morning, feeling the new year's chill, I wanted to pull the holiday season tighter around me like a warm coat, keeping happy anticipation for one more day.  Partly it's the fault of the calendar...a holiday like these winter favorites coming on a Monday throws us all off...Monday, we feel, is the start of the workday, not the holiday itself.  Surely, we think, there should be a weekend to follow, at least to allow us time to recover from the carnival atmosphere of more than a month.

All December, we've had quite a time around here, counting candles, presents and heads, wrapping lights on wreaths, gathering at one holiday table after another, at each one celebrating the day and each other.  Thereat, we all have our favorite ceremonies, songs, dishes, and we value the chance to share them as well as indulge in them, learning new ones as much as resurrecting the old.

A friend wrote me a few weeks ago, "What are you celebrating this year?"  "Everything!" I told her, and we laughed over the web.  Families being what they are, wide-reaching and multi-cultured, variably believing and remembering and keeping, there is always something to celebrate for and with everyone.  I, for one, am even more in the mood to do so, considering the wet blanket this past year's grinches have thrown over inclusiveness, not to mention over common decency and basic respect for the humanity in all of us.

So though tonight, New Year's Eve, I will be staying home out of the fray as usual, I'm ready enough to celebrate in situ the potential for good that a new year brings, the hope that in 2018 we will awaken to remember who we are at our best, both individually and socially and globally. 

Anyway, in honor of my Scotch uncle's residence here, I decided to make tonight a sort of Hogmanay fest, beginning at dinner time here, and continuing for as long as any of us can stay awake.  Fortunately, Scotland is five hours ahead of us in time, so 7 pm will find us beginning our Auld Lang Syne verses, and calling his Glasgow family across the pond to wish them well.  Then, here, while others are watching the ball drop and the fireworks flicker and spark over the trees outside the front window, our household (and apparently most of the neighbors', too) will be comfortably tucked away in sleep.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Scottish customs, let me explain that Hogmanay in its own country is not the retiring feast we are set to practice here.  The Scots begin early and last days eating, drinking, singing, and, just at midnight, going out for First Footing, a walk from house to house offering New Year greetings and begging another dram of whiskey from each.  It's apparently a merry time for all, and reminds me a little of the New Year's Eves of my childhood, at my grandmother's (all festivities happened there), when we ate at least seven courses of seafood for hours (I truly, even hungrily, miss that part) until the moment, counted down in two languages, when even children were cheerfully gathered to the front door to wave noisemakers and sweep the old year out...oh, yes, with a new broom, quite literally.

Food still being the center of any festivity, for our Scottish New Year, I've been looking up Hogmanay dishes.  Hence the early trip to the market to get some ingredients I don't usually have on hand.

Here is a full Hogmanay menu from The Spruce site:

Haggis

Smoked Salmon

Cock-a-Leekie Soup

Venison Pie

Cullen Skink

Trifle or Cranachan

Shortbread

Tablet

Not finding sheep's intestines at WF was, I admit, a relief, though a decade ago, I had tried and quite enjoyed the haggis in the Edinburgh pubs.  Smoked Salmon?  No brainer.  Cock-a-Leekie sounded not only doable but delicious, as did the Skink...I'm always up for a good hearty soup.  Venison Pie made me yearn for the freezer full of tenderloin and shoulder meat I could once upon a time reach into for such a delicacy.  (Alas, I'm no longer a meat-, even a game-, eater.) 

But 'tis the season:  out with the old and in with the new.  The Cullen Skink won out for our main dish this evening.  Orange curried carrots for a side, smoked salmon made into a paste with hard-boiled egg and green onion, some nuts and grapes.

And dessert.  Each year, my aunt used to make a wonderful Trifle for our holidays, and that would be easy to replicate now, especially after the major gift-giving of this month and last...the liquor cabinet is replete with the stuff that gives that elegant dessert its best flavor.  But, as, interestingly enough, my uncle had never heard of Cranachan...raspberries (Scottish raspberries) and cream...I thought I'd try that instead.  And Shortbread?  I certainly didn't have to go to the store for that...I'd made another batch only last night.

