December 1, 2014: A Past Thanksgiving

     These past few days have been spent with my family and myself: eating, laughing, hanging out, some work, some chores.  One of those chores included making the back room into an office for Maya and myself.  Part of that meant bringing in the file cabinet that has been sitting in the garage for the past 7 years, going through the stuff that was in it, and pitching most of it.  However, I was delighted to find a piece of writing that I thought I had lost.  It was about a previous Thanksgiving when Ian (now 21 years young) was only 1 or 2 - not sure which.  It follows below.

     "It was the simple act of sewing up the turkey.  I looked in my sewing cabinet - which was my mother's sewing cabinet, which was her mother's sewing cabinet - and immediately found the 4-inch, curved needle that I was to use.  It was almost as if it had been lying in wait for me, asking itself, 'Will she find me this Thanksgiving?'

 

   I found the string and carefully threaded the needle so that all of the loose threads pulled through.  The knot that I tied in the opposite end was huge, partly because the string was fat, partly because it had to keep a turkey's bottom closed tight.  I could not afford any loose seams.

     As I took the needle and poked it through, I was aware of how focused I was…me and the turkey - the needle and the string.  Through the bottom flap of skin and up and through the top flap of skin and pull tight and lap over to go through the bottom flap of skin and up - and so on until the five or six stitches it took ran straight and true and the turkey was closed.  Done.

     'You sewed the turkey?' my husband asked - this, after a lengthy discussion about how to close the turkey, did it really need closing, don't go through the trouble, it'll be fine, and my insistence that yes, it would be sewn.  'Yes,' I replied quietly.  'I sewed the turkey.'  'Your mom probably sewed turkeys, too,' he said.

     At the time I had replied, "I doubt it."  Now, I know that she did.  I don't remember her sewing, but I do remember a

bird sewn.  When I saw the finished turkey - out of the oven stuffed, stitched and brown - I remembered.  And now I know - somehow that simple act of sewing up a turkey was transformed into an archetypal act that connected me to

my mother in a way so profound that I wanted to go on stitching forever - I felt her presence so strongly.  Even now, writing these few words, her presence is again so close that I could breathe on her were she next to me.  Perhaps, I muse, she is my breath.

     I pray to all that is divine to be with me today - that it stretch from thanksgivings past and lace me through with all that is good and nurturing that I may give to myself and my husband and son.  And in that giving, may the spirit of my mother and her mother and her mother be alive today and everyday.  And I pray with my entire heart to all that is divine, to all that is beautiful and to all that nurtures, that I may again, next year, sew my history to my legacy by taking five or six stitches in a turkey with a needle and string."

     And today, I pray that I may experience each moment of

my life in the same way that I experienced that one - fully present in the "now," - yet so consciously present with all who came before me, and so consciously aware of all those who will come after.  

     

I am a Lucky Ducky.

needle: http://www.planetjune.com/blog/images/chair3.jpg

turkey: http://assets.kitchendaily.com/styles/large/s3/brine-cured-roast-turkey_400X400.jpeg?itok=NtvoSYqu

line of women: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/88/ab/48/88ab4801da6d3cff53b50b6433c8960f.jpg

two women: http://chrysaliswoman.com/uploads/3/2/1/6/3216263/9176086.jpg?645

infinity sign:  http://cf.ltkcdn.net/feng-shui/images/std/101965-400x300-Eternity_knot.jpg