don't eat alone

Ginger and I have spent the last couple of days working to get packages in the mail for our family, who are scattered about the country. Yesterday afternoon while Ginger was at work, I was home baking cookies to pack and send (and let Rachel have a few), which meant I got to pick the music. That matters because I tire quickly of the onslaught of holiday tunes. The aggressive version of “Here Comes Santa Claus” I heard in the grocery store today almost sent me running for the parking lot.

I have two exceptions–and by that I mean songs I love to hear more than once–when it comes to songs of the season. One is the soundtrack to John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together and the other is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The first because it’s John Denver and it’s the Muppets and I have long been an unabashed fan of both. The last because it holds both the sadness and the comfort of Christmas in a way few songs or carols do.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is part of a soundtrack as well. Judy Garland sang it in “Meet Me in St. Louis”–Esther (her character) sang it to Tootie, her five-year old sister on the eve of the last Christmas in their family home because they were going to have to move to New York because of their father’s job. The point of the scene in which she sang was to say, “Let’s make the best of this Christmas.”

You may already know this part. The lyrics she sang were not the original ones. Here is what the songwriters first gave her:

have yourself a merry little Christmas
it may be your last
next year we may all be living in the past
have yourself a merry little Christmas
pop that champagne cork
next year we may all be living in New York . . .

The words fit the plot line, but Garland told the writers that they would make the little girl cry, so they rewrote them to the ones we know, for the most part.

have yourself a merry little Christmas
let your heart be light
next year all our troubles will be out of sight
have yourself a merry little Christmas
make the yuletide gay
next year all our troubles will be miles away
once again as in olden days
happy golden days of yore
faithful friends who are dear to us
will be near to us once more
someday soon we all will be together
if the fates allow
until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow
so have yourself a merry little Christmas now

As the song found a life beyond the movie, other lines were tweaked accordingly (“next year” became “from now on”), but the line I wish had lived on (and does, in some versions) is the penultimate one:

until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow

That feels truer than “hang your shining star upon the highest bow” to me because my star doesn’t feel that shiny and it is what we do: we muddle through, somehow, with the hope and promise of our connections to one another.

After asking Siri to play several different versions of the song–most of which didn’t muddle through–I turned to John and the Muppets. The third song on the record is “The Peace Carol,” a folk song written by Bob Beers, that begins

the garment of life be it tattered and torn
the cloak of the soldier is withered and worn
but what child is this that was poverty-born
the peace of Christmas Day

Tattered and torn is what we often look like as we muddle through, or at least that’s the way the words hit me. The last verse of the carol turns to an accounting image that reminds me of how often we speak of what our lives add up to be, or how we count the years. Even the Psalmist prayed, “Teach us to number our days.”

add all the grief that people may bear
total the strife and the troubles and care
put them in columns and leave them right there
the peace of Christmas Day

Maybe the last line is a response to that prayer: “put them in columns and leave them there.” And now I have “Seasons of Love” in my head (that happened at Christmas, right?): “how do you measure a year in the life?” We measure as we muddle–sort of like I have done in this paragraph. We answer the phone, or we write letters and e-mails, we text, we drive or fly, and when those things can’t happen we miss each other and we muddle through.

Though it doesn’t show up on the page, my phone rang as I finished the above paragraph. It was my friend Burt calling to dust off a memory–forty years ago tonight we were at my apartment for his bachelor party. My best description of Burt is he is my most enduring friend. We met in the fall of 1976 and have been a part of each other’s lives since. I love that man. And I trust him.

Just before he called, I was scouring through The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to find this word:

lilo
n. a friendship that can lie dormant for years only to pick right back up instantly, as if you’d seen each other last week . . . (from lifelong + lie low. Pronounced “lahy-loh.”)

Then the phone rang. Burt asked how I was doing and I told him I was hanging in there. I went into more detail and then asked about him. We both had muddling stories to tell. As we prepared to say goodbye, he said, “I know these are hard days. Just remember you’re not alone. We’ve got you.”

