In the Kitchen

With those I've lost

Dear Readers,

I am a little lost these days, drifting through obligations. Grief and shock – about the assaults on America and Americans and immigrants – have me at sea, as does death.

In February, my cousin Mark died, the first of our generation to go. In April, my younger sister’s childhood best friend died, and that’s dug deep into all of us — Michelle was an extra sister. When my Uncle Michael suddenly died, we thought that his death, the third, was the last because bad things come in three’s, right?

Well, now my older sister’s husband is gone, too. I’m leaden. Frozen in a blob, like the one that stained the butcherblock counter my dad made.

Here’s that story: one night after dinner, my dad asked if anyone wanted to make a toy gun. I was the only taker. We heated up lead on the kitchen stove and poured it into a mold. Extra lead spilled right onto the counter, making a dark mark.

My dad made lead soldiers when he was a kid, and instead of making some in the basement, on a hot plate, I think he was seized with an itch to recreate the activity with all of us around him – my mom, my two sisters, and our younger brother. Maybe he wanted to make a time soup, smooshing together his childhood with the family and my mom made together.

My father was disappointed that we’d stained the counter, the maple butcherblock he made from a tree he cut down in the backyard. It was a centerpiece of the kitchen.

That room is alive in me, breathing like a person. All the people I’ve lost spent time there, eating, drinking, talking.

I’m in the kitchen with Michelle & my sister Elissa. They’re making cookie dough and giggling. We all eat spoonfuls before some of the dough makes it to cookie sheets and into the oven.

I’m in the kitchen with Mark and my mom. “Someday, Amy’s going to make a great wife,” he quips, grabbing a carrotstick. Mom and I are cutting up vegetables for appetizers. She raises her knife and declares, “She is going to be a lot more than a wife! She can be whatever she wants to be!” Mark holds his hands up in the air, confused that his compliment struck a wrong chord.

I’m in the kitchen with Jeff, my sister Pegeen’s husband, over and over again. He’s drinking Coor’s Light, and we are snacking on chips and salsa. Dipping carrots and celery into a blue Bennington Potters bowl of ranch dressing. Jeff and my sister are dating. They are married. They buy a house on the street. They have their daughter Molly. Four months later, I have my son Fran. Pegeen has Sophie. I have Felix.

We keep snacking, dinner ever almost ready. My dad doctors the salsa with cream cheese, shredded cheese, cheap cheese-ish sauce that comes in a jar. My dad has strokes, and he is always sitting. We take over dressing up the salsa, but our hearts aren’t in the task. Before the strokes, he was always standing, moving, telling a joke. We take up those parts of him too, trying to be him, trying to be the him we need for us.

Rewind time. My father’s brother Michael is in the kitchen with his wife, my Aunt Mary Ellen. The adults make gin and tonics, using the tall and frosted 1964 World’s Fair glasses and the long iced tea spoons. Lots of limes, lots of ice.

Everyone drinks them on the deck my dad built. Everyone’s glowing from the gin and company, from the sun sparking a sharp golden light on the scene. The kids, me, my cousins John and Steve, my siblings: we run in the yard. Catch fireflies. Eat popsicles.

My son Felix, my husband Jack, my son Francis.

The sunsets and seasons roll fast, shuffled like a deck of cards, like a time lapse sequence of nature for PBS (long live the attacked arts of America! Long live the public! Who is the public anymore? Where is our voice? Our educations, medical aid and social security?)!

The sun rises and rises. I study the pink through the eyes of my bedroom windows. The miracle of that moment, color breaking behind the trees in the old nursery across the street – that will never leave me.

I’m a kid, I’m growing up, I’m a mother. I’m growing and shrinking and growing again. My sense of self and the world are ribbony, certain, uncertain.

Down the street, I’m at Pegeen and Jeff’s for Fourth of July. There are no kids on the street to make a parade, like we always did, like our kids did. The kids are grown but we still celebrate, and Jeff is on his deck, at the grill, making hot dogs and hamburgers, steaks. The summer sun finally sets, and Jeff starts the bonfire. Everyone waits for the moment the fireworks start.

Some of the thyme we walked through at the graveyard. What perfume!

For the open house after my uncle’s funeral, I made morning glory bread, and an apple pound cake, and a rhubarb cake with hazelnuts. I made these all on the counter my father made for our kitchen – not an actual butcherblock, but Formica butcherblock, like a snapshot of the actual. The counter is edged with strips of maple from that same kitchen project at the house where I grew up, eight and a half miles north.

I can’t think of a way to end this missive. There’s no cozy way to wrap up the infinite passage of our loved ones through the world.

Yours, Amy