Thanksgiving

 

Henry and Oliver, Yosemite 

2011

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer. Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need. Take only that which is given. Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share. Give thanks for what you have been given. Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken. Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, 

Braiding Sweetgrass 

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Post Thanksgiving Catch-Up

I had all my chicks home for a long weekend, and that is a good thing.

I had such a good time talking with Henry about all kinds of stuff. It's hard to believe how grown he is, how self-possessed and on his way.

I baked a lot of apple pies.

If you peer into the distance, you can see some biscuits. I baked a lot of biscuits.

I baked a lot of pumpkin cheesecakes, too. They tend to split on the top, even though I refrained from over-mixing the batter (causes air bubbles that rise to surface and split the cake open while baking) and turned the oven off and left them in the oven for two hours after baking. Outside of using a water bath, do any of ya'll have any tips to avoid the splitting? Toasted meringue helped disguise the cracks and went beautifully with the pumpkin, if I do say so myself.

On Thanksgiving day, Carl, Henry, Oliver and I went down to Skid Row to help a wonderful organization feed the needy and the homeless for a few hours. It's shocking to see and disgraceful to accept the level of impoverishment in this beautiful city that I call home. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that I can help more in whatever capacity.

And then there's Sophie. She is struggling. I don't know the answer and grow tired of living the questions. I had a mini-breakdown on Saturday night. Ok. It was a breakdown. I haven't cried that hard in a long time, the kind of cry where you might as well vomit up your heart, if not your guts. I thought a lot about what it means to be faithful. Faith full. Not to any god but to love and life. There's grace to that, an inversion. Prayer as incarnation, a calling forth, for something dark to be revealed.

Hyperbole and Cliche on the Eve Eve Eve of Thanksgiving

Yes, that's white flour you see in the basket, and it's bleached white flour and it's self-rising white flour. I'm fixing (like my Tennessee friends say) to make about ten dozen southern biscuits. Angel Biscuits. Our beloved Mary Moon provided me with a recipe. I'm also baking about ten thousand apple pies and about five thousand pumpkin cheesecakes. Hyperbole is the rule today. The apple pie is a pretty standard recipe that I've made a bazillion times, and the pumpkin cheesecake, the same. I've found that slicing the apples very thin -- like about 1/4 inch -- is the trick to ensure that the pie doesn't become a mushy mess, although mushy messes have their charms. You let the slices macerate in some lemon juice, brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon and salt first, and then you drain them and boil down the juices into a thick syrup that you then add cornstarch to and toss with the apples before adding them to the pie. You know the rest. The pumpkin cheesecake is a tad time-consuming and after being cooked must chill overnight in its springform pan before being un-molded, and the only trick I have for it is to use really good cream cheese because the cheap kind of cream cheese sometimes has a lot of water in it (kind of like cheap butter) so it's better to use the good stuff, if and when you can. Despite making ten thousand things, I remain a bit of a snob when it comes to baking and pastry. If you're a new reader, in another life I worked in fancy-schmancy kitchens in New York City under asshole chefs and learned all the finer things in pastry, before being thrust into the cruel world of childhood epilepsy when my infant daughter was diagnosed with it and so began The Seizure World which might be sort of like The Matrix (I have a limited understanding of the movie as I am decidedly not a fan of sci-fi) in that it's kind of a simulacrum of the world as most know it where tiny little mother minds™ are trapped and enslaved. Wait. That's the real world, too, isn't it?

Anyway.

Hyperbole aside, I have a hell of a lot of biscuits, apple pies and pumpkin cheesecakes to make over the next few days for my cottage business, Everyone Needs Cake.™ Because of that I have decided not to make Thanksgiving dinner this year, and both my sons (Henry comes home tomorrow night!), The Bird Photographer and I will be feeding the homeless on Skid Row Thanksgiving morning. Then we'll return home and eat pizza and pie.  It's just as well (it's also cliche day, apparently). We have much to be thankful for, and it isn't the origins of the country, to tell you the truth. Or the Pilgrims that set the tone for the rest of history, either.

Status Update

Seattle, WA

I'm super glad that Thanksgiving is over. I dislike the contrivance of it, that forced gratitude thing. I've never really liked Thanksgiving, except for the sides, to tell you the truth. Speaking of, you know what side I'm on. I am here this morning on the left side of the country and ever so grateful to be here. My political views are opposite to those of some of my closest relatives, and I was filled with dread about the night. There've been awkward Thanksgivings before, but never like this one. I told one of my friends that I was taking it on as some sort of karmic thing. I was intent on being, if not Zen, than at least a tad Stepford-like. I figured that would be at least in keeping with the Drumpf's bride. Last night I posted on Facebook that I would drink a glass of red wine for every Trump supporter at my Thanksgiving table. I posted this picture of myself along with it:

I'm not a big drinker so I anticipated the night being epic. Here's what happened. Everyone behaved. No one mentioned anything at all about Drumpf or his band of crazies. It was ok. That was a bottle of Montepulciano, and it was delicious. I drank one small glass of the wine, served the food dutifully and cleaned up as dutifully. Then I lay down on the bed next to Sophie in a sort of comatose state with a splitting headache and eventually went to sleep.