However tattered life may be, somehow, those words are enough to muddle through.

Let us say them over and over to one another: we are not alone; we’ve got us.

Peace,
Milton

Thanks for reading. For the month of December, my book, The e-book version of The Color of Together is 99 cents at Amazon. Please check it out. Also, You can also subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, mixing metaphors. It comes out every Tuesday. Both my newsletter and blog are free and ad-free. If you would like to support my writing, you can become a sustaining member.

I drove someone in town to their doctor’s appointment in North Haven today.

Last week, Ginger became aware that someone in town needed a ride to their chemotherapy appointment and other family issues meant he didn’t have one. My flexible schedule made it easy for me to play chauffeur. It was their second treatment and the first one had exhausted him so much that he ended up being admitted to the hospital. He came home a few days ago and then reached out yesterday to say he needed a ride again, this time for tests to get ready for the next treatment, and wondered if I was available. I drove him back again this morning.

Since that meant I was going to be in the New Haven area for a while, I signed on to Lyft to see who else needed a ride. I gave someone a ride home from their car dealership, picked up a couple who had dropped off their rental car and needed a ride home, and then rove to a house in what we often call a transitional neighborhood to pick up my next passenger.

She came out of the house and set a couple of bags on the steps and then went back in for more. I asked if she needed help and, once she said yes, picked up what I could and put it in the back of my car. She went back in the house one last time and came out with a car seat covered by a blanket. Her baby had slept through the whole thing. As she got in the car, a man crossed the driveway behind her headed toward the house. As he unlocked the door she said flatly, “My brother will come get the rest of my stuff tomorrow. And don’t call me on my phone.”

She closed her door and we drove off.

A couple of blocks away from the house I asked how old her baby was. She told me she was three months old and she also had a six year old. I didn’t ask anymore questions. During the twenty minute ride to Waterbury, we had moments of conversation, but she spent most of the time texting and listening to either voicemail or someone rapping. My hearing loss made it hard to tell the difference.

The drive from North Haven to Waterbury is beautiful in several places. Connecticut is full of trees and water. We passed two or three beautiful lakes still rimmed by leftover snow. We passed through a couple of small towns that look like you think a small New England town should look. As we would through Waterbury we passed big Victorian houses and then smaller places and then blocks of apartment buildings that look like blocks. She was going to one of those.

I pulled into the parking lot and asked if she needed help getting her bags to the door. She said yes and between the two of us we managed to get everything in one trip. She opened the door and I set the bags I had on the threshold. The man inside–her brother, I assumed–said, “Thank you,” and closed the door.

As I would back down the road with the lakes and trees, I had time to let it sink in that I had helped someone get away from a bad situation. At least, that’s how it felt. She came out of the house with everything she could carry and we drove to somewhere she felt safe. About that time, I got a text message that things had wrapped up at the clinic and I drove back to pick him up. He was exhausted.

When we got to his house, his wife, daughter, and dog all came out to greet him. The little girl looked at me and kept saying, “Hi! Hi!” as she wrapped herself around her dad’s legs. They went in the house and I drove home thinking about two people whose lives didn’t have much in common other than they both were making drastic moves in hopes that whatever comes next would be better.

The jury’s still out in both cases.

The gift of my day was that they both needed rides to make some progress to whatever comes next. I will get to continue to play a small role in his story as it unfolds; my guess is I will not see her again. Then, of course, are all the houses I drove past where similar stories are playing out and I am not a part of the cast at all, which is a good reminder that neither one of these stories is about me, even though I am telling you what it felt like to be in them today.

I don’t have much of a point to make either, other than to say I learned again today that we all need each other, whatever happens next.

Peace,
Milton

Thanks for reading. For the month of December, my book, The e-book version of The Color of Together is 99 cents at Amazon. Please check it out. Also, You can also subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, mixing metaphors. It comes out every Tuesday. Both my newsletter and blog are free and ad-free. If you would like to support my writing, you can become a sustaining member.