As for liquid refreshment, see previous paragraph; we'll hardly miss the Prosecco.  Along with the holidays' gifts of single malts and various wines, we'd also been presented with home made cream liquor from the friend of a friend, and so we're good, as they say.

Well, as it's past midday, I'd better get to it.

I'll let you know how our Scottish New Year goes.  Meanwhile, a very good new year to all of you.  In whatever tradition you celebrate, may the good in you be the good for all of us.  We're all counting on it.

Yours aye...

What she carried

 Tonight, looking for a photograph I knew I had only recently put away somewhere, I opened the drawer of my aunt's dresser and found her pocketbook, which I'd forgotten in the more immediate business of closing her life.  The photo search instantly abandoned, I brought the purse out and began to go through it, thinking at first only to keep important documents (if any) and sort the rest.  But as I pulled out its effects, the discoveries within drew a picture of Aunt Vi that made me smile, and then wonder.

One's purse, after all, is the catch-all of our personalities and practices, so individually, so personally it characterizes us.  We might choose the outward appearance of one carrier over another, on one day or another, to match an outfit or suit an occasion, but the inside contents will always remain pretty much the same.  We carry what we need; we carry what we are.

Women's purses are sort of like men's pockets, only different.  They are more private, for one thing.  They contain the necessities of both genders, of course...wallet, keys, handkerchief (if we are of that age), change, perhaps the latest credit receipt, and probably a cell phone.  But women carry so much more; their necessities go beyond the businesslike chambers above to include not only the ways to get in, out, and hold of, but also the ways to be what we are...and often what other people need and are, too.

As I thought about this, I imagined the story that my aunt's purse would tell about who she was.  Pushing away (for now) its adjacent thought...what would my purse tell about me?...I began to put the pieces of her possessions together as if it were a puzzle I could construct.

First, the outside open pocket:  her clip-on sunglasses, essential for facing the brightness of a day as her eyes grew more dim; her plastic raincap, to pull out in such emergencies as a sudden drizzle. An address book, a bit ragged from thumbing.  In the zippered pocket, a comb, of course, a pack of throat lozenges, and a small key it took me a minute to recognize...the key to the jewelry box she kept on her dresser, though I doubt it had ever been locked.

There was a wallet, certainly, with a few dollars and coins for the weekly hairdresser and manicurist appointment.  There were the usual ID's, the first of which was the non-drivers identification card we'd applied for when they first moved here three months ago.  It made me think of its predecessor, the full drivers license from her previous home state; a clerk of which  state had obliviously renewed it, although my aunt, at the counter in front of her, had to ask for help from the man behind her to find the line to sign her name and besides, she had wisely given up driving years before.  How we laughed about that!  "Well," she rejoined, "at least people will know who I am."

Behind it were two copies of a social security card, the topmost one issued with her married name, and the undermost issued her originally on today's date, actually, in 1936.  Being an accountant by trade, she kept her paper copies carefully...indeed, there is not a crease on the original, though the paper has understandably grayed some.

Her health insurance cards (unlike my own) likewise showed no distress, though she must have pulled them out for twenty or more appointments a year over the last thirty.   A credit card, a privilege card from the Hallmark store, her also-newly-minted voter registration card, and her vision-surgery cards took up the remaining slots.

Except...stuck in a side slot was a yellowed plastic wallet folder with photographs:  showing from one side my grandparents (her parents) in their 1956 passport picture, taken for their first trip abroad, and from the other side, my cousin Nancy, her godchild, in a school picture I'm pretty sure, shining her characteristic smile across the decades.

It was a curious, almost portentous, time to find Nancy there, as she had passed away two years ago on Christmas day. This portrait reminded me of the happier, younger, healthier years of her life among us.  How hard her parents worked to bring her those years, how essential she had become to the liveliness and determination of all of us, in some inexplicable but assuredly felt way or another.

