Saturday, November 29, 2008

Thanksgiving…The Sequel

The Thanksgiving crew re-gather on day two, with theme and variation. One family is gone, and another substituted. Another college student joins. The East-West balance shifts firmly East, and dinner is pure Chinese except for a random store-bought apple pie.

We pick up Grandmother Y with her teen grands on our way while the Driver and Tech take our teaching assistant and pick up their former student, now in college nearby. By the time we all arrive in Ann Arbor, the two college girls who never met before, are chatting cheerfully in their provincial dialect, Mandarin left behind in the joy of the sound of home. They look like tiny sisters and slide into the age gap between the ABC teens and the East and West adults.

The evening unrolls with comfort. Massive food preparation is still underway on our arrival and we chat to the increasing aroma of Sichuan straight up and spicy. “I was going to go mild,” murmurs the cook, “But you all said you LIKE spicy.” “Definitely,” we chorus. “There’s a few mild dishes too, just in case,” she adds.

The teens of today were the roaring toddlers of a decade plus ago, dashing around my house with abandon. It is wonderful to see them matured, interacting with the wide range of adults, switching easily from English to Chinese, comfortable with both cultures, deferent to their elders but pure American none the less. The current noisy children are our four grands, equally comfortable with the mix of language and food choices. The oldest grandmother speaks no English but mixes well with everyone, loving the little blondes like they were her own. She knows the word “baby.”

This interplay of families has deep roots. The 40-something host couple met us over a decade ago when they were struggling to take root in this country. As we befriended them in that transition, our kids came to know and enjoy them. We met their parents as they visited, and now twice have been to their town in central China to visit. Last summer, it was our young teaching assistant who put us on the right bus to visit the old folks. Today she is in the home of the second and third generation. The extra grandmother too is an old friend despite our language barrier. Last fall we helped her bury her husband.

The evening ends with a sweet fruit soup. I work with the grandmother and the teaching assistant to create tiny balls of rice dough that will go into the soup. Glutinous rice, sticky rice. As the three of us work together, three generations loosely bound by friendship, the conversation wanders in and out of languages. Everyone gathers in the kitchen again to enjoy the soup, sucking the rice balls off our spoons.

Suddenly the cook remembers the pie. Everyone over 18 opts out and the pie goes to the teens, children of China who now have American taste buds. But the youngest leans over to me and whispers, “YOU bake a lot better apple pie than these ones my grandma buys at the store…”

Friday, November 28, 2008

Extending the Table

The table, even in its smallest form, is large. The family who first owned it must have entertained largely. It came to us about 30 years ago when it was too large for a retirement apartment, and we have loved it ever since.

Thanksgiving morning we pull it out all the way and find the five leaves and table pads. Then I lay the tablecloth a friend made many years ago that is the only one that will fit the table fully extended.

Next we dig out dishes and silver. There will be 17 at the table – about the max that it will hold even with five leaves. I teach our young Chinese teaching assistant, visiting for the weekend, how to lay two forks, two spoons and a knife, plate, glass. We skip the extra plates in light of space. The silver is a wild assortment of years of family and friend collections; the plates almost as varied. We pull out all the serving dishes we’ll need and stack them on the island in the kitchen.

Dinner is well underway by now. The turkey has been in for hours, the potatoes finished and tucked away to be warmed, as well as the squash. Cranberry of both the jelled and sauce varieties are chilling. One friend will bring salad and another, breads. There are vegetables on the counter to munch and the Dreamer brings humus. The Driver’s apricot cheese ball sits in the fridge with crackers ready.

At four the cars begin to arrive and family and friends pile into the house. There’s a loud mix of English and Chinese as greetings are exchanged. Children have grown and those who used to be tiny are now teens reaching out to hold the new generation. We tuck the oldest great-grandmother, now very fragile, into her seat before the rest of us descend the table.

Gathering at the table is a tight squeeze. Even though the table sits in the “living room” side of the colonial, this table was built for a house of a previous generation. As we start we sing our praise and thanksgiving. On a computer nearby the Dragon skypes in to say hello from afar where she is also with friends.

Conversation bounces around. Chinese and U.S. economics. Engineering projects. Business. Recipes for food. Origin of specific pieces of the silverware. Language confusion reigns. Conversations started in English revert to Chinese and vice-versa.

Across the table the teenage son of the mechanical engineer loads his third helping of mashed potatoes. In his rice based home, mashed potatoes aren’t common. Our young assistant has made friends with the teenage girl who first came here as a tiny infant. Where did the years go?

Finally we sit back and view the decimated platters and dishes. Dessert will wait for a while. Another feast has extended the table and it was rich.

