nedful things

  Thanksgiving is a very special day, symbolizing the hopes and dreams of the very first settlers on our soil. It's an interesting day really.  It's all-American.  These days I don't know if we are giving thanks or just celebrating our right to excess.  In any case, it's worth it if only for the pumpkin pie.

Every family has its own tradition and my personal Thanksgiving tradition has always been to find someone who was cooking dinner and wanted guests, someone who would feed me and feed me well. That's what holidays are all about, tradition.  For years the family gathered at my mother's house and she cooked, and cooked, and cooked.  She was great at tradition.  We ate, and ate, and ate. We were pretty good at tradition too.

The first year I broke tradition was the first Thanksgiving my mother was feeling ill.  It was a long time from when she started to slow down and fail to when we forced her to the doctor and got the sobering news that she had cancer.  That year, she just wasn't herself, not as strong and not as capable.  She didn't want to cook and she didn't want to make the trip to my sister's house for dinner.  That year, my children and I were the only Thanksgiving guests and I did the unthinkable but entirely logical.  I ordered the meal from a local supermarket and on Thanksgiving morning picked up a bird roasted to perfection with all the side dishes and dessert already prepared.  It was a good meal and very little trouble.  I briefly thought about making this a new tradition.

The next year it was clear that if my mother lived to Thanksgiving, it would surely be the last November she was with us.  Suddenly my traditions seemed unimportant and I had domestic urges.  I felt an overwhelming desire to learn to bake beans as she had, and I needed to learn to roast a turkey.  It was time for me to grow up, to take responsibility; and for the first time in my life, it was my own idea and not just forced by circumstances.  That year I bought for the very first time, my very own raised-to-be-eaten, fattened and plucked-naked turkey; the symbol of what America means to me.

I started two weeks before Thanksgiving to give myself a test run.  I was immediately thwarted at my first attempt because the roasting pan I had purchased was too large to fit in my apartment-sized oven.  When I moved in I had the choice of a large stove or room for a washer and dryer. Having spent far too many years at the laundromat, I opted for the washer and dryer. As we are a small family, I decided we needed only small meals. There is no such thing as small amounts of dirty laundry if there are children in the house.

Not to be daunted, I found a new pan, one that fit in the oven and still allowed the door to close completely.  I did everything that I could discover one was supposed to do.  I read about turkeys on the internet, I googled.  I asked friends.  I discovered that every single person on earth cooks the turkey a different way.

One wraps it in bacon so that the skin gets crisp but does not burn, another uses a special rack, some go for frozen turkeys, others for fresh, some cook it on the grill, some others deep-fry.  I didn't even get as far as stuffing the thing.  I didn't make the usual mistake that most new cooks do and leave the insides of the turkey inside the turkey.  I violated him like a professional, removing the entrails through the proper orifice and marvelling at how efficient these fowl are to keep all their organs in a nice plastic bag like that.  Not nearly as messy and probably reduces the risk of infection.  

To my surprise, I didn't completely ruin that turkey.  I opted for a cooking bag that promised I could not fail and amazingly, I didn't fail. I had one nicely roasted turkey under my belt and I was eager now for the main event.  I bought another turkey, another set of cooking bags, stocked all the usual vegetables and stuffing and chilled the cranberry sauce. Thanksgiving morning came, and I was ready for it.

There was something odd about this bird.  I prepared it exactly as I had done before,  I cooked it the requisite number of hours, the little pop-up timer had popped and all signs pointed to it being ready for consumption.  But when I went to carve it, the meat was pink.  I put it back in the oven and waited a bit longer.  When I removed it the second time, it was pinker, in fact it grew more and more pink-stained as cooking time went on.  The strange thing was, the meat was white and well done near the bone, but grew from faint to shocking pink near the skin.  I didn't know what was wrong with this glowing pink turkey.  I cut off some meat and put it in the microwave.  It got tough and rubbery, but it was still a faint magenta. I started wondering just where this "farm" was that was the supposed origin of this turkey.  I suspected it may be near a nuclear power plant.

I tried to find white and cooked meat to serve, it was a strange bit of carving.  I filled a plate with any meat I could scrape off that didn't look as though it came from a turkey with radiation sickness. Ultimately, I didn't have the guts to feed it to anyone and I wrapped that turkey carcasse in three plastic bags and tossed it out. I would have lined the trash can in lead if I could have.  We had a vegetarian Thanksgiving.  We gave thanks that the turkey didn't seem to be emitting subspace signals and there was no increase in UFO activity over my house.

I was feeling defeated so two days later I bought another turkey and we had Thanksgiving all over again.  This bird turned out fine.  I was told later by someone who works as a cook, that the pink meat was a sign it had been frozen, thawed and then frozen again.  I was thankful once more that we didn't attempt to eat it.