Between those photos, there was a third, a small snapshot of another niece, my cousin Donna, in her habit, probably taken when she entered her order, also smiling broadly.  Certain and composed, it was clearly a souvenir of how much Aunt Vi had enjoyed attending the ceremony of her initiation in St. Louis, and the time they'd had in that city.  As in fact she had enjoyed every one of our ceremonies, wherever they were, whatever they were, over the years.

Under the photos, two charms...the encrypted penny her brother had passed to her, "so she wouldn't ever run out of money", and a coin minted by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; she must have visited that shrine long ago in New York.  And by them you would recognize her two priorities for security...comfort and faith.

Under the wallet, a small Swiss army knife, for who knows what emergency (well, it did have a nail file), and a small flashlight for dark restaurants.  At the bottom, a piece of white coral, shaped like an angel and encased in clear acrylic, seemed an obvious keeper.

But her wallet wasn't really the first thing I had removed from the purse..excuse me, pocketbook  (as in, where is my pocketbook?  make sure I have my pocketbook...George, hold my pocketbook!) as I delved into the main compartment.

It was the small clear box that went everywhere with her. On any trip, to the grocery down the block or to Florida down the coastal road, you could be sure she'd ask, "Do you want a TicTac?" Yes, she did often find her mouth in need of refreshment, and so assumed that surely someone else in the car did, too.  I learned after a while, to my relief, that the offer wasn't, in fact, insinuating anything about one's breath.  She just wanted to make sure that the others were comfortably driven, too.

Winter Moon

A cold drizzle has fallen since daybreak...perhaps even longer through the night.  Yesterday there was a rasher of snow; the dusting is melted now, giving up its ghost despite the "winter storm warning" sternly appended to the local weather report for today.  

But it's a good time for writing out the holiday cards I've painted, collaged, and sewn; even watching the unchanging scene outside the windows reminds me that inside it's warm and wafting the beginnings of the more glowing holidays.

While the outside of the cards have been a pleasure to do, the inside, the verse I usually include, has come harder.  Not only the weather, I suspect, but the despairing news from across the world, and the feelings of helplessness in the face of so much deliberate and hateful ignorance, have kept me from seeing how even as peaceful a scene as I painted would translate into words that inspired hope.

But late this morning, sitting down with firm intention (and spurred by my uncle's pacing to get them into the mailbox), I took the printed image and wrote from its cue.  Only a segment of the poem that ensued will appear on the cards, but somehow I didn't want the whole to be tossed aside.  In some lights the latter stanzas may seem redundant (not to mention not quite a holiday message of cheer, except for the dogged traditionalists of Chanukah), but seen in another light, they're at least what I mean.

Well, you all see what you think.

Winter moon

In the shadows, peace winters

while its roots ingest the cinders

of the earth’s strength.

We wait, longing, to be willed

its fortune…how can it, we ask, chilled 

and hungry, leave us stranded so long?

In its bed, hope and knowing 

listen for signs of our own growing, 

believing that good will light us again.

This raw season, as the cold looms,

the darkness of all but one bright moon

waxing and waning over the landscape

we once called home... can it nourish

us, too, bereft as we are, unlock our courage

and carry us forth to break its insidious spell?

                                                            r           12 09 17

P.S. Now that I've written this, outside the window it is indeed beginning to snow again, thicker than yesterday, though so far disappearing on impact over the roof, street, and mulched leaves.  It's cold, but not cold enough, I guess, to keep the beauty of a winter storm, just its illusions.  (I'm in a mood, aren't I.)  

My sister, on the other side of the state, sent photos of her snow-draped landscape this morning, no doubt to show us that somewhere, beyond the dull wetness, loveliness reigns.

Flying blind

My aunt eats slowly, her morning spoon pushing squares of cereal and rounds of banana around the bowl until she captures one--though which one she won't know until it reaches her tongue.  Her slowness is a matter of habit, certainly not lack of interest nor even her 98 years (she's always been the last one finished at table); her appetite is as keen as ever, though she eats, I notice, a speck less every few days.

