Not Too Good For a Free Banana

 A few years ago we started the game of trying to think of the quintessential story of a person. Like, if you had to explain the essence of someone in one story, this is the one you would tell. I thought it would be fun to get some of them down.

* Rachel *

There was a heavenly year when we lived in Atlanta that Rachel lived with us. She was the perfect housemate: quiet, considerate, tidy. She was working for the CDC, and every morning she would slip out the door like a whisper. I never heard the shower run or her packing up her bag, and I was always mystified when I realized that she'd already left. It was a masterclass in being unobtrusive.

One morning, though, I happened to be down at the dining room table, which had a partial view into the galley kitchen. I saw Rachel slip into the room, the light a gentle early morning grey. The whole time she'd been living with us we had generally managed our groceries separately. We ate dinner together, but other food and snacks were kind of separate. On that particular morning, there was a gorgeous bunch of bananas on the counter, practically glowing in the flat dawn light. Rachel had purchased them the day before, and now she broke one of them off of the bunch, put it into her lunch bag, and was headed out the door when I saw her come to an abrupt halt. "What's she looking at?" I wondered. What she was looking at was a nasty brown banana that I had purchased the week before. It was sitting it the fruitbowl like some kind of garden slug. Slooowly, Rachel pulled the perfect banana back out of her bag, and looked at it for awhile. Then, with the determination of a person who has seen the hard road that must be walked, she put her perfect banana in the bowl, picked up the brown one, and headed out into her day. That is Rachel. The kind of a person who would never eat a perfect banana if others had to suffer with less. Also who would never let food go to waste if she had anything to say about it.

The only thing that would make that story a better description of my sister Rachel is if it included some glimpse of the inner steel that appears in the face of a challenge. If she'd beaten me in a race to the banana, that would be a perfect story.

How Now, Brown Coat?

 Many years ago, Vivian and Jerry came to visit us and we went to an REI Garage Sale. There was the usual assortment of returned tents and bicycle pumps, and a lot of healthy-looking people milling around looking at stuff. We examined the box of Smartwool socks and thought about whether we needed a gently used camp stove, and then, almost incidentally, I glanced at a brown coat hanging alone on a rack. It looked warm, probably too warm for me in Atlanta. But Vivian had just moved to New Hampshire so I called her over. The coat had been marked down significantly, maybe $400 to $75 or so, which seemed exciting. Still, Viv wasn't too sure. "I wasn't planning on actually spending any money here," she said. "Just put it on," I said.

The coat was warm. Really warm. 

"This coat is really warm," said Viv. "New Hampshire is really cold."

"Just get it," I said. And she did.

After that I would get occasional messages from the frozen north. A couple of times each winter I would hear from Vivian specifically about the coat. "Thanks for making me get this coat," she would say. Or, "that brown coat might have actually saved my life today." I felt vaguely happy to have given good advice but didn't think about it too much. Until...

Until.

We moved to Colorado about the same time that Vivian moved to San Diego, and one day I got a package in the mail with a note that said, "You need this more than I do now." Inside was the coat, looking just as placidly brown as ever. I laughed and hung it in the closet. It wasn't winter yet. In fact, we hadn't had a winter in years as we'd just been living in Thailand, so I'd almost forgotten what cold was like. But eventually it did get cold. Really cold, like sub-zero, try not to breathe while you stomp through the snow to break the ice on the chicken's water dish sort of cold. I learned to use a scarf to seal up the space between my neck and my jacket. I learned to take my metal earrings out, and not to touch anything without gloves. And I remembered the coat. On one particularly cold day I reached past the other jackets into the wayback of the closet, pulled out the brown coat, and put it on.

The world shifted just a little bit. Suddenly, I felt...different. I felt SAFE. I felt like the gods of winter no longer had any power over me. I thought that Vivian had just given me a coat. What she really gave me was a superpower.

The brown coat is magic. It is a forcefield. It is a space heater in the Arctic. It is warm clothes out of the dryer. It is a black cat sleeping in the sunshine. It is almost as good as having a sister walk into the room. It takes a world that is trying to kill you and makes it...fine. You can walk out the door into the meanest cold imaginable wearing the brown coat and after awhile you think, hey, why are my ankles a little chilly?  I wear the brown coat every winter, and each time I do it brings me joy. It makes me think of Vivian. It makes me happy to have been right so many years ago. Somehow it makes me feel like a better person, the kind of person who could go outside and do stuff. It makes me feel like going on an adventure, like I could do anything. Cold is nothing to me. I am invincible.

