Thanksgiving 2013

In 2013, Ro and her husband Mark move into their charming forties bungalow. Wanting a big family Thanksgiving, they invite Mark’s Dad, their sons, brothers John and Jim, and me and my husband. Ro’s sons will be there, too. We don’t travel at the holidays, but we make an exception this year.

I’m eager to see everyone, to see what Ro’s done with the place, to see her new artwork. She’s now developed her art in multiple ways: she draws and paints, sews, knits, dyes, and felts. In this house she has her own studio for the first time. She’s writing, too.

And of course, it’s plain grand to see her. We’ll cook side by side, sing in harmony, and laugh our ages off. Share intimate fulfilling conversations.

We mother each other, healing our daughterhood.

•••

Among your gifts, Ro, acts of deep witness. Not only yours to me, but mine to you. Bedside as you labor and deliver your first child, I choke with tears and laughter as the little head emerges, struck with a kinetic comprehension of our mother, our womanhood, and our humanity at once.

I’ve subsequently grasped from you the sheer relentless physicality of parenting and its relentless emotional upheaval. Yet how your love outdistances exhaustion and resentment. You’ve proved it can be done, and artfully.

Ro’s kitchen is elegant, but compact. Preparing Thanksgiving dinner calls for shifting, sensitive choreography. Though we would have clobbered each other as children, these subtle movements of respect are a pleasure for us all.

After a wonderful meal and a spirited bridge game, Mark leaves to drive his father back to the hotel. Brother John bids us a warm farewell and limps to his car for his long drive home.

“Too bad he has such a long drive. Why did he move thirty miles out of town?”

“He never told us. We haven’t been there—he hasn’t invited us yet.”

Ro and Mark keep an eye on John. For years he was able to eke out a living as a classical guitarist, performing and giving guitar lessons. He asked our help in financing a CD, which he sold at gigs, but it’s Ro and Mark who have consistently made sure he’s solvent and celebrated. He always has a place at their table for holidays, birthdays, and the occasional bridge game. They paid him to give music lessons to their children. As time went on and there were fewer gigs for classical guitarists and fewer students, Mark gave him a job in his law office, so at least he’s had an income for fourteen years. They also took him in for several weeks and nursed him back to health while he recovered from diabetic shock.

“He seemed pretty good tonight, but I’m surprised he didn’t bring his guitar.”

“Yeah he hasn’t brought it the last few times.”

“Well, I brought something,” says Orion, Ro’s older son. Out of a backpack he pulls a baby food jar of marijuana. We laugh. We siblings haven’t smoked individually in ages nor together in several decades. But Washington has just passed a law. He rolls a joint and offers it to us. The first legal smoke of our lives.

We puff, move to the living room, group around the handsome fire Mark built, and enjoy several stages of stoned: giggling, reminiscing, sighing into silence. Layers of love intensified.

Like young twin wizards, Ro’s boys slouch in black hoodies and jeans, by turns bemused, inquisitive, observant, hilarious, blowing perfect smoke rings as we remember the things we always remember, our landscape’s well-worn paths: the stinky-sponged dish arguments, the stinky laundry room, the stink of the green sunroom chairs, the stink of us. The house smelling like a den of young animals. Which it was.

Remembering infinitesimal domesticities: the rhythm of the upstairs faucet, the specific squeak of the corner cupboard door, the bark on the second-base oak in the back.

Giving each other hard times for the hard times we gave each other—

“You so lorded it over Jim and me,” Ro says. “Had to be priest when we played Mass, and we had to crucify you for Holy Week.”

“Because I could never be an altar boy. Jim had real authority”

She rightfully grouses about the time Mom asked her to clean the fireplace.

“I didn’t want to do it. Irene said she would if I’d do her ‘infinity’ favors.”

“You didn’t know what infinity meant, right?” asks Jim.

“I becked and called her for years,” I admit. “And I apologize again for my twenty-third birthday, Ro.”

“What happened?” asks her younger son.

“It was her ‘golden’ birthday,” says Ro. “Because she was born on the twenty-third day of the month, I gave her twenty-three presents. She opened them and then promptly went out with her friends. Didn’t even invite me. I cried and cried. Then Jim said, ‘You just have to take Irene as she is.’”

