the thing to do when breath is alternating between shallow and shallow is to play in the kitchen. if i can play in the kitchen it keeps my hands busy and my emotions calm/balanced/serene. i am able to write music and lyrical pieces in my head. or pray over the food i am preparing, a habit i picked up long ago and kept by choice in my current behaviour system.
so, on this day, this anniversary, i invited my siblings to join us for brunch and decided to prepare our mother's midday favourite food items. i know the recipes by heart but i always feel like i need to verify them from her cookbook, in her handwriting. perfect penmanship, like that of other grandmothers, schooled in a way long forgotten - where the look, the style and precision of handwriting lent itself as another extension of who a person was. she was a very fashionable woman - very handsome and tall for her generation, with a buxom movie star figure. a natural blonde, (who helped the natural along in her latter years), she maintained an innocence that she insisted on keeping till the day she died.
chile con queso, fruit salad, sausage, bacon, croissants, fresh orange juice and champagne, wine or cocktail, (the alcohol that none of us ever got around to.)
after eating, we called her sister, my godmother and now the family matriarch. now SHE would have gotten 'round to the libations! she knows how to celebrate. although a bit reserved at the start of the call, she shot her own brand of enthusiasm to her nieces and nephew right through the phone wire. and i felt it. a tie, an ancestral bond that expressed itself. the voices of my sister and brother were genuinely animated, as they spoke to our favourite relative. as the telephone passed from one to another, conversations didn't really say anything at all, but all was said with intent, love for each other and a shared feeling - the one about missing her.
i thought of the place where we all grew up. the magic home where, for a while, the american dream took hold. where my mother cooked the best brunch i have ever eaten. where my brother, sister, parents and i ate together in harmony. where i learned the meaning of family. where my roots took hold. and as i sat, sharing a remembrance meal today, brother and sister with me, parents no longer in material form, with the man i love on my right side, i felt my mother agreeing with me that the brunch could have been better....croissants not quite crisp enough, meats...comme ci comme ça, but the chile con queso was a winner. she would have loved it.
she loved us. and we loved her.
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