WordSisters

Category: Holidays

  • Gathering

    Gathering

    On days when November winds scour the streets and heavy gray clouds lean on the landscape, I feel Nature’s rhythms more deeply. Summer’s flowers have died and the natural world is dormant. I’m reminded that many of my elders are no longer with us. Even in my awareness of death and departures, I’m also comforted. These cycles are natural. This is how it’s meant to go.

    Although I’m not a farmer, the idea of gathering the harvest resonates. Instead of crops, I gather my family. At Thanksgiving, we relish the ritual and continuity of turkey. My mother’s stuffing recipe. My husband’s mashed potatoes. My pecan pie. Foods we don’t crave any other time of year. Beyond the food served is a yearning to reaffirm our ties to family and tradition. This is what we do, have done for years (Even though our customary foods have evolved. Smoked turkey is tastier than roasted. None of us miss the yams.) We give thanks for what we have and who we have in our lives.

    Nature’s rhythms are also woven into the circle of my extended family. Recently, we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 100th birthday. Four generations gathered in one place. There, too, we enjoyed the ritual of eating our favorite deep-dish pizza, fresh veggies, rich desserts. We honored her along with our connection as family. We reminded ourselves of who we are and who we come from. 

    For the first time, all three great granddaughters were able to attend. One of my granddaughters sat in my lap clapping with delight as the group sang “Happy Birthday.” Her newly met cousin danced and serenaded Gigi (her great grandmother) at the party’s end. Later the little girls played with abandon in the center of the living room surrounded by their grandparents and great aunts and uncles—just as my sons did 30 years ago. 

    Our circle is warm and loving. The cycle continues. 

  • Let’s Talk Turkey

    Spending last week with a ten-year-old and a three-year-old, daytime conversations focused on important topics like glitter glue, building Lego structures with or without directions, how many cookies equal too many, and the dangerous wild turkeys wandering nearby.

    One night we strapped on headlamps to walk in the meadow, away from houses, turned off the lights to look at a sky ablaze with stars. The granddaughters, bright eyes plastered upward, were thrilled until remembering it was December and cold.

    Star gazing in the meadow is the kind of memory shared in social media posts, but we talked about the wild turkeys longer. Burning off energy with the younger child, her father saw many turkeys roosting in trees along our driveway. Since a neighbor told me that the turkey brood pecking through our neighborhood slept in our trees at night, I had been reading about them. Mostly about self-protection. Our smallish dog has been rushed more than once by a mom turkey protecting her poult. When he made it to the house before me, she turned attention my way. Nothing stopped her approach. We’ve been captive in our house as turkeys peck through the garden.

    Mom turkeys can sit on their eggs for a month and have not one hatch. About 20% of eggs will hatch with only 25% of those surviving their first months. Clearly not cute, poults, or baby turkeys if you prefer, are fragile and a snack for many predators. Turkey poults require loafing and roosting sites. Got to like a youngster that requires loafing territory, or fancy word for shelter, during their food search. 

    Turkeys spend their day on ground pecking for edibles and their nights roosting in trees. Our garden and grassy areas provide easy shopping for mom turkeys. We are annoyances in their family protection effort. Woodlands provide some shelter while the poults are too young to fly up to the roosting zone.

    Thanks to tended gardens, grass and woods, our local turkey population expands. Mom and the recent four poults joined a multi-generational wintering flock of about two dozen spending each night. They prefer multi-story stands with mature trees. I’ve read that up to a hundred turkeys might roost near each other. 

    This potential does not thrill me. Even our current community leave enough excrement on the driveway or in easement near the trees. As a popular toddler book says, everybody poops. In the human neighborhood, poop is not cute. The turkeys don’t care.

  • Home and Away

    College recruiting, corporate management and consulting carried me across much of the United States. Although some of that travel prompted future visits, a suitcase in one hand, briefcase in the other wasn’t the most satisfying way to explore cities and countryside. There are cities I enjoy, mountains worth the travel, lovely ocean sides. Driving across the plains or open lands remind me how different our life experiences are from fellow citizens.

    The Midwest continues to be where I am comfortable living my life. Green spaces, cities, the Great Lakes, agriculture, forests blend well. We considered moving during our careers, imagining our lives in desert lands or other river cities, even one Canadian possibility. Except for Canada, I don’t regret passing up those changes.

    Something moved me in the childhood lands of Pat Conroy and Flannery O’Connor. The charm of old Savannah and the Lowcountry areas of Georgia and South Carolina felt homey. I wanted to stay for a year, maybe two, and learn about the rhythm of that region’s residents. To walk where azaleas and trees blossomed in March, to witness the loggerhead turtle’s journey, to try Sunday church once more, to celebrate holidays differently.  Biscuits tasted better, seafood fresher, crayfish better than a slab of whitefish. 

    Weeks in Maine challenged my Midwest assumptions that farms were farms, days on the shore universal, that New England was an area of wealth and education. Spending weeks in a London flat introduced reality to daydreams of living in a congested metropolitan area. Nearly two weeks in a small Irish community felt nice, but I wanted to go home. This stretch of the south felt like it could be home as if the slower movement of my mature life would be acceptable in a place that has nurtured so many artistic folks.

    When the roof needs repair, spring returns to stormy winter, property taxes increase, daydreams happen about a mythical life in a charming setting where all seems lovely. But roofs deteriorate there, summer temps and humidity can be high, history and today’s politics lean away from my values. Best to keep Savannah on my writing retreat list and my home in the Midwest. I’ll be back with a notebook, laptop, and good walking shoes during azalea season.