"I Would Rather Be Here Now"

On Thanksgiving morning, I chopped celery and onions at the kitchen counter, surrounded by trays of bread I had sliced and dried the day before.  As I measured tart cherries and golden raisins, I wasn’t watching the clock.  I chopped up an apple and a pear while classical music played on the radio.  I boiled broth while my partner, Marilyn, made calls to her siblings and got the house ready for our guests.  I placed steel bowls on the counter: the large, slightly dented one that has been in Marilyn’s family for decades, and the smaller one I acquired twelve years ago with a set of steel pots.  The clanging of steel is the sound of the thalis and katoris of my childhood.  Yesterday, though, I was participating in an all-American ritual, one taking place all over the United States.  I was making stuffing, adding sage and thyme, inhaling the aromas.  The steel bowls were for mixing the stuffing—that is the word I learned during my first Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania in 1984, though Marilyn calls it “dressing.”  I tried a recipe for Northwest Fruit Stuffing last year, my first year making stuffing, and it might be a new tradition now.  The smaller steel bowl was for the vegetarian batch for our friends who were coming to dinner; I added turkey broth to the larger batch.  I was completely content as I worked in the kitchen in old pajamas printed with purple flying elephants, a Cedar Crest College sweatshirt, and an apron.  I said to Marilyn, “It is such a luxury to spend a long time doing just one thing, instead of having only a short time to do many things.”  The latter is my reality most days of the week. 

Making the stuffing was one of the things I was most grateful for yesterday: the opportunity to slow down, to create good food, to inhale aromas and feel textures, to know I would be sharing the food with good people.  To know that what I was doing was important and to know that it was enough.  There was nowhere else I wanted to be yesterday morning, nothing else I wanted to do.  As I cooked in my pajamas, I thought of a bumper sticker I had bought recently: “I would rather be here now” it says. 

Diwali and Baseball

The house was dark when I pulled up on the evening of Lakshmi Puja.  My partner,  Marilyn, wasn't home yet.  Usually, on Wednesdays, she gets home before I do, and the house smells of garlic and olive oil when I walk in from my late shift tutoring at the Writing Lab.  That evening, before I even took my coat off, I put some mithai into bowls for the Hindu neighbors two doors down and walked over under an umbrella.  Their house was even darker than ours.  So much for all the bright lights that are supposed to fill Hindu homes on this night with no moon.

I was a bit blue, but I put some sweets out for Marilyn and me to eat later and changed into pajamas.  At least Game 6 of the World Series would start soon.  I have only recently become interested in baseball and have many rules to learn, but by Game 6, I already knew that the Rangers would walk Pujols, and that Berkman would likely come up to bat next.  I also cheered for the Cardinals like I had been watching baseball for decades.  So I was excited about Game 6, back in St. Louis, where the Cards would have the home team advantage. 

While I was figuring out dinner, Marilyn came home and said, "Did you hear about the game?  It's postponed because of the rain."  My heart sank.  Fine, we aren't really celebrating Diwali.  We often don't, at least not on the actual night--but no baseball?   

That night, I stayed up working after Marilyn went to bed.  I turned on lights in all the rooms downstairs, Iit some incense, ate some mithai, and hoped fervently that the Cardinals would win the next night.  And, oh what a night it was!