For me, sitting across our grandmother's table from her, it seems that each bite must be a surprise, though she takes it in unflappable stride.  She expects oat squares and bananas; therefore they come, albeit in their own time, until she is finished the bowl. At lunch, for which we have dinner, she is a bit more questioning:  "Where is the meat?  Is my wine here?  A piece of bread, please."  The last of which she uses as a "pusher" to help along the small, miscellaneous hills of food she has gathered from across the plate, fork from the right, knife from the left.  The last bite on the plate is the most challenging, but with an extra hand she achieves that, too.

Eating blind is an exercise in traversing the unknown, as most of her doings are these days.  A stalwart defender of her independence, she can still admit her incapacity and yet demand her rights to have what she needs and wants.  Everything in its place is our goal for her ease, and yet that, too, has its adventures.  A coffee cup returned after a sip to the slope of the saucer, the cut halves of toast (buttered as she likes, thickly and right to the corners) slid hither and yon on the plate.  Ice cream (one of her favorite desserts) seems to have little trouble gathering into the spoon, but carrot cake, even without the raisins which she dislikes, scatters across the plate like frozen sand on a winter beach.

As slowly as she dines, so she walks, tentative, halting steps, though with purpose.  She has mastered the light switches that only vaguely assist direction, the furniture that serves as her guideposts along the paths from bedroom to kitchen, from den to porch.  Only in the last few weeks has she begun to lose her way in our small house; even a small missed turn will send her to the kitchen instead of the den; to the den instead of the bedroom (the dining room, the center of it all, is not usually missable), and the surprise at not being where she aimed.  And yet, nothing diminishes the ambition to arrive where she intends.  "George!" she calls to my uncle in a voice as unblunted as a general's on review, "Where are you?"  And then, with the response, her direction reinstates itself.

Even for her, blindness can be quickly tiring.  The row of stitches she painstakingly knits, counting carefully at the end to be sure she hasn't dropped or added, can be all she accomplishes in half an hour's sitting, her hands directing the circular needles she prefers.  Even with the day lamp over her left shoulder, positioned to help the most, a single row is an achievement.  Every day she picks it up, determined to make the 33 inches the strip should be for its inclusion in one of the lap robes my sister always has in process.  And every day she rues her failing (mostly failed now) sight. "Don't get old!" she admonishes anyone in hearing range.  After the row, it isn't long until her head falls forward, slowly, the sun warming her nap from behind.

The same occurs with reading her large-print book, one or two sentences at time.  She doesn't give up either her interest in it or her attempts to garner the clues to the mystery, but after a page, she rests.

This morning, rising earlier than usual, she gets herself weighed and into slippers and robe, and calls the rest of us to organize breakfast, on which she dines heartily.  Then, though it hadn't been her habit until lately, tiredness descends and she announces that she'll go back to bed for a while.  After an hour or so, I don't hear her at her ablutions yet, so I will peek in to see whether she's still relaxing.  Though she will berate me later for letting her stay in bed so long, I will counter by telling her that it's Saturday, and there are no appointments, no company coming, nothing ahead but relaxation and perhaps a walk in the sun when it warms up a bit.  She can, I will assure her, take it easy for the morning.  After a life ordering and doing and managing, managing far beyond, and far more fervently than what most people would give in to, she's certainly entitled to that.

My sister asked me the other day, "What do you think we will be like when we're that age?"  A few years ago, I'd have laughed and answered ironically:  Just like them!  Thinking of my mother, aunts, uncles, all of whom attained their nineties, minds intact if bodies tended to betray them, annoyingly.  Each trying as hard as her/his personality dictated to stay the course of time.

Now I don't quite take that resilience, determination, fortitude...not to mention the quick spurts of good humor...for granted.  I would be lucky to be that healthy of spirit and drive if the next quarter century finds me still on this earth.  Every day, watching my aunt (and uncle, too) is another lesson in how best to get old...if not always with the painless vision we imagine when we say we admire those who are "growing old gracefully".  It isn't a sweet, indulgent capitulation to age that seems to matter, or that is even possible.