Thanksgiving indeed.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Home Alone

After weeks of a house bursting with family and activity, following weeks on the road with people, ‘home alone’ is singularly inviting. Only the grandcats skitter around the rooms or curl contentedly on the down quilt at the foot of the bed.

Yesterday was packed. Exercise. Driver and Co to the airport to visit the Dragon – (and then they were stuck for hours in transit because of silly blush of snow on the East coast -- phone calls and decisions.) A morning with 50+ local Moms of Pre-Schoolers to discuss the influence of visual media on little people. Evening at the auction of the local academy where I now serve as a regent. Home to a long phone conversation with the absent husband as he drove south from Boston.

Today dawns clear and cold and empty of people. Rise when I choose, eat what I choose, work at my own pace. Down to the basement to continue sorting through nonsense collected over years. Laundry to process. A tad of shopping. Study time in Colossians for the upcoming couples retreat in December. Dinner on my own, with a good book. Perhaps a movie, again of my own choosing.

Home alone. No one to feed -- except the insistent cats who try to convince me they are starving. No one to ask questions. No one to interrupt my train of thought. Even the phone is gloriously silent.

Tomorrow the Dreamer, the Engineer, and the little grands will gather after church for the Sunday tradition and the house will be full of noise and laughter and conversation. The husband will fly in from New England and the Driver and Tech and grand #4 will fly home from Philadelphia. There will be no silence, no peace, no quiet.

One day home alone is bliss. A life of home alone would be desperately lonely.

“Sing to God, sing praise to his name, extol him who rides on the clouds -- his name is the LORD-- and rejoice before him. A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families…” Ps. 68:4-6

Friday, November 14, 2008

Celebration

As we enter the auditorium I am immediately struck by the picture on the screen. Al, far thinner and older than I remember, but pointing a finger right at us, wide smile across his face, beside a pool. Larger than life, in fact, huge.

But he was.

The platform is covered with flowers so one hardly notices the casket. It’s there, but not the centerpiece. The man on the screen is alive; the body in the casket is just an empty shell.

The service starts with a sax solo, “Great is thy faithfulness.” The man beside me, an old friend we met because of Al, whispers, “He’d have to have this one.” Music follows music. “How great thou art. How great is our God. You are my King.” Drums, sax, guitar, and a wicked good pianist. The auditorium is packed with a at least 500+ and they sing with gusto.

The widow, younger by far, welcomes the audience. Al’s first wife died in a heartbeat almost 20 years ago, and though I knew he remarried, I have never met this woman. A stock broker, she speaks with ease, and grace.

Different family members speak. Two of the adult stepchildren speak with tears of the father that Al became to them, a wonderful gift in their young adulthood. The oldest granddaughter, now 34, speaks for all 26. I remember her parents stopping by our house the night she was born to borrow a Nikon for the hospital. Can this poised young woman be the toddler I sat up with one night with croup when her parents were off somewhere? Only the eyes are the same.

A son-in-law tells of sneaking in brats and sauerkraut when wife #2 was golfing. He apologizes, in a sense, to his long gone birth father for his deep love for his father-in-law. To know Al, evidently, was to love him. Most of this middle aged audience knew him when they were teens. He was the father figure who told it to them straight, but since he wasn’t their father, they did what he told them to do.

The highlight of the service is a video interview done just three weeks ago by a broadcaster daughter, and videographer grandson. Once again, Al lives. The color of his Florida home drenches the screen. He talks about fighting cancer, about hating to leave his family, about loving life. “It’s not about me though,” he says. “God doesn’t make mistakes.”

The pastor closes the service simply. “Al loved people and was totally generous with himself, his time, and his money. He loved his Lord,” he reminds us. “In fact, he made Jesus so appealing that if he gave an altar call, you just couldn’t stay in your seat. You had to go find out what made Al so happy.”

The graveside, dripping in gray November rain, is short and sweet. The crowd huddles and shares umbrellas. It’s a formality. Al isn’t there.

Back at the church, there’s a lavish luncheon. The tables are full of people talking non-stop, catching up with each other, telling stories. The family are greeting people, talking to each other. Little kids finish their food and begin to wander around. Laughter rings around the room.

The pain of loss will come. No one can replace a father. But living large leaves a legacy that is winsome.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Shack

A month or so ago my friend said, “Read The Shack.” Respecting her judgment, I got a copy when I got home and read The Shack. Definitely worth the read.

Some of the plot is predictable – man who had a hypocritical and cruel father loses youngest daughter to brutal murder, blames himself, helps the rest of the family get past the pain but is himself still gripped with what he terms The Great Sadness, and definitely angry with God. By the end of the book, depression and anger are gone. But so is predictable theology.

