Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is about gratitude for all the wonderful things in our lives -- family, friends, food. It is so wonderful to have enough of these things to be able to celebrate, to hold a feast, a potlatch, a ceremony of eating and drinking, and enjoy this abundance. At this time of year many of us also donate food to others whose feast tables may not be quite as full. I know I never give enough, but what enough would be, I never know. I can only hope that everyone will have a full belly at the end of a day spent with people they love. If you don't, email me, and we will try to find you a space at our table.
 
This year, we will have my mother and three friends over for the big meal. I am so excited to be able to host it in my own home. That doesn't happen very often, and there is something so satisfying about cooking for hours and having people over to enjoy it, especially on Thanksgiving. This is a day when I, at least, am overwhelmed with gratitude for the abundance in my life (so much so, that I usually end up eating about three times more than my stomach can hold, and then lying around groaning for the next few hours, until enough space opens up to start picking at the leftovers.)
 
As always, enough is too much, or at least too much for my little brain to handle. Stop eating when you're full. Duh. Nope, not smart enough to do that. At least, as a non-sugar-eater I get some break from dessert -- but no, wait, there's my wonderful no-sugar apple pie*. I think I will still be lying on the couch for a while.
 
Just before Thanksgiving this year, I turned 46. This occurred after having been 45 for what felt like 10 years. That was one long year. I am grateful, though, to have had these years, and all the ones before, with all of my parts still working. Even if my hair no longer produces color without liberal application of L'Oreal Preference and even if my joints are all silted up, I am here. The world from my window is white with snow. I went sledding with two wonderful children today. We screamed as we flew down the hill, faces being slammed with frozen powder as we went. It was awesome. I am thankful for snow and for sledding and for 10-year-olds who carry their own sleds back up the hill. I am grateful for the fuzzy grey cat stretched out in a half-moon on the floor in front of me. I am grateful that my drive to Burlington in the soggy snow last night did not end up with our car on its side in the ditch, and I offer my best wishes to those whose did.
 
I am grateful for my "precious human birth", as Pema Chodron calls it, and for the preciousness of the humans around me this year -- Cedar, Bruce, my mom, my good friends. I am so blessed; the turkey should be just an afterthought... but it won't be! I wait all year for this meal! It will be good, and with any luck, it will be enough.
 
 
*Whenever I've written anything about one of my recipes, people always want it, so here is the very scientific one for no-sugar apple pie. Make a double crust, with butter, not that scary Crisco stuff. Fill a large bowl with peeled, cored and sliced Cortland apples (they make the best pies). Throw in some cinnamon, a hint of nutmeg, some lemon juice, some butter, and some flour. Mix it all up and pack it into the shell, making sure it mounds up high. Put on the top crust, pinch it on well, cut a few slits to let the steam out and bake it around 400 for as long as it takes to start bubbling out the slits. Pretty easy, and especially yummy with plain whipped cream (just put in a dash of vanilla).

Steamroller Blues

 

I have drunk many cups of tea whose teabag tags bear the wise words "When God made time, he made enough of it." That may be true, but I think he only gives it to people who go to church (or synagogue, or mosque...), which is why you are not gettting a full blog post this week. The post exists and awaits only the application of large jolts of electricity, mental and otherwise, to make it rise from the table and walk. However, it is hard to reach the jumper cables from under the steamroller. Fear not, though; before long there will once again be enough Enough to satisfy all. Hope to see you next week!

A Clover and a Bee

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson is the poet of enough. Dwelling in “possibility”, “a fairer house than prose”, she knows we don’t need the whole prairie to be happy. Consider this:

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —
 
Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —
 
I've known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

How many friends does a person need? If you have a good one, or two, can you close the valves of your attention? What else can the soul select and then stop, satisfied? If I could do that with everything – with food, work, stuff – then to be alive truly would be “Power… Omnipotence --Enough.”

 
It’s not just Dickinson. All poetry is about enough, really, because the poem stops when the writer feels he or she has said enough. Still, a small aspect of enough in poetry comes from small poems about small things.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

We get the taste and feel of the cold, juicy plums. We get the questions in our own mind – should I really do this to my friend? Should I really take these plums? And we get that feeling of guilty pleasure. That this is enough to make a poem and that these plums were enough for the speaker is somehow both incomprehensible and satisfying at the same time. It is the same with William Carlos Williams’ other famous small poem about the wheelbarrow. Is a wheelbarrow really enough for so much to depend on? Its mere existence in the world, its redness, next to the white of the chickens, is somehow integral, is enough to contemplate, to make a poem.

Sure, there are more complicated poems. But even they end, and thus at some point the writer said, “Enough. It’s done.”

But why should we single out poetry as being sole representative of enough? Other works of art – short stories, novels, paintings, essays (blog posts?) – also eventually end, their creators saying, “Enough.” And what about us humans? Our lives begin and end, and I don’t know if we have a creator per se, but eventually God or our DNA or the Higgs Boson steps in and says, “Enough.” And then we die, but was it enough, after all?

…would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

Maybe the fact that so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow is a reminder that our lives, too, are enough, that somewhere, somehow, something depends upon us, even if we are completely isolated, even if our only companions are chickens.

 

The following picture comes from http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/so-much-depends-upon-a-red-wheel-barrow, a collection of many permutations of this poem.