I wrote this some few years back, when my children were teenagers. It's interesting to think of what's happened since then. I wonder what will happen next?
It’s
the day before Thanksgiving. My
kitchen is covered in cooked sweet potatoes, cornbread waiting to be crumbled,
simmering mushrooms, chopped onions, garlic, cranberries, apples, and sage. As I chop and simmer and sauté, I think of
holidays past and future; of other homes; of my life in America and in England;
of the many faces and voices that I love and miss. Like the character in Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, I sniff the
air and know Christmas is coming, “It’s
fruitcake weather.”
My three children are scattered to
their own interests today. They are
moving in directions that don’t always include their parents now, wading in to
the shallow end of lives of their own, and I prepare for this holiday in a
quiet house for a change.
I’ve never cared much for change,
but I’ve come to make my peace with it over the years because I have learned in
a long, slow lesson that everything changes, given enough time.
And this is the largest one so
far. My babies are gone. They have disappeared somewhere into the long
legs, strong jaws, and steady eyes of the young adults I find myself surrounded
by now. It’s disorienting. I miss their little selves sometimes; their
soft, round arms and legs, their tiny voices; the whispery smell of sleep in
their hair in the morning. But I like
these young people who think they own my house -- even with their immature
attitudes about the division of labor and money in a domestic setting. They give me reason to hope that, in time,
they may just turn out all right. Or at
least avoid lengthy jail sentences.
We went for a family walk not long
ago, the five of us--something that doesn’t happen as often as it once
did. We took our dog, Scout, to the
reservoir not far from here on a crisp, golden autumn day. It was muddy underfoot, of course, and we
trudged around the water talking, grouching, arguing, complaining and laughing
as usual. We are our own moveable circus
of noise.
Along a narrow avenue of trees I
fell behind with my middle child, my daughter.
We walked slowly, and lazily watched the others ahead of us. They played at the water’s edge throwing a
stick for the dog and competing to see whom she would bring it back to first.
Yards away from them, I stopped in
mid-stride, entranced by the scene around me.
In a pause between two heartbeats I caught my breath at how beautiful my
family looked to me just at that moment.
My feelings must have shown on my face.
My daughter asked what I was thinking.
I told her to look closely at the
family around her, as we were that day, because our times together like this
would slowly come to an end. What we had
always been as long as she could remember--the circle of five-- would only last
a while longer. Before long our circle
would change, and we would not go back.
Standing under the falling leaves I
thought about how families grow into their own private cultures. They form and grow, and then change to form
other circles, other cultures. Being with all of them that day was like
watching a drop of rain gather on the edge of a leaf, just before it falls into
the stream below and is carried away to become a part of something else.
My daughter and I watched together
as the others tussled over a stick and jostled each other and argued and
laughed. She put her arm around me and
rested her head on my shoulder. While we
stood there our circle felt close and safe.
I thought, “If I stand here very still and quiet and if I don’t move or breathe,
this afternoon will go on always with no one having to grow up, or grow old, or
separate, or die.”
But our feet got cold. Somebody started an argument. Scout lost the stick. Our moveable circus slogged back to the car
where we ate crumbly cookies and shared hot tea from a plastic thermos lid and
argued about who was muddiest, whose feet fit where, and who had more room on
the seats.
Driving through the Dales toward
home I thought about how we are born into one circle--a good one if we are
lucky, but how we have to cultivate the second one ourselves. I drank in the three-hundred-sixty degrees
of wonderful outside the car window, and I was so thankful for everything
around me and behind me---for all of it---especially the birds. I am so thankful for birds.
There was a time
in my life, a long time ago, when the only thing that comforted me was watching
the birds that came to feed on the crumbs I left for them on the garden wall of
our rented house in California. That was
a lifetime ago when my husband and I first came to understand that our oldest
child’s autism would take our family down a different path than the one we had
planned for ourselves. I didn’t want to
go down that path. I didn’t even want to
look down it. I was scared to death then
of the rest of my life.
So all through those dark days, I held on tightly to those
birds. I fed them and watched them every
day until, well, we had some very fat birds in our neighborhood. And after awhile, I found I was able see all
the other good things in life again.
I am grateful for those birds.
There has been so much to enjoy, after all.
Everything changes given enough
time. Everything. I don’t even know
where we will be at Thanksgiving next year, or Christmas, or how often in the
coming years the children will spend those holidays in our old circle.
But today, it’s the day before Thanksgiving, and my kitchen is
covered in a great plenty. My husband
and children will be home again soon.
Steam has stippled the wide windows
that look over the walled back garden. I
crumble cornbread for stuffing and watch through abstract patterns of beaded
water as the birds dart between bare branches and swerve through the air. They collect the gifts I’ve left for them and
fly on; high over the rooftops and into a horizon I cannot see from here.
 |
| Still prefers ham. |
Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for coming. Visit again soon.
Leann
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