Instead, we ought, I will tell my sister next, be practicing for speaking our minds as loudly as we can, and demanding, as she does, that life go on as usual.

Food for Thought

Yesterday, I bemoaned to Cathy the fact that it's been a month since I last wrote on this blog, being not without inspiration, but without the focus to turn words to page.  As is her wont, she came back immediately with her idea of a solution: "Just write one paragraph."  Right, I thought.  The paragraph and I travel the way of Faulkner's sentences:  I am certainly capable of it; I just don't feel the need to stop at the end of every rational point...everything in life is connected, after all.

Since my aunt died, though, late on November 4th, writing anything but the form-filling has been nil, save for her obituary. Such traumas close me up to all but practical thought; I go into mindless action, doing what tasks need to be done, organizing and re-organizing, making the changes necessary in a fast-changing life.  Wearing myself down to no words at all.

But Cathy can probably be credited for opening my word-door again.  Early this morning, a vision came to me of the family cookbook we produced twenty-some years ago, and suddenly I knew how to begin here.

With Thanksgiving coming fast on the heels of Aunt Vi's passing, the holiday season, with its tumble of family and feasts and frantic activity, ought to be an intrusion into sorrow; it's said that holidays are often hardest on those who have suffered loss.  In past years, closed tightly up into myself after two searingly close deaths, how fearful I was of attending to such social occasions...how I girded myself up against anything but the necessary.  But this time, having a table to fill with children, relatives, relatives of relatives, and friends and their relatives, silvery service on shiny linen, wine, and food cooking for days, each redolent of the history we have shared, seemed to me just a continuation of her memorial, another way to honor memory.  After all, our gatherings resemble in no small way how my aunt not that long ago filled her house, as did my mother and grandmother theirs. They were open to any guest; the tables expanded or multiplied, however small the space.  (My father once remarked, after inspecting our first house, "I like the way they spaced those roof joists, but that dining room is way too small.") 

My sister Ann, on such occasions, reminds us tongue in cheek that food is what our family is about, in sorrow as in joy, in celebration as in vanquishment.  Often one affection glides along with the other; someone lost brings back someone gained...we mourn a death, we look forward to a new life coming into the world, or a lost one returned.  We gather around the table to share one and both simultaneously.  We're not unusual in that.  In the short weeks between her passing and Thanksgiving, neighbors from houses nearby, bless them, brought daily offerings of sustenance to our door.  Food as nourishment and compassion is hardly a new thing in any culture (though my Scottish uncle, quite amazed and touched by their care, asked, "Is this a Southern practice?").  Food is the language we all have in common.

As in times before, the table held old dishes and new dishes, each remembered by its maker or its originator.  Our book of recipes...my mother's and grandmothers', my aunts' and sisters' and cousins', my sons' and husband's and friends'...might as well be instructions for a renewable feast that acknowledges both life and loss.

I don't mean to say that the holiday table is a panacea for grief.  Hardly.  You could make a case for temporary distraction, for the busy-ness taking one's mind off absence and heartache for a few hours.  But not a good case.  My uncle, the newness of whose days without my aunt brings complication unimaginable, generously let himself become part of the scene, teasing children, listening hard to and trying to attend the conversations around him.  My friend Johanna, also recently widowed, who had asked to join us for the Thanksgiving weekend, too entered willingly enough the crowd and noise of the table (the children running around and under it), seemingly relieved by the occasion on which she could feel loss and beyond-loss.  It's not always easy to rise to the surface from the cloudy underwater of mourning.  But it can feel like a breath of new air, an intimation that we can eventually come back to live with ourselves again.

This isn't what I set out to say, actually, when, between dreams early this morning, I imagined that photo, and by now I've forgotten just what it was I did intend.  (Perhaps I could have written that in a paragraph.)  

But sitting here, in the small interim between one feast and the next holiday racing (for better or worse) toward us, I find words not about what we have lost, but what continues, and what that continuation means to our solace.