Today was my birthday, so I’m am finding my way to the keyboard in the waning moments to say I am glad to be alive and aging.

Birthdays at our house are intentionally surprises. The person being celebrated is given information about the day on a need to know basis. For me, that meant leaving the house at a little before 7 to meet a friend for coffee, who was then succeeded by another friend around eight who handed off to another friend who walked me home. And then we went to breakfast.

Then came the evening. We left the house about four and drove up to Essex, Connecticut, which is about twenty minutes from Guilford. We stopped at a small artists’ co-op to see the results of people’s creative expressions (and I got a Brie baker) and then we drove down Main Street and walked into a restaurant/bar called the Black Seal to “have a drink and a snack,” per Ginger’s instructions. We shared Buffalo wings and each got a drink.

We hung out for a bit and then walked farther down Main Street until Ginger decided we should go into the Griswold Inn. It was not as impulsive a decision as it seemed. We ate dinner and then, when it came time to go to the next place, we walked about ten feet into the Tap Room where Ginger told me we had arrived. A couple of other friends surprised me, but that was not all of it. About 8:15 four men took to the mics and began to sing sea shanties. The band is called The Jovial Crew. For the next two hours we listened, clapped, and sang along.

We left at the end of the first set and went back to the Black Seal where we met John, who was being the bar, Tony, who was sitting next to me, and Ellen, who came in later. We shared stories and they all wished me a happy birthday, which indeed it was.

I wrapped up my sixty-sixth year with good food, good friends, songs of the sea, and stories from people I had never met, all because of the woman who loves me so much that she made it happen. After half my life with her, Ginger still catches me by surprise.

That’s the best gift of all.

Peace,
Milton

Thanks for reading. For the month of December, my book, The e-book version of The Color of Together is 99 cents at Amazon. Please check it out. Also, You can also subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, mixing metaphors. It comes out every Tuesday. Both my newsletter and blog are free and ad-free. If you would like to support my writing, you can become a sustaining member.

One of the highlights of our time in Durham was the monthly gathering at Fullsteam Brewery for “Beer and Hymns.” Jesse DeConto and his bandmates led us in singalongs, both sacred and secular. One of those Sunday nights was the first time I ever heard “Canticle of the Turning.”

my soul cries out with a joyful shout
that the God of my heart is great
and my spirit sings of the Wondrous things
that you bring to the ones who wait

you fixed your sight on your servant’s plight
and my weakness you did not spurn
so from east to west shall my name be blest
could the world be about to turn?

my heart shall sing of the day you bring
let the fires of your justice burn
wipe away all tears for the dawn draws near
and the world is about to turn!

The tune–“Star of County Down”–I knew because my friend Terry Allebaugh (the best harmonica player I’ve ever heard) taught it to me and we played it as a duet a number for times, but the lyrics moved me and have stayed with me. I want to trust that the world is about to turn.

This morning I learned that the lyric is an adaptation of Mary’s response to the news that she would have a child who would be Love Incarnate. Luke’s gospel said she spoke the words to her cousin Elizabeth as she shared news of her pregnancy. No one else was there. The centuries between her and us have taken her words and named them (“The Magnificat”), set them to all kinds of music, and venerated Mary in a way that makes it difficult for us to remember it was a pregnant Palestinian teenager who spoke them. She wasn’t reading a prepared speech or polished lyric. She had no idea that her words would live on as a theological anthem. She was talking to her cousin about something she was still working to comprehend that was also something that gave her hope that the world would not always be like it is.

She was speaking the language of joy.

When I look at our lives, Mary and I don’t have much in common other than our shared humanity, which includes our share of being surprised by both grief and joy. Thanks to Christian Wiman’s collection, Joy: 100 Poems, I learned of one by Lucille Clifton that gave me a better sense of Mary.

hag riding

why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when i wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride

The last three lines are as good of a definition of joy as I can muster: throw your thigh over the rump of the day and ride like the world is about to turn. We have the image of Mary riding the donkey to Bethlehem. Maybe she rode one to visit her cousin as well. By the time the days were accomplished, as the KJV says, Mary seems more subdued. This time around, she treasured what she saw and heard and held it all in her heart.