I swell with gratitude for these two siblings. I bore no children. I thought I’d put a stop to family patterns, spare myself the sight of pain, scribbled on a child’s face, authored by me. I didn’t want a lifetime of guilt after a lifetime of guilt. I also thought I’d spare myself the bother of loving those who may or may not love me back. Looking at my various siblings, I see I’ve done both in spite of myself.

“You both know me at my worst. Thanks for loving me anyway.”

More old stories tumble out. They recall a showdown I’ve forgotten:

Dad insists I eat the liver and onions which he loves and on which I gag. I cannot.

“You will sit at the table until you do.”

I cannot swallow it. Hours later, he lets me leave, though without any dinner.

“We were impressed,” Jim says.

We twist again the puzzle of Mom.

“How she hated maintenance.”

“Maintenance, like olives, is an acquired taste. The older I get the more I like it.”

“And they didn’t have yoga, exercise, therapy, or meditation much back then. Martinis, paperbacks, and Confession were pretty much it for stress relief.”

We laugh anew at one of her particular duplicities:

After Mom had sufficiently recovered from her brain operation, it was time for me to fly back to New York. As I was packing, she came in and said, “Thank you, dear, for all your help. You know, you remind me more of your father than anyone else in the family.”

Wow. The highest possible compliment. I carried her words with a secret glow of pride until one night years later when we Youngers were talking family. I finally worked up the courage to confess she’d so anointed me.

Ro and Jim both gasped and said in unison: “She told me I was the one that most reminded her of Dad!” After the initial pinch, we scream with laughter. Tricked again.

But she did write letters that fizz with our youth. I share a few tidbits that night:

“ ‘Ro said we’re having “Chork Pops” for dinner.’ Jimmie wants to ‘stand on the bathroom camera that tells how many numbers we are.’ ”

And my favorite—“Jim and Ro have lots of fun together …the other day he came up to her playpen singing (to the tune of Little Brown Jug) ‘Ha, ha, ha, you and me; Little Ground Hog, how I love thee.’ ”

•••

Comfortable silence falls again.

•••

We talk about the confidence they’ve instilled in their own children, the sense of joy, the love of their bodies and of physicality, along with the positives we got. Jewels among the sand, the silt, the sludge:

“Sure we never learned how to do laundry, or paperwork, or mail a package, keep a house clean, but that you can learn.”

“Especially if you marry someone who knows how, the way most of us did!”

“But we did get senses of humor, of meaning, of justice. Love of spirit, of language, of meaning. Faith. We listen to people. We make good friends. We suffered each other and were suffered. Sanded off each other’s rough edges.”

“And their marriage was a good enough model for most of us.”

Another wave of silence.

“How is everyone?” Ro asks.

“That question is Capsule Ro,” I say, writing in my little blue notebook. Grass makes me want to write down all my thoughts.

“Is there a phrase you’d say captures you?” I ask Jim.

“Whatever my answer is, it’s going to be in that notebook.” Which is Capsule Jim—always trying to anticipate and outthink.

Later he offers an alternative: “I am always learning.”

A few more Capsule Ro’s:

“I want my laugh.”

“Don’t blame me.”

“May I sing?”

Every night before she went to bed, Ro asked Mom and Dad, “May I sing?” Not to us, but to herself, as she fell asleep. She was always granted permission.

Tonight we ask at last, “What were you singing about?”

“The family,” she answers. Of course. “Oh, Mary Kay is a nun, and Tom is at college…I was trying to keep everybody straight.”

Youthful Capsule Irene was, “I’m offering it up,” but I let that go early, telling Mom one day, “I was going to offer up my itch, but then I thought what would the angels do with an itch?” Now Capsule Irene is: “Here’s a question.”

Capsule us? “That Went Fast.”

We marvel anew at the bonging grandmother clock the night Dad died. Pogo has the clock, but, sadly, not nights like this.

Wordlessly, in perfect concord, we imbibe the familiar flow of each other’s presence. The embers topple, glow. Bing’s “White Christmas” plays softly in the background. Unbeknownst to us, next summer, we’ll entrust our lives to one another in the wilderness.