I guess we're going to have to get on with it. Keep resisting in our own way.

Here are my divine children for whom I'd do anything.

Gratitude Week: These Sweet People

My monthly column at Gratefulness.org is up. You can read it here.

A Chorus of Thank Yous

Post Gratitude

The weekend passed in a blur, really. The boys, Sophie and I drove up to northern California and met my parents at my aunt's beautiful house near Palo Alto. My aunt is very old and very frail, and of the four sisters, only the youngest (my mother) and oldest (Aunt Yvonne) are alive. My Uncle Charles, who lives in Mississippi is also quite old and fragile. My own parents are still so vibrant, and I know that I take this for granted. Our relationship has its ups and downs, but I'm so grateful for their active presence in my life, for their support and for their love.  There's a terrible melancholy in leaving them, seeing how tied they are to my children and my children to them. The relationship between grand-children and their grand-parents is truly a love affair.

I felt grumpy over most of the weekend, precipitated, I guess, by the near 24-hour care of Sophie. I haven't traveled with her in years, and I know why. I had to be vigilant nearly all night because she doesn't sleep well and would have gone careening off the bed if I weren't there to wrestle her back down. It's difficult to not miss what I insist on calling a normal life when I'm out and about with Sophie. You must know what I mean.

I'm filled with a deep gratitude for my boys, Henry and Oliver. They have never lived a normal life, either, yet they help me instinctually and uncomplainingly. I have worked hard to not let them think they are responsible for taking care of their sister, but the older they get, the more understanding they are toward me, to the strains under which I operate. Sometimes I wince at their aide, wishing that it didn't have to be so. I struggle with that old cliche that well-meaning people dump on us. They're learning such compassion! I worry that one day they'll be on a psychiatrist's couch, wailing about their stunted childhoods, their stressed-out mother, their sister who demanded so much attention. Those thoughts make me falter on the tightrope where I've balanced, for the most part, for nearly twenty years.

It is what it is, is another cliche. I can't do much better.

Other than the Night From Hell, though, Sophie was pretty good. She had few seizures and really enjoyed riding in the car up to northern California and then back home. However much I struggle against it, her identity and mine are entwined. When I surrender to that fact, I really do feel bathed in light, filled with gratitude for having the honor to care for her.

Family

The last week of five am mornings have found me lying flat on my back in Henry's bed (he, relegated to the couch, my parents in mine), the sun hours away from rising, my thoughts more a mull than a muse, my life displayed in front of my mind's eye without death to make it precious, more terror than melancholy. I have no idea whether it's the season, the fact of having my aging (however terrifically) parents in my bed while I lay low to the ground in my boys' baseball player-postered room, my age, or just the damn facts, but I was hard put to remain composed. All the gratitude was schmatitude in the darkest hour before dawn. Texts to a friend on the east coast buoyed me, her reminder that it was the darkest hour before dawn lulled me back to sleep where I dreamed technicolor snippets, walked through parties in houses with rooms and old lovers behind doors. I woke sheepish in light, drove my parents to the airport, embraced them in gratitude for spinning the web, however sticky, where I'm stuck, ran my hand over Oliver's head and wiped away his tears with my thumb. Why do they have to live so far away? he sighed as we pulled away. We waved as they fussed with their bags, smiled, blew kisses.

There's a black reindeer head sitting on my dining room table, waiting for me to bring it back to the store where my mother accidentally dropped her cane and broke off one of its antlers. She paid for half of it and brought it home so that my amazingly handy father could glue it back like new! In the above photo, just to the right of the black plastic-covered foam sheets for Sophie's room -- the path to hell is laid with the best intentions, I believe Blake said --  is the gift they left: a life-sized Santa who dances and sings a number of Christmas tunes -- in our native tongue and Spanish.

That's my family recap. What's yours, dear Readers?

A Feast of Photos

Thanksgiving menu included turkey, gravy, roasted Brussels sprouts, roasted root vegetables, sweet potato pone, Italian sausage stuffing, cranberry jelly, cranberry jelly slices from the can (a must in our family), mashed potatoes, Manhattans for my father and me, sparkly cider for my mother and the kids, apple pie and banana cream pie. Sophie continues to have an unprecedented string of days free of seizures.

We are grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

More stuff going on around here

Does that photo scare you? I woke up this morning at 6:30 to hear two cement mixers churning their goods right outside. A new neighbor is renovating a house across the street and today was the day that cement was poured for the driveway. Dandy. As I'm prone to do, I lay on my back, mulling. Mulling is different than musing. I mulled about the shipment of CBD that should come today and how much money it was going to cost. I mulled over the five gigantic panels of foam that are squeezed into our front porch, how my parents' offer to upholster Sophie's walls while they were here went awry and how I'll have to look at everything in disarray until I can find someone to do it. I mulled over the coming end to de-schooling, when home-schooling will start in earnest and then I mulled over marriage, family, life and death. I was not light-hearted. That would have been musing. I was sleeping in Henry's bed across from Oliver who talks in his sleep off and on throughout the night -- yells in his sleep, actually -- admonitions and exclamations and all manner of drama. My parents are in our bedroom. Henry was on the couch, and The Husband was with Sophie. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do but retreat to the kitchen and make coffee. So, that's what's going on around here.

