A poem
The usual tradition is Eggs Benedict
but to get my ducks in order
I ask dad where the ham is.
I may not be the best at
bringing a feast together,
but I follow cookery enough
to know that mise en place
is an essential ingredient in
a successful festive meal.
Then it's off to the races
all at once
like a blank has
burst from the starter's gun.
The mess is not in place.
I repeat,
the mess is not in place.
My mother comes into the kitchen,
bewildered over all the hubbub
in her normally quiet kitchen.
"What are you all doing?" she asks.
I see my father is holding mom's
orange Fiskars scissors in hand
the black sharpie words "FABRIC ONLY"
grinning like a devil's teeth from the blades,
speaking comforting lies, "be not afraid."
He's used them to slice
the gold foil from off the ham,
has started punching them through
the harder, sturdier plastic underneath.
I smell ham and clove and pineapple.
She doesn't notice, and
allows herself to be gentled
out of the kitchen she ruled for forty years.
"You made the holidays special for a long time,"
I tell her. "Now it's our turn."
Her eyes show no recognition of her scissors.
It's no longer as important as it once was.
He cuts the potatoes for Christmas dinner
in half, revealing bright green
under the skins.
"Throw those away, Dad,"
I tell him,
"That green shows they've turned.
They'll make us sick to eat them."
Irrationally, I think, manger danger,"
wondering if we'd have done better in a hotel
than at home in this too-familiar old barn of a house.
There's no flour for the creamed onions
so I use breadcrumbs instead
to thicken the cream sauce.
Dad doesn't seem to like the little
purple onions in amongst the white ones.
I think it's a nice change;
a new flavor in a sauce that must be forgiven
its imperfections, is a small miracle
of new revelations against old laws.
"Fear not,"
I think, as I try to slice
pineapple thinly
and pin it to a pre-cooked
spiral-cut ham
already made of gaps
and openings,
widening spaces where
my mother's memories
no longer help me hang it together
this holiday
Steel pins wouldn't hold this
fruit in place, much less the
usual order of meals:
no one's touched the coffee cake
while we drank coffee and opened gifts.
There will be no Eggs Benedict or bacon at brunch,
and we're galloping right to dinner
at ten in the morning.
I join together some kind of salad
with vinaigrette and olives,
blue cheese and grated carrots.
The potatoes are a goner,
and nothing will shepherd the day
back on course. No guiding star tonight,
and two out of the three magi here
have no frank sense between them,
let alone any mirth.
Nothing about today is stable
but we'll be eating together, at least,
the old father and younger mother exhausted
as though from a long journey —
and me, the son,
too old and too young at once,
trying to shine in a darkness
that I didn't know
needed overcoming.