So thanks for the coat, Vivian. You wove a spell of love, down filling, and possibility and cast it over me. I'm forever grateful.

Happy Birthday, Beth

 

What to say about Beth except that she makes the world better. Her heart and her hands are always full, making food, snuggling a child, fixing something for someone. If you have to be stranded on a desert island with someone, I highly suggest you consider Beth. She would get the coconuts open, if you know what I mean.

Something Great

 Fathers day 2005

Beth

you were with me
when i figured out
how to dance
to feel music
corner of my eye
i saw
your face shining
i didn't know
what i looked like
but your face said
you were watching
something great

you were with me
i was 7
under the bleachers
open gym night
that awful smell
was intoxicating
weight machines
i could barely reach
you said to try
i remember
ignoring
the other muscle
in the room
laughing at me
you saw how
i loved to lift
and your face said
you were watching
something great

you were with me
when i asked
questions
in the car
why that mountain
was flat on top
why people stand
with a thumb up
why trash doesn't
go out the window
why our bodies
lean when we turn
you knew, i asked
and your face said
you were listening to
something great

ou were with me
when i jumped - fell
i love to jump
i love to fall
off beds
off houses
off bars you made
off cliffs
off diving boards
out of airplanes
you were with me
i needed
someone to catch
and your arms said
you were catching
something great

you were with me
when i became
a parent
learning to watch
patience
it's complicated
and a gift
to be an adult
with a shining face
for a child
now i know
as i try
that when
you were with me
as a child
i was the one
watching
something great
thank you

A Grouse About Turkey

It’s January 22nd and I’m cooking a turkey for no particular reason. I didn’t even buy this turkey: some buy turkeys and others have turkeys thrust upon them. I’m doing it as a favor for Connie, and I ought to have a better attitude, as Connie is well past 70 and has recently been dealing with breast cancer. Someone else thought they were doing Connie a favor when they gave her this turkey, but the oven in the retirement community where she lives is too small and it has been taking up all of her freezer space since November. 

What can you say when you ask “Is there anything we can do for you?” and the response is “Please cook my turkey.” So I’m cooking a turkey, but I’m not happy about it. Maybe I’m not happy because Connie only wants “some of the meat” back, which means I’m going to have to carve and debone this turkey. Maybe I’m not happy because Connie has two grown sons who live in town who almost certainly have ovens. Maybe I’m not happy because the turkey neck had been shoved so far up into the abdominal cavity that I literally had to get out pliers and stabilize the turkey by clutching it to my chest to get enough purchase to pull that thing out of there, and when I did the turkey slipped out of my arms and skidded across the kitchen floor leaving a contrail of bloody turkey juice as it went. And then I had to go change my clothes, mop the floor, and clean the pliers. Maybe I’m not happy because I’m kind of a selfish jerk who should just get over it and stop complaining about the minor inconvenience of cooking someone else’s turkey. 

On my better days, this kind of thing is exactly why I go to church. If left to my own devices I would probably find some way to serve...occasionally. I would volunteer at the food bank, or maybe go back to volunteering at the library, where I didn’t have to talk to anyone and where I never ended the day with my cats sniffing at the stains on my forearm. I would help out, for sure. But I suspect there would often be other things to do on any given day. I suspect that my volunteerism would rarely be uncomfortable for me, or involve any actual sacrifice. I’d hang out almost entirely with people who have my sense of humor and whose voting record rather conveniently matches mine exactly. Church throws me into a mix. It makes me do nice things for OTHER people, possibly people I don’t even like very much. And, It makes me cook turkeys, which I definitely don’t like very much. On my better days, church makes me a better person.

But I guess that today isn’t one of my better days. It makes me wonder, in the overall accounting of my life do I get more points because I did this even though I didn’t want to? Or way fewer points because I complained about it the whole time? Have I just become spoiled, so that any minor inconvenience is cause for complaint? (probably). I believe in cleaning when you’ve helped make the mess. I believe in shoveling your elderly neighbor’s driveway. I believe in connecting with people who aren’t just like me. Theoretically I believe in cooking turkeys for breast cancer survivors, and maybe someday I’ll even be glad to do it. But today is not that day. Today I’ve got a turkey in the oven and no thanksgiving in my heart. Maybe I’ll do better tomorrow.