This year I fell back on tradition and sought out someone else to cook the dinner.  We gave thanks that my sister made the meal and required no outside assistance or anyone to bring dessert (I haven't had an urge to make pastry crust yet).  I have returned to the tradition of finding someone else to do all the work.  Tradition is so important.

Child of the ocean
            I am

feet shod in swirls of
green weed and sand

My spirit rises and falls
to its rhythm
bows in sympathy
with the trees that bend
to the ocean wind

My footsteps

capture a wave
foamy sea pools
in this impression of me
until another rush is made to reclaim it

We have no peace in us today
            the sea and I
 
The gulls bicker
over candy wrappers
and brittle crab shells
the cracked remains
long empty

I echo their unsatisfied cries

I launch my soul in a bottle
with a grain of salt
and a grain of sand

Autumn comes and
sets fire to the trees,
And the Wind
sets fire to the air.

With the evening newspaper spread out across the table, Amy cradled a cup of comfort. Warming and aromatic, her coffee was her favorite companion.  At the end of a long day - the children asleep, the supper dishes washed up - there was time to put aside formulating the plans for morning; time to take a few moments of quiet and scan the newspaper. Most evenings Amy had only enough of an attention span left over to chuckle at the "wrong" advice column, but something suddenly took her attention captive.

"Miss Hammond!"

The named exploded out of Amy's mouth. She hadn't thought or said that name in years. But in that moment that it appeared in front of her, it leaped off the page into her memory, bringing it to life.  Miss Hammond - hadn't she been dead for years?  Miss Hammond, frail of frame but determined and imposing in her way, cultured, refined and not at all the sort of person Amy would ever have expected to meet.  The sort of person Amy might never have met if it weren't for those fateful words, the sudden and unthinking exclamation of a seventh grader in a troublesome situation and looking for a way out.     

I always wanted to play the piano", Amy had blurted in that desperate moment.

It was just something to say, something to give the guidance counselor something to concentrate on.  It was another one of those sessions, the ones where her guidance counselor tried to live up to her job requirements and guide her.  These discussions always went the same way, Mrs. Garcia was no different than any of the others.  

"You're a good student, and gifted.  Your grades don't reflect your abilities and this is Junior High School now, Amy.  This is where your academic career begins to be important to your future. If you don't come to school you miss opportunities to learn and your grades suffer."

Academic career.  Why had they never understood that words like that meant nothing to a twelve year old girl?  Why was it so difficult for them to see why she didn't like school?  Was she as invisible to the adults and faculty as she was to everyone else?  Mrs. Garcia droned on and on. Why did she always pick on Amy to practice her counseling skills on? Amy was in no danger of failing and there were plenty of other students who were.  Amy even knew who they were.  She was in all the same classes as they were.  Amy didn't understand then, she didn't realize that the more school she skipped and the more her grades slipped, the more likely it was that she was going to end up in classes that became increasingly less challenging. The overall effect was to make school a less attractive choice than it was already.  She had a passing grade in all her classes, why wasn't that enough for people like guidance counselors?

Mrs. Garcia was searching for something to interest Amy, not in school but in life.  When she asked for the hundredth time what Amy would like to do or study that would interest her, Amy said the first thing that came into her head.

That was how she ended up taking piano lessons from Miss Hammond.

It was decided - after the guidance counselor had contacted her mother - that not only Amy, but her brother as well, should be quickly enrolled in the study of music.  Amy's mother was very pleased with the idea;  her sister played the piano and so she was very sure both her children had latent musical talent.  She quickly located and installed in their tiny livingroom the most inconveniently large upright piano she could find at the Salvation Army store and called for the tuner.

Saturday was the appointed day for lessons and each Saturday morning, instead of running outside wild and free, Amy and her brother Nick trudged to Miss Hammond's to be instructed in the fine art of tickling the ivory.  Miss Hammond lived on Randall Hill, where all the large and imposing houses built by the richest and most important citizens of town were located.  The hill was steep, and Amy felt this weekly struggle with gravity was just her punishment for having opened her big mouth.

Miss Hammond's struggles had to do more with the students she had taken on.  She certainly earned her seven dollars when it came to Amy and her brother.  Nick could read music, but he couldn't sight-read.  Nick would learn the piece and then play it by heart every time.  He had a wonderful touch, but couldn't play anything cold.  Amy, on the other hand, could sight-read but wouldn't practice.  Miss Hammond constantly scolded her for the way she positioned her hands, Amy having a tendency to use whatever fingers were handy to strike the notes that danced across the page rather than following the accepted patterns.  Perhaps if Miss Hammond could have combined the two children into one, she would have had a prodigy.  Unfortunately all she got were two very musical but very lazy and stubborn students, whose careers were destined to be in something much less disciplined than the playing of Beethoven.

