Thangst-giving
Nov 21st, 2007 by Marilyn
I have a dear friend in Australia – and since we don’t get to see each other, we talk mostly by email and, in these busy days, frequently by blog. “Your posts are angst-ridden,” she recently told me.
My friend is sincere and caring and means only well. But I stared at the words on the screen, and quickly dashed off a crazed email – I have bad angsty writing? – and just as quick she amended her statement. No, no, no – not nauseatingly angst-ridden or anything, “I just know it’s chaotic for you.”
But the damage was done. Now I was angst-ridden over being called angst-ridden.
A private review of my own words proved my pal right – I didn’t think the sunny Australians even thought about angst, but she’s really a native New Yorker, and that explains it. With all the fuss and strife selling a house that you loved, but wanting to build another one, and living without them both — well, the dark side was bound to spill.
my eBay lamp feels my pain
I recalled my husband telling me that no one feels for you when you’re building your dream house. Oh, crap…he’s right! Thank goodness it’s Thanksgiving, and we are nearing the end of the pity party. I’m near-starved for a kitchen, and some true sear and smoke and meat in my own pans, but a dim feeling is growing, and it’s gratitude.
Right now I’m in Chicago, in my mother’s condo kitchen, trying to find the bowls and spoons and spatulas. This is not the house I grew up in, so the drawers are foreign and the plastic wrap isn’t where it should be – but I am grateful to be here, knocking out some family stuffing, and grateful to cook just about anywhere.
I am grateful for the opportunity to build our house and in it, a special kitchen. Here, in the old house, is last year’s holiday:
Bountiful. Shiny. Yeasty and hand-rolled!
The lovely clinking of glasses, drippy candles, ribbons and berries and a sage green living room. Wait a minute…that paint in the living room…
Hmm. Next year I will put out the cranberry relishes – two kinds. One with dried cherries, and one a thick orange-cranberry sauce – on a round black table under the wooden beam trusses…
…in the sunroom, which we painted…
…sage green. Apparently, you can take it with you.
All of my crazy little turkey things – salt & pepper shakers, flea market figurines, and the fat porcelain bird standing guard on the cinnamon rolls, above – will share Thanksgiving together tomorrow in storage.
If I packed them in the same box with the china and the glassware, maybe they’ll all have themselves a fine old time. We will, too, and a note to my dear Aussie friend, who will no doubt have an angsty fit when she reads this: more sad words, mate – we’ll sit in my kitchen next year and drink tea, and have blue Kansas skies from now on.
Happy Thanksgiving!
