Wounded hearts

I’ve seen two mothers, two families lose children—daughters—this month. One daughter died after years of ALS, leaving behind a husband and her own daughter. The other, a daughter with a developmental disability, died today at the age of 15. 

“You’re in my prayers,” I say, I type on Facebook, I write in a note card. But really what it is, is —“You’re in my heart.” In my wounded and broken heart. 

Driving home from work today, listening to the news, I heard more grief: parents of the two women killed at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital yesterday, talking about their daughters and about their loss. I keep thinking it’s a dream and I’ll wake up, said the mother. She knew God, she was a praying woman, said the parents. 

Things fall apart. We share the broken pieces and fall apart together, as much as we dare, and keep going, doing what needs to be done. 

There is anger, grief, struggle, and an ache inside that we hope won’t be there in the morning, but it’s still there in the dark night, still there at dawn. Even very old wounds break open when hearts around us are breaking. It’s a kind of sympathetic vibration, like music, but in beats and pulses unique to human hearts.  

Monday of Thanksgiving week (not a meditation on gratitude)

Working backwards from Thursday:

Wednesday is for pies, apple in the late afternoon, pumpkin after choir rehearsal in the evening, as well as for putting leaves in tables, patting down the wrinkles in tablecloths, counting heads and counting chairs and chopping onions and celery for stuffing. 

Tuesday is for shopping, unless I get it done today, in which case Tuesday is for cleaning, which I really don't need to do much of since I cleaned for guests last weekend and that's good enough, thank you, especially for family. Though now that I check the weather I see that Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be bright and sunny which means dust will show on the bookshelves in the back room, as will streaks on the refrigerator in the kitchen because both rooms face west. 

Monday is for menu planning, which I seem to be avoiding by writing this post, but the turkey's thawing in the refrigerator and I've done this all before, like, for more than twenty years and beyond the turkey and the gravy (which I've got down, the secret is browning the turkey neck and the giblets before you turn them into broth, the broth being an excuse to open a bottle of Merlot) — beyond that nothing matters too much except the ten pounds of mashed potatoes, which my niece will peel (hope you're reading this, Gerianne), and of course the stuffing or the dressing, which is what Grandma Masch called it and into which you can throw just about anything -- at least it seemed like that's what she did. 

Thanksgiving Dinner is logistics as much as it is cooking. Two decades of experience hosting family members at my house on this day means that everyone knows their part and they're all increasingly capable of helping out. Nieces know where to stand at the counter. When Uncle Joe was not there to carve the turkey his daughter Lauren took over. Kurt finds chairs; this year he may have to bring some back from his house, because he took them there last summer when he moved in. 

Questions to be settled today: what vegetable dish will I make to serve beside the traditional carrots brought by my sister? Will I made something everyone likes--green beans with something or another (NOT mushroom soup)? Or something the picky eaters won't touch: butternut squash and roasted onions, Brussel sprouts (which even I am ambivalent about), cauliflower au gratin, so rich there's nothing not too like because it's all butter and cheese. And will I make sweet potatoes? Probably I will, because they're cheap and I like them a lot. 

As usual, I thought briefly that I would skip the cranberry sauce this year, because only my mother really likes it and the leftovers eventually have to be extracted from the back of my refrigerator and thrown out in January. But there they were, the cranberries, at the grocery store on Saturday, two bags for $4 and so I plopped them into my cart. The second bag will get used for cranberry bread in December and hey, I really can't imagine my personal Thanksgiving plate without that glob of red next to the mashed potatoes, turning everything on my plate just a little pink.

There will be cornbread. Actually, corn sticks, baked at the last minute in the cast iron molds that came from Aunt Clara, heated in the oven, brushed with butter, sizzling hot, with the timer set to make sure we don't forget the second batch as we settle down for dinner. There are never any leftover corn sticks. 

Sometime today I need to draw the mental picture of the oven, with the turkey in it and the picture of where everything goes in that last half hour when the turkey is out and the kitchen is one giant scramble of last-minute cooking. What can we reheat in the microwave? What garnishes what" (What bits of chopped parsley or orange zest get left behind?) When can we eat?

This, my friends, is Thanksgiving Day. Dinner is at 1:00. (Church is at 10--which makes dinner at 1:00 quite the trick.) 

I'd better get started. 

Thankfulness? My full heart moves me forward.