What else is going on around here

Grandma and Pop Pop have arrived!

What's happening in your parts?

Dear You

Dumbfounded.

Stumped.

Speechless.

Overwhelmed.

Blown Away.

My Socks Knocked Off.

Floored.

Filled Up.

Graced.

Happy.

(that would be me, and much like the photo above, taken nearly thirty years ago with some of the beautiful women who orchestrated the whole beautiful project, I can't do anything but say thank you, my hands to my face with a big, giant grin)

Thank you, Chez Werndorf, Neuro-Chick Kid Doc, Carrie, Brittany, Gay, Gina, Jill, Liv, elizabeth, Beth, Buck, Mitzi Ann, Janet, Bob, Emma, Owen, Missy Slick, Bluegal, Susan, Carol, Gail, Sheila, John, Susan, Moye, Doug, Claire, Teddy, Margaret, Anderson, Anna, William, Lucas, The Freemans, The Sullivans, the Banksons, Vic, Mary Grady, Helenie, The Mermaid Union, The Martins, Jennie, George, Will, Allen, Jack, Mary Campbell, Peter, Henry, George, Ella, Sloat, Ginna, Carson, Clara, Grace, Roy, Carlton, Monster Max, Heather, Logan, Diana, Len, Annabelle, John, Jane, Phil, Fish, Johanna, Daisy, Dash, Carolyn, Hartley, Grace, Anne, Dave, Sarah, Anne-Hope, Laura, Charlotte, Dean, Jessica, Hazel, Grace, Nora, Willa, Julia, Billy, Emily, Grant, Sarah, Antoine, Mattieu, Blanche, Alix, Melissa, Mark, Linda, Rod, Ethan, Parker, Peter, Shannon, Suzanne, Kevin, Allyson, Frank, Elizabeth, FOS (friends of Sophie), Chamberlins and a gazillion Anonymous people.

Thank you.

Thanksgiving Redux

This is a picture of my two boys, just after our rather large turkey banquet in Palm Springs yesterday. We drove up to Palm Springs on Wednesday morning, spent the night and had dinner at the hotel on Thursday afternoon with my friend Cara and her family.

Cara and I

I used to turn my nose up at eating Thanksgiving dinner out, but let me tell you something. It's awfully nice to sit around and have people clear the plate you're eating from so that you can go back to a different area and load it up again. Afterward, you can walk out of the dining room and into your car and drive back to your house and get into bed. Call me apathetic or Thanksgiving-secular, but it was fantastic.

This is a picture of my parents. My dad will be 77 years old next April, and my mother just turned 74. They're crazy good-looking, right? They've been staying with us for the past week and are going back to Atlanta tomorrow morning. Despite a few fractious political arguments, we had a wonderful time, and I always feel a tad melancholy when they leave.

Oliver insisted on having his photo taken in front of this garish ice sculpture. He was overcome by its fabulousness and decided that when he grows up, he'd like to be an ice carver. I just love my boys' aspirations.

This is the only photo that is halfway decent of my three chickens. Or maybe this one, although Sophie looks tortured (probably appropriately so).

I was hoping for a Christmas card photo, but no go. I've decided that this year (for the first time in eighteen years) I'm not sending Christmas cards. Call me secular.

I'm hoping to be inspired very soon to write a bit more than I've done the past week. How are things your way?

Palm Springs

A Love Letter to Cara

Dear Cara,

I lay on Sophie's bed this morning as the sun poured into her room, listening to one of the three CDs that you brought over to us on Wednesday with your beautiful girls. The sun was pouring through the windows on this morning after Thanksgiving, and despite last night's difficulties, my heart swelled up out of sorrow and into joy. Each song so carefully chosen; words that crept, then danced around the room and my tears running down my face -- Of all my extraordinary friends, your ability to do this for me is something that I can only wonder about and accept as being nearly divine. Thank you, Cara -- thank you for your understanding, your silly humor, your tight hugs, your wisdom and understanding. Thank you for listening, for always saying the right thing, for your strength in combating your own illness, for raising two beautiful girls, for thinking of Sophie, for talking with Sophie, for believing in Sophie. Thank you for your attachment to us, for your holiness and deep spirituality.

All my love,
Elizabeth

A bit of contrary charm

Thanksgiving Angst by Anna Dibble

via Moira's wonderful blog Dog Art Today

Happy Thanksgiving

Yosemite 2009

For each new morning with its light,

For rest and shelter of the night,

For health and food, for love and friends,

For everything Thy goodness sends.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanksgiving - Day Three

I'm thankful for laughter and humor. I'm thankful for my Fox News-watching relatives and I'm thankful that I don't have to watch Fox News. I'm thankful for waxed eyebrows, friends who have people over for Thanksgiving dinner and good report cards. I'm thankful for funny texts from my little sister in Washington, D.C., and  I'm thankful that it looks like fall outside in Los Angeles, but it's not too cold.