I was drying off the Girl when she began asking me some rather basic questions.
“Why do we grow up?”
Why indeed? Really, who wants to grow up when a child in the Western world? Still, I thought to continue the conversation: “Why? Don’t you want to grow up?”
“Because I don’t want to get old and go to work.”
Two turkey dinners in three days. One can only sit back and enjoy the journey home.
I should have some kind of keen observation about the nature of extended family and the good old southern Thanksgiving dinner.
For the former, I suppose one just has to look at the pictures: pockets of conversation springing up here and there; the some males drifting in and out of the living room to check the progress of a given football game; women circled around a child.
Getting the extended family together was the goal of Thanksgiving on my father’s side. I recall celebrations of twenty years ago when all the brothers and sisters, in-lawns, children, grandchildren, and a few guests got together and filled a small house to overflowing. There must have been forty or more people some years.
Now, we meet in a bigger house with a smaller family: all the cousins have grown and have families of their own. Some are even grandparents. They have their own gaggle to gather together Thanksgiving and Christmas: if we tried to bring together the same group today, there would be sixty or seventy, not just forty.
I wouldn’t recognize half of them, and I wouldn’t even known many. A stranger in one’s own family. It would be like looking through photos of someone else’s family reunion.
Still, even in that case, there would always be the familiar faces.
The smaller group is better. No strangers. Just smiles and quiet conversation.
It all spills outside as the children play. Blizzards in the north and our family has Thanksgiving in shorts.
Now, just as my cousins and I played together years ago, our children play together. Uncles put them up trees, older cousins lead them into various adventures: it’s all very familiar.
Playing in grandpa’s back yard, exploring together. I have the sense I’m watching my own life.
Perhaps just looking at the pictures wouldn’t suffice, though. Pictures are worth a thousand words only to those who know the narrative behind the shot. For others, they’re just pictures of strangers.
Do the pictures of the food suffice, though? There are no exotic holiday-influenced dishes here. Turkey and dressing with thick, chunky giblet gravy; casseroles that are a variation on a cheese-and- theme; an enormous ham with a lottery of uneven slices; green beans, greens, and sweet tea. It is a southern meal in spades.
Pictures are enough, but I didn’t take many pictures of food. It was, in a way, the very least important guest.
“I’ll just head out now, while the rice is cooking,” I called out to K, keys in hand, heading out for a quick run to the grocery store. I pulled out of the drive way, and as I came to the intersection, I saw something odd: a police car blocking the road at the next intersection — my destination. I continued, thinking there must have been an accident and planning on taking a back route. I glanced down the blocked street and saw a sight one doesn’t see often except on the news: dozens of men running around in hazardous materials suits.
What to do? Go back for the camera and tripod.
I was the only one with a camera — other than the local Fox affiliate crew — but there was a small crowd gathering. The officer blocking the road replied, “Hey, I’ve got no idea myself,” to all queries, but we all knew.
With that much haz-mat protection, it could only be one of two things. Neither is something you want in your neighborhood.
“The coroner hasn’t arrived yet,” laughed one of the spectators, “so we know it’s not a pile of dead bodies in the basement.”
“And we know they weren’t growing a little grass in the basement,” another added. The group consensus: meth lab.
And sure enough, it was. Odd and rather creepy to think that I passed a house every day for several years where such nefarious, lethal behavior occurred. Most chilling: I’ve seen children playing in that yard.
Coincidentally enough, there was another drug bust in our little town on Friday.
“Tata, I want to help!” she calls as she hops down the deck stairs. With an armful of branches and twigs, I’m agreeable, but I smile, wondering how much help I’m actually going to get.
“Grab a couple branches,” I explain, “and follow me.”
We march to the street, L chattering all the way, explaining how she’s going to explain tomorrow how she helped her daddy.
Suddenly, behind me, I hear it: “Ouch!” She’s rubbing her eye; I’m wondering when she’s going to ask for a bandage. It’s been her obsession lately: no matter the wound, no matter the location, there must be First Aid.
“The stick went in my eye,” she says, with concerned voice. After so many months of learning her various voices, I know it’s nothing serious. It’s not quite play — something did happen — but perhaps her concern is exaggerated. She sees K and me hurt ourselves, and she models the reaction.
“Come on,” I say offhandedly. “You’ll be fine. Little things happen when you work as hard as you’re working now.
She plods along, amending the story she’s going to tell tomorrow, practicing the Tragedy of the Stick.
As we’re returning to the backyard, the late afternoon sun reflects off the golden autumn leaves, and it’s as if she’s walking into pure light or developing a halo. I walk about twenty paces behind, watching her hair bounce and sway as she dances into a golden November afternoon.
In order to create, we must destroy.
Partial destruction is oxymoronic: in the process of destroying, we often find we need to destroy more than we’d initially anticipated.
One cannot destroy only halfway, though one can create halfway. It’s called cutting corners.
Living in a house highlights that mystery, for a house is itself a mystery.
There are leaks that leave tracks, and sinks that have no visible connection to the main drain line.
“When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out. In.” You know, it’s going to be alright. Eventually.
Today is All Saints’ Day — one of the best times to be in a Catholic country like Poland. This morning, every single cemetery in Poland had something like this going on.
Photo from 2001
Every year I write the same things and probably show some of the same pictures. Since we haven’t experienced All Saints’ Day in Poland since 2004 (has it really been that long?), I’ve only a very limited stock of photos, and an even more limited stock of stories: I can only tell the same stories so many times before even I get tired of them.
That’s something of the appeal of it: the repeating ritual of the Catholic liturgical calendar means we’re always coming back to the same place. It makes life less of a straight line and more of a spiral.
One of the most calming and consoling times in that spiral is the evening of All Saints’ Day, when all the cemeteries flicker with the light of thousands of candles, and the hissing, crackling, and popping of the candles punctuate the prayers of the faithful.
I would visit the cemetery at least twice: once when the priests were leading prayers and a second time when no one else was there. Both were calming in very different ways.
Surrounded by Poles who had intimate connections to the cemetery — here lies a brother, a mother, an uncle, a great-grandmother — I felt the peace of the community, even though I was an outsider. Catholicism is very communal and intimate, and prayers in a candle-light cemetery are the epitome of that intimacy and community spirit.
Yet it was when I was alone that I felt more calm than I’ve ever felt in my life. Surrounded by death, I felt more alive than any other time of the year.
Halloween, in comparison, is so distinctly American: commercial, whimsical, with just enough evil to make us worry but not enough to make us act.
I prefer the Polish Catholic version, and I would imagine I always will.