Amy probably never would have admitted it then, but she really didn't hate going to piano lessons.  She loved music and it was interesting to learn how it was made. The best part of the morning was when it was her brother's turn for a lesson.  While Miss Hammond scolded him for not reading the music, Amy was free to explore the world Miss Hammond lived in.

Miss Hammond's parlor was spacious and airy.  The baby grand piano was set by a bay window adorned only by sheer panels and that part of the room always seemed awash in sunlight that made the polished mahogany of the instrument gleam. The floors were polished as well, dust-free and shiny hardwood.  There were two rugs, persian, in rich tones of blue and red, but not matching.  One was placed under the piano and the other in the part of the room meant for sitting and socializing.  The spare look of the piano's space was sharp contrast to the other half of the room.  Deep cherry wood tables with intricately carved legs and feet were topped with embroided scarves and  books of every kind, picture books, history books. Some had been written by friends of Miss Hammond and inscribed by the author on the inside cover.  It was a glimpse right into the soul of Miss Hammond to inventory this room, her love of art and music and fine things was everywhere displayed.

Amy never knew what Miss Hammond seemed to like about her, or Nick for that matter.  It never occurred to her at that time that perhaps most of Miss Hammond's students were even less talented or diligent about practice than they were.  She now wondered if Miss Hammond felt there was something alive in them that she wanted to cultivate, something she didn't see in her other students.  Amy never knew why Miss Hammond chose her and Nick to accompany her for an afternoon of chamber music and a display of vocal talent of the operatic sort given by a tall, blonde, curly-haired man in an impressive suit. Whatever the reason, Amy had felt very grown-up and yet somehow out of place in that auditorium. Amy thought then of all the worlds that Miss Hammond had introduced to her, all the experiences she would never have had if she hadn't been trying to escape an eager and concerned guidance counselor that day so long ago.

The last time Amy had heard Miss Hammond mentioned was at least a decade ago.  Miss Hammond was gravely ill and in the hospital, with the sort of illness one does not survive.
Over the years, Amy had relegated Miss Hammond to deepest memory; the place where people long gone are sent to reside, in brain cells that are rarely called up to deliver their bits and flashes of those lives that have briefly intermingled with our own. Until that that evening, as Amy sipped her coffee and skimmed the paper.
    
        "Virgina E. Hammond, age 97,
        from complications of pneumonia,
         in a local nursing facility"

In that moment, in those few words: "survived by" "leaves" and " taught piano in her home",  Miss Hammond came brilliantly to life; resurrected from memory to scold and instruct, tapping a hand on the piano and counting out the beat as Amy struggled through Fur Elise one more time.  

And then, Miss Hammond was dead.  Again. 

Nedfulthings is at its new location.

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My wheels spin away from new constructions,
Mansion monstrosities planted amongst
the dots of settled two-storied dwellings.
Where stony-faced lions guard the gated way.
No tresspassing foot treads landscaped nature,
These slide into the distance as the road
now is carved around the watchful trees;
suspiciously eyeing the intruders,
limbs reaching out, mournful they stand alone.

The road runs through the years, past the fields stripped
bare of corn.  The spent soil turned over and
caressed by dew to deep brown, a carpet
of jeweled patterns in red and gold
those gifts of autumn bequeathed by the trees.
The road twists and turns, the crests rise and fall
into other worlds I dare to traverse.

A portent in the early morning mist;
It gathers like a cloud that fell from grace
Hangs low and points into the distance
long and thin like an accusing finger
at this incongruous abandonment.
Along a neat row of the disconnected
discarded,dark screens line up for a show.
They dot the edges of the lonely road.
Air conditioners though lying broken,
still have power to change the atmosphere.

No wonder the trees watch through knotted eyes.
There is no escape from this creature, man.
Between two poles a tattered net stretches
like some ancient ruin of a clothesline.
And at the edge of the now missing crop
stands a chair, empty.  Perhaps it is held,
waiting for the invisible scarecrow,
The shadow image of the intruder.

I got to wondering today about bird omens.  My mother always said it was a bad omen if a bird came into the house or flew into a window.  Well, yeah, I would think so really.  A bird in the house has to be unlucky, not to mention messy and there isn't anything good to be said about having a bird do a body slam against your window.  That one seems fairly obvious.  I did wonder then why she kept parakeets; which would seem to be birds in the house.  Omens are mysterious things.

I wonder if I have experienced a bird omen.