It is the free-wheeling characters inhabiting the pages that make the book interesting. Characters that poke holes through most of courteous religiosity, form and rules. God, for example, is a large African American woman named Papa. Why? “To reveal myself to you as a very large, white grandfather figure with a flowing beard, like Gandalf, would simply reinforce your stereotypes…Hasn’t it always been a problem for you to embrace me as your father? After what you’ve been through, you couldn’t very well handle a father right now, could you?”

C.S. Lewis would like how The Shack deals with The Problem of Pain. “We created you, the human, to be in face-to-face relationship with us.... As difficult as it will be for you to understand, everything that has taken place is occurring exactly according to this purpose, without violating choice or will.”

“How can you say that with all the pain in this world, all the wars and disasters…what is the value in a little girl being murdered by some twisted deviant?”

Honest questions. Honest answers. “We’re not justifying it. We are redeeming it.” Allowing man to take power in his own hands is costly, but the cross was more costly.

“You really don’t understand yet,” Papa says. “You try to make sense of the world in which you live based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality. It is like looking at a parade through a tiny knothole of hurt, pain, self-centeredness, and power and believing you are on your own and insignificant.”

There is more. Not deeply profound, but interesting. Some predictability, some sheer fantasy. Definitely outside the ring of pious drivel that makes one gag, and perhaps approaching the realm of thoughtful reality.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Full House

The grand cats are the first visible signs of life on Sunday morning. They work hard to convince me that they are starving waifs, lost in the still dark of night. Unfortunately, for them, there’s a little note on the food container that says, “Fed cats at 4 AM.” A full house needs communication tools.

We’re into week two of the multigenerational, refugee household. This weekend added another couple who flew in from the south, but the wife is a good friend from Asia. We’ve met her before and now know her new husband, recently back from Iraq. Lowest on the totem pole, they got the basement “suite.” No grumping – they are happy to be here and reconnect. The bonds forged overseas are strong and deep. Conversation runs around the world and includes the hard side of returning this direction.

Mealtime is interesting. I am reminded of years ago when multi-family would arrive at Grammy’s home and meals morphed without much planning. Here, too, there are many cooks and many bottle washers. Food gets to the table to find that someone has set the table. The dishes are stowed in the dishwasher and land back in the cupboards. I sort of mastermind the menu, but it’s open to diversions.

Last night the “boys” took a walk to Panera for bread and returned with bread and more. This afternoon a girls’ trip to the corner Asian grocery brought home familiar – to us at least – goodies. My great foray of the weekend was a run to Sam’s.

Midday on Sunday is The Gathering. The clan is larger today than usual, but the routine seamless. Early Sunday morning one cook starts the main meal before breakfast. The other cooks pick up after breakfast and finish the pre-church prep. The post church final touches are also shared. By that time the little kids are hungry and speed is essential. Dinner, that Sunday institution I choose to retain, is only a little about food. It is far more about conversation and dialogue and debate. All ideas are welcome, even those that get shot down quickly.

A home with more lefthanders than righthanders tends to send food in two directions at once. Noted, accepted, and laughed at. Children are part of the mix, but not the focus. They are quite welcome to join the conversation, but somehow understand that this is not about them.

They will be the adults some day and rule the conversation.

Full house. It’s working. Laundry gets brought down, tossed in, dried, folded, and returned. No one keeps track of who’s doing what. Housework is the same. Everyone shares. Inside and outside.

Perhaps this is how our ancestors lived in multi-generational community. Who knows? It won’t last forever, but for now, the full house is a warm haven for wanderers – all of us.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

The color of autumn

The corporate office campus is a jewel of acreage with a deep ravine running down the middle. Much of the property is woods with a wide range of deciduous trees towering high overhead. Each season is unique – the stark black outlines of winter, the blush of pale green that marks early spring, the deep green of summer that blocks the view across the valley, and finally, the blaze of autumn.

Trees mean leaves. Many trees mean many leaves. Many leaves fast become mountains.

Typically, we declare a fall day an outdoor work day for all of the office. Accomplishing a needed task meanwhile gives everyone a day outside that has no resemblance to desks and computers. No one complains. Everyone pitches in and the camaraderie is rich.

We arrive at nine to find an arsenal of rakes, tarps, clippers, trash cans, and the junky old white truck that lives back in the maintenance barn. I join the rakers on the front hill that sweeps up to the treeline and then plummets down the other side to the expressway. We work in pairs, pulling leaves into large piles along the hill.

Across at the front entrance, a group of women are pruning the rose garden and shrubs around the brick walk and little tree planted to honor Tom. Tom’s widow directs the crew. We’ve missed Tom for some years, but we all love the landscaped garden and bench. It’s a good place to quietly sit and think or have a cell phone break outside the office-with-no-walls. This bench hears lots of prayer.