Another who didn’t share much in common with Mary was twelfth century mystic Meister Eckhart, and yet he wrote something I come back to most every Advent, and something Ginger quoted in her sermon this morning.

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the Divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace, but I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: when the Son of God is begotten in us.

I read and quote his words as though I understand their implications, much as I do with Mary’s joyful outburst to Elizabeth, yet they both remain full of mystery and challenge. Joy is not as much a decision as an ambush, perhaps, other than I can choose to take those paths that make me vulnerable to being ambushed. Mary wasn’t expecting an angel or a baby or the life that unfolded from then on, for that matter. When it all came down, she threw her leg over and went for the ride.

Perhaps that last sentence assumes too much and makes the same mistake as others in turning Mary into more than she was in that moment of surprise. Maybe not, since she shared an explosion of joy with Elizabeth and a rush of reality with Joseph and she kept going. We don’t get many details other than her joy–her sense that she was a co-conspirator in ambushing the world with joy.

May it happen to us as it did to her.

Peace,
Milton

Thanks for reading. For the month of December, my book, The e-book version of The Color of Together is 99 cents at Amazon. Please check it out. Also, You can also subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, mixing metaphors. It comes out every Tuesday. Both my newsletter and blog are free and ad-free. If you would like to support my writing, you can become a sustaining member.

a shared table

It is not news to say I love to cook for people. I have told the story of our Thursday Night Dinners many times. As I have tried to negotiate life without a regular income, two friends from church, Gus and Mike, suggested we host ticketed dinners where I cooked and people paid to be a part of the evening. Mike and Kristin, his wife, hosted one about a month ago. Gus and Sarah, his wife, hosted one tonight. My friend Lisa was my kitchen partner for both of them.

I have called the events “A Shared Table” because the idea is not that I decide what to cook and then people come, but people sing up and then I decide what to cook based on their food needs and preferences. Tonight, for example, several in the group were pescatarians and one was allergic to gluten. Rather than create a menu and then make special dishes, I wanted a menu that was made for everyone. Rather than think about it as what I had to do without, I chose to see the limitations as an opportunity for creativity.

Eighteen people gathered for dinner tonight. I have spent the day in the kitchen, with the occasional check of World Cup scores. I am tired–in a good way–so tonight’s post is a photographic journey through the menu for the evening.

We started with appetizers: a smoked trout paté (smoked trout, celery, parsley, capers, lemon juice, crushed red pepper flakes–sorry, no picture), and two pick up appetizers: chai-spiced sweet potato slices with goat cheese and date and olive tapenade, and apple slices with brie and balsamic walnut brittle.

The first course was a roasted beet, carrot, and sweet potato soup that had ginger, garlic, and oranges in it. I topped with a little sour cream and a fried sage leaf.

The second course was a winter salad of baked delicata squash, ruby red grapefruit slices, Brussels sprouts shavings, and a lemon maple vinaigrette. (Gus made the maple syrup.)

The third course was a tostone (twice-fried green plantain) topped with roasted pineapple guacamole and then a piece of lemon-chili baked cod and a mango chimichurri sauce.

Lastly, we served a chocolate risotto with whipped marsacpone, caramelized sugar, and a parmesan sail.

And then we hung out and talked for two hours after we were finished eating.

It was a good night.

Peace,
Milton

Two things: The e-book version of The Color of Together is 99 cents at Amazon (and other ebooks sellers) for the month of December. Please check it out. Secondly, thanks for reading. My website is free and ad-free because of the support of my readers. If you would like to become a sustaining member, click here. You can also subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, mixing metaphors.

In this last week before my sixty-sixth birthday, I started something new: I became a Lyft driver.

The idea came from my cousin who does so herself in Texas. We were catching up and talking about ways to make a little cash and she suggested I look into the service. She went on to tell me several stories of people she had chauffeured and the stories they had to tell and that was enough to make me jump through the hoops on the app so I could start driving.

