Post Turkey

I survived Thanksgiving. I feel relieved, tired, cautiously optimistic sort of how I felt after taking an exam in college after having stayed up all night to study, seeing the questions, writing the essay and thinking this is going turn out alright. Maybe not an easy A but definitely more than passable. Somewhere during the process, automatic pilot kicks in and you can't help but do what you have to do.

It definitely helped having the house full of people, all thinking the same thing: Where the hell is Steve?

Sometimes I feel like I am starring in a reality TV show, "Widowhood: The First Year." This weekend's episode was "The First Thanksgiving Alone." She laughs, she cries, she gets lots of flowers. This week, the story moves to London, where our fearless heroine is taking her first solo vacation since losing her husband. How will she feel? What will she do? Stay tuned for the next dramatic episode.

Turkey

I am really worried about my turkey this year. Actually, every Thanksgiving, I worry about my turkey. For years, I stuffed it and rubbed it with unconscionable amounts of soft butter, draped it in butter-soaked cheese cloth, then roasted it slowly BREAST SIDE DOWN as mandated long ago by my mother, Muriel Schwartz Beck, basted it religiously every 20 minutes or so (also her instructions) and then had several intense consultations with whoever was in the kitchen at the time before finally pronouncing it done. My biggest fear always was that my turkey, despite my careful adherence to my mother’s rules, would turn out like the one we were served at my Aunt Roz’s house i.e. dry as a hockey pock, tough as an old moccasin. Thank god those fears were never realized.

One year in my crusade to cook the ideal turkey, I ordered a turkey from some arcane online gourmet site touting the best of the best. Their best turkey turned out to be a turkey injected with duck fat, in other words, an upscale version of the ubiquitous butterball turkey sold in every large supermarket chain but without the pop up plastic timer. This was an experiment that was never repeated.

Last year in my continued quest to find the ideal turkey, I ordered a heritage breed turkey from Heritage Foods. The vendor instructed me not to stuff it but, as my mother’s daughter, I hedged my bets by giving it a serious butter rubdown and basting it occasionally. Surprise, surprise, it was juicy and succulent and everyone loved the taste. To my dismay when I went to order a similar turkey this year in early October, they were already sold out!

So this year I ordered a turkey from Kol Foods, purveyor of kosher, organic turkeys, figuring I wouldn’t have to bother with the mess of brining the bird, an always iffy procedure which usually results my having to mop up large quantities of salty water from my kitchen floor and counters. The only glitch was that this year's turkey came to me, a woman who has only ever cooked a freshly killed turkey, frozen solid as a rock. It now sits in my refrigerator slowly defrosting or at least I hope it is. On Thursday, I plan to bathe it in butter, baste it like crazy, etc. etc. Here’s hoping it works.

On the Way to Thanksgiving

I am in the throes of Thanksgiving madness--making lists, braving the mobs at Whole Foods and the Reading Terminal Market, organizing the fridge to receive all the bounty and, of course, starting to cook whatever can be done ahead of time. We will be 22 this year at the table--Liz and Giul, my nephews, my brother-in-law, a whole cast of friends and family. I love this holiday and all our home grown traditions. We'll play charades after dinner, pick at the leftovers all day Friday, go out to the movies together over the weekend. And, of course, we'll rehash the dinner and the weekend on Sunday when it's quiet and empty in the house at last. Nothing left to do but laundry.

I picture myself doing all those things. I imagine it will be like walking along a very high and narrow bridge across a deep pool of rapidly flowing water. I have to get to the other side but I must be very careful not to fall, not to falter. That would be dangerous, possibly fatal. Once on a hiking trip in New Zealand far away from home I had to walk across a bridge suspended high above a powerful mountain stream, the water rushing over huge boulders in a loud roar. The bridge swayed in the wind and shook with every step I took. No turning back. I had to get to the other side. I looked straight across not daring to look down. When I made it across I laughed with relief and then wondered what the hell I was doing.

That's what I ask myself now. What the hell am I doing?

The Warmth of Other Suns

It's not unusual for me to remember a vacation or a place I've visited by the book I was reading at the time. Like when we took our kids to some heinous all inclusive resort in Turks and Caicos where Mo ravaged the minibar EVERY DAY we were there and the rest of us starved to death at the all you can eat buffet. The only thing that got me through that vacation was reading Katherine Graham'a magisterial memoir. I distinctly remember sitting in a cabana on the beach in Naples, Florida one weekend by myself reading a biography of Lord Byron, juicier than any romance novel. Or years ago during a solo trip to Miami plopped down on the beach surrounded by topless young women and preening gay couples while I worked my way again through Moby Dick, the great American novel. And how many fat Victorian novels, preferably by Dickens, have kept me company on long plane rides to Asia.

Well this is the book that I will always associate with my current excursion to Florida: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. For two days in Miami by the pool by day and in bed at night I have not been able to put it down. It's the story of the great migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow south to the cities of the north during the last century. It's told largely through the first person accounts of three people but is interlaced with lots of often appalling historical information and many more stories that make the historical record all the more real and compelling. I have just a chapter left to read and I can't wait to come home from dinner to finish it. I love the main characters as if they were protagonists in some epic novel. I know I will always remember them.

Namaste

I am on a mental health break. What that means right now is that I have just finished a yoga class where I got in headstand in the middle of the room with just a little assist from the teacher. Definitely a personal best. It also means I am at The Standard Hotel and Spa in Miami Beach on a gorgeous clear and sunny day. There is a couple sitting together in the outside bathtub on the patio next to mine, probably deeply regretting that the old bag in yoga clothes is sitting on her patio typing emails and surfing the Internet. What it means, above all, is that I have spent four wonderful days and nights with my darling daughter first at the Yoga Journal conference and then in Miami. We punished our bodies by doing six hours of yoga in one day and then arrived in Miami where we treated ourselves to an amazing two hour treatment during which we were scrubbed, massaged, baked in clay and bathed in hot water. Blissful!

I may be far away from my normal life having a sybaritic interlude in the weirdness of Miami but my thoughts whirl around in the same circles. How did this happen to me? What am I to do? How do I live my life now? I'm going back for Thanksgiving, that ritual gathering and feeding of the family which I always take pleasure in making happen. But it will be so different this year without Steve to stand up and make his usual long, rambling, and slightly drunken toast sending his love out to all of us.

Sometimes at the beginning of a yoga practice, the instructor will suggest setting an intention for the practice. I am setting my intention for Thanksgiving this year. I am dedicating it to Steve.

Three Months

Three months ago today. A ghoulish anniversary. It seems like it happened a lifetime ago and also just yesterday. Amazing, shocking, frightening how 41 years, nearly 2/3’s of my adult life, ended in a flash, a few minutes and then it’s over.

For some reason, I am in a very good mood today. I don’t understand it, but I’ll take it. Be here now, I keep saying to myself, on and off the yoga mat. I am writing these words with tears in my eyes but that’s okay, too.

This too will pass. If anything, I’ve learned from this loss and the ones preceding it, I’m a survivor.

On the Water

There is something to be said for large families. Right now I’m feeling that my family is pitifully small. This past weekend Liz and Giul went out to see Moses in Utah. Being there just the four of us felt a little like being stranded on a desert island with no chance of rescue.

I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving when the house will be filled with family and friends who are like family. Maybe then I won’t feel so alone. Right now I feel like the captain of a very small ship who has to navigate across a very large ocean without much help. I'm doing it but I feel the weight of the responsibility to keep everyone safe.