Tending Tom’s garden is fine work, but I stick with the rough leaf crew ankle deep in yellow and orange

After we rake all the leaves into piles, Terry brings the truck. Complete with straw hat, the Minnesota farm boy turned executive is loving today. We pile leaves onto tarps, haul them to the truck, and dump them into the bed. I hop on top of the pile as Terry wings the truck around back to the edge of the ravine, wind in my hair. We dump the contents into the valley of trees and return for another load. The rhythm of the process takes on a life of its own, punctuated with much laughter and jest over who’s working hardest, rakers or haulers.

Inside, another crew is making up boxes of goodies for all the company kids who are in the US for college. With moms living overseas, the office women send a “mom” box each fall that will arrive in time for exam week.

The green grass slowly emerges from the golden carpet. At noon we’ve conquered the leaves and the front garden looks impeccable. We troop down to the dining commons for pizza and salad. “Good job,” says the boss. “Looks like someone lives here now.”

Mission. Accomplished.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The vote

The phone rings and the caller asks for the Dragon. I say that she’s not home and he tells me he’s calling all absentee ballot voters on behalf of a local candidate.

I resist several urges. One is to tell him that he’s mispronouncing the name of the candidate he’s representing. I happen to know her well and wouldn’t vote for her at gunpoint. I also don’t ask him why he’s calling for the Dragon if she’s voting absentee…doesn’t absentee mean “absent?” Guess not.

I simply give the polite answer that she’s away at grad school and is a responsible adult who will have returned her ballot. He murmurs that this is nice and goes away.

Of course she’s voted. In June, on a visit home, she stopped by the township office to find out why they wouldn’t send an absentee ballot. She found she was no longer registered at her legal address, and surmised that securing a license in Alaska must have knocked her out of Michigan. The clerk at the window made noises that it was too late to get an absentee ballot, but the clerk at the computer pulled up the Dragon’s voting record. “Oh, heavens,” she said. “Give her a ballot. She’s voted in more elections in the last nine years than I have.” Ballot secured.

These were the same clerks who sent our absentee ballots to China for the August primary.

Voting is important in this house.

The Driver hand carried her absentee ballot home from China and had me drop it at the township building since she headed out of town on Sunday. The Dreamer traded off kids with a friend today so they both could go vote. The young women of the applesauce brigade voted before they came to work. Juggling schedules, everyone in the house voted in some way, shape, or form.

At least two of us collected the free cup of coffee at Starbucks. Voting has some perks.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Value laden

The garage takes on the look and smell of an apple barn. Rows of boxes filled with a plethora of color and shape. Bright Ida Reds alongside burgundy Spies. Green blushed Macs rub up against Goldens. Dark ruby Jonathans sit with striated Galas.

The applesauce “machine” begins in the barn. One worker loads two tubs of apples, taking a selection from all the varieties and bringing them to the kitchen. There they are double washed and piled high. The next workers grab washed apples, position them on the cutting board, and in one motion split them into seven pieces with an apple cutter. The pieces are tossed into four large pots on the stove and boiled.

When soft, the pieces are processed through an ancient apple mill that spits applesauce out one end and peels, stems, and seeds out another side. Finally the sauce is bagged and stacked in the freezer.

The work flows without stoppage, every woman taking turns at each job. The men have fled. Two took their guns to the shooting range, the third is off to take his pilot re-certs, and the eldest, after giving some very male engineering advice on methodology, has retreated to points outside and upstairs.

The children wander in and out of the process. Scorning political correctness of safety, we allow them to help carry, wash, and cut cold apples, as well as turn the apple mill of hot sauce. They are little and don’t stay long at any job, but in time their now childish attempts will yield genuine results. The littlest babes hang out in various seats, or slung on their mom’s backs.

Lunchtime finds the crew gathered at the round table. The little ones major on applesauce, bowl after bowl. The fresh batch passes the taste test. Grand #2 decides sharp cheddar is great sprinkled on top. Her maternal great grandmother would be delighted.

As the day wanes, weariness sets in. This is hard work. Hands, arms, feet, and backs are tired.

Conversation turns to the value of the process. Taken in pure monetary terms, the apples were free, but time is not. These women, all Masters in their fields, can earn real money in real time. It would be cheaper to buy applesauce.

This, however, is not about money. It is the process itself that is value laden. The old apple mill is from the great-grandmother of the little ones underfoot. Though she lives nearby, she is no longer able to work the mill herself. She handed it down the generations. The women and children are bound by blood and marriage, but more by love and commitment. Conversations range widely and opinions are freely expressed. Ideas are lofted, dissected, and consensus reached.

At the end of the day, the value is not just in the gleaming pink bags that promise pleasure for many winter suppers to come. The value is the sharing of life.