Before anyone ever got in my car I was grateful I had signed up because a couple of days after Lyft notified me that my driver’s license was set to expire on my birthday. Instead of driving that afternoon, I renewed my license.

Here in the bustling micropolis that is Guilford, Lyft drivers are not in high demand. I knew I would need to be closer to New Haven. I got my chance today when someone in town put out word on social media that they needed a ride to and from the hospital for some treatment, so I volunteered to drive them in (for free) and then set out to use the time in between to see how this whole DIY taxi thing works.

The way the app works is pretty cool. An alert came with a request and an indication of how far I was from the person who needed a ride. I clicked to say I was on my way and the app switched to a map that gave me specific (and accurate) turn by turn directions. When I got to the location, I clicked a button that said arrived and the person came out of their building and got in the car. Then I moved a slider to start the trip and the map gave me everything I needed to get them to their destination. When I dropped them off, I had one last slider to confirm I was finished and the next ride popped up.

My first passenger went from New Haven to Wallingford, a town to the north. He had some sort of package he was delivering and was on the phone with the woman who was expecting both he and his cargo the whole way. When he got out of the car, I drove a few blocks and picked up a woman who was going from Wallingford to Meriden, another town on the outskirts of New Haven, but a little farther east. She was a little more conversant, but was also captivated by her screen. Then I got a prompt to pick up a girl at her high school and drive her home.

By this time, I had been driving about forty-five minutes, following the map on the screen in my CRV and wandering through parts of greater New Haven I had never seen. Because I was paying attention to each turn, I had no larger sense of where I was other than a town name, and I wasn’t always sure of that. I was simply going from here to there–and only because someone else needed to make the trip. About that time I received word that the person I had driven in for treatment was going to spend the night at the hospital for observation. Since I was on the other side of the city from Guilford, I decided to take a couple of more passengers.

My next to last ride was a woman who worked in New Haven and lived in Hamden. When I got to the address, she was standing outside the building with a walker. She might have been in her thirties. She got in the car and I put the walker in the back and we began the twenty minute ride to her apartment. She was just getting off work and was ready to chat more than my other passengers. The reason for her needing both a ride and a walker was she had fallen asleep driving to work four months earlier and had hit a tree. She totaled her car and broke a number of bones. She was still recuperating. Her job had been in maintenance, but since she was unable to as mobile as that position required she had moved to a desk job. She didn’t like it, she said, but was glad for the work.

I was struck by the tone with which she talked about what had happened to her. She was not despairing, neither was she deflective. I heard hope in her voice. Maybe part of that was we passed a restaurant I recognized and complimented and she asked if they had good wings because she loved wings, which led to the rest of the ride being about how to make crispy wings. It’s hard to be hopeless when you’re talking about chicken wings.

I dropped her off and picked up one more person: a man who lived in the next apartment building and took him back to New Haven, though I didn’t realize which direction I was heading. The streets were small, the trees–even without leaves–were thick, and the fog was heavy. About three turns before we reached his destination, I realized I was on the way home. He got out of the car, I turned off the app, and I drove myself back to Guilford.

Years ago, I wrote a poem called “Spokane” where I imagined a family in Washington who lived happy and fulfilled lives that did not require me. One of the middle stanzas says,

they are finding their dreams
building their lives
breaking their hearts
living out their days
without knowing me
and they are not the only ones

Today, I got to drive into the middle of other lives and help them get where they needed to go. Though my name showed up in the app, my contribution was to drive. I had no real lines to speak of. They are not required to remember me. I was, as they say, an extra in the story of their lives, and they in mine. How amazing that for even a moment we had the chance to need each other.

Peace,
Milton

Two things: The e-book version of The Color of Together is 99 cents at Amazon (and other ebooks sellers) for the month of December. Please check it out. Secondly, thanks for reading. My website is free and ad-free because of the support of my readers. If you would like to become a sustaining member, click here. You can also subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, mixing metaphors.