As a smoker, my employer only allows me to indulge my addiction if I will descend into the cavernous depths of the building, to the cement-pillared dungeon of the parking garage.  It was on one such excursion that  my fellow addicts and I spotted a large leaf shaped like a bird sitting in the middle of the entrance way to the garage.  I moved closer to see this phenomenon and discovered it was actually a bird, disguising itself as a leaf.

It was alive.  But it was hard to tell how alive it might be.  I determined it was a female cardinal, which was somewhat exciting since I had never been so close to one.  It blinked its eyes.  That was about it on the movement scale.

The spot where it was resting, and the mirrored glass above the entrance way, made it fairly clear how it arrived here, stunned and immobile. I don't know where my usual concern for injured creatures went but for some reason, I had no reaction whatsoever.  A bird has a brain that is only about the size of a grain of sand, I reasoned.  If it runs its head smack into a wall, how much damage could that do?  I figured the bird was brain dead or concussed or possibly in a persistent vegetative state.  Nonetheless, using a box top, we gingerly moved it to a sunnier and grassier location, thereby making it easier for predators to snatch the paralyzed bundle of feathers.

Later that day it was gone.  The prevailing theory is that it recovered and flew away.  That's possible.  It could have regained only the ability to stagger and toppled over the nearby embankment. It could have been Fluffy the cat's lunch.  

But I wondered what sort of omen it was.  If a bird tries to fly where there is no sky but only a mirage of open space, and in so doing conks itself in the head and falls as dead at your feet pretending to be a leaf... what does that mean?  If it then revives and flies away to go on about its bird-brained business, is that a good omen?

I wonder if I do the same thing at times.  Am I staring into what I imagine is ahead, but perhaps  is only a reflection of what is behind me?  Maybe I project into the future based on what I have seen in my past.  Could it be I keep slamming my head into it because I cannot find a truly new direction?  Do I see an open way where there is only a solid and unyielding wall?

 Maybe all it means is that birds have brains about the size of grains of sand and it is not uncommon for them to fly breakneck into sky that isn't there.  Maybe it is a bad omen because it makes you look for meaning where none resides.

Some days, it would be nice to find meaning.  I wonder.  If I knew whether the bird had lived or died, I wonder if the meaning would find me.

Time.  

Time is a function of the universe we live in.  Scientists can so easily explain it. Days and nights occur because the earth is spinning on its axis.  We can study Einstein's theories, we can boggle our minds with the concepts of time, space, motion and matter.  None of this explains what time is in the human experience.

I wonder how it is that I get up so early and still there is no time and I am late for work.  Then I get to work and time goes so slowly, there is twice as much of it as there ought to be.

This past weekend we reverted to standard time from our cherished Daylight Savings Time.  Twice a year we change our clocks, hoping to remember the correct direction by reciting  mnemonic devices such as "spring forward, fall back".  I say, either way, someone could get hurt.

The clocks went back an hour.  Sunset crept up on us earlier.  It was only by an hour but due to the strange way humans divide their days, it arrived at a very important time marker: the end of the work day.  The time when we finally are freed from our partitioned cells and jangling phones.  Time to get into our cars and fight all the other humans who are also desperate to reach home.  

I noticed it the first day at work after the clocks went back. I stood at the window, looking out over the parking lot, noticing the absence of those gorgeous pink and purple streaks of sunset.  Dusk had already arrived with yet fifteen minutes to go until the 5:00 parole from our daily sentence. I couldn't help it, the realization that the months of darkness had arrived overcame me and I exclaimed "oh, it is pitch black already!  The night begins now before our day is even through".  The coworker behind me groaned and sarcastically thanked me for that uplifting observation.  I have that effect on people.

But we all know time moves when we want to hold it, stands still when we would hurry it and push it out of our way.  I turned to her and in a moment of remorse and manufactured optimism, I told her what is essentially true.

"Listen", I said.  "It is already November.  That means that in only three weeks it will be Thanksgiving.  You know what Thanksgiving means?  It means that after Thanksgiving, time will fly by in a flurry of too few shopping days left till Christmas.  Time rushes past us while we flounder, unprepared and suddenly Christmas is upon us."

"Now Christmas is four days after the winter solstice so that means we have already passed the shortest day of the year and are already gaining minute bits of daylight.  Sure these go unnoticed at first, but steadily they accumulate all through January until one day in the middle of February you will realize it is not quite pitch black when you walk to your car.  And as everyone knows, February is a tiny little month that barely gets noticed before it is gone. And after February, spring comes March-ing in."

I turned to her for the full dramatic effect.

"Clearly, the signs are all there.  Spring is just around the corner."

Einstein was right, you know.  Time is relative.