On the Ravine

My Easter Vigil begins on Saturday morning. Now, the traditional Vigil service occurs sometime after sunset on Saturday and before dawn on Easter Sunday. It is a service of great remembrance. The scriptures start in Genesis, trace a long path to the Jewish Passover, and end with the Gospel Resurrection Story. The “Alleluia’s” ring out, silenced since the beginning of Lent.

My Easter vigil begins with a check-off list and an assembly of cooking ingredients. In years past, I was preparing for an Easter brunch of thirty-five, a beloved event for friends, neighbors, and family. Now that we do not have accommodations for such a large table-gathering—and this family has grown—the guest list is diminished to fourteen. The preparations are still large.

We’ll begin with mimosas, shrimp salad tarts, and vegetables. The dip for the crudités will rest in the belly of a bunny fashioned by Grandma from puff pastry. She’s been longing to assemble this rabbit ever since she saw it in Woman’s Day. And then we’ll sit down to ham, macaroni and cheese, asparagus, green salad with strawberries, and yeast rolls. Vicky chose the dessert, strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting, and we’ll have some brownies on hand for the chocolate-lovers.

In some way, I will touch every menu item today, even if only to lay the foundation for tomorrow’s baking, chilling, or assembly.

Easter has been my favorite holiday for most of my adult life. In Easter there is great remembrance of suffering and ultimate victory over Death—for all. There is a recollection of “the paths we’ve trod”, the storms we’ve weathered, the pain we’ve conquered—all of us. There is this notion that we are all together on level ground, equally guilty, but identically redeemed. We are one people, not because we make some conscious decision for acceptance, but because we stand before this awakening, blooming creation as co-targets of the same Love.

Yesterday afternoon, I made the annual Easter trip to the discount store to purchase ingredients for cake, dips, and cleaning. My buggy was loaded, way too stacked for that woman with the little pricing gun to “pre-checkout”. She told me so. But the Pakistani baby in the cart ahead told me “I’m two” and his father and I talked of sons, cooking, and standing in lines.

“I am already pre-checked,” he said. “Let me put your items on the belt for you.”

He emptied my cart, and when I thanked him, he answered, “This is your holiest season, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “It is.”

“And today is the ‘Good Friday’?”

“Well, yes…Good Friday.”

“I wish you a blessed holy day today, and a most wonderful holy feast…”

Happy Easter, dear friends. Let the vigil begin.
***

On Tuesday, I cooked dinner—middle-of-the-day dinner—in The Cellar. The housecleaners were working upstairs, first at our place and then at Mom and Dad’s apartment. It’s best to stay out of their way.

I cooked a teensy-tiny pork roast (to be accurate, it was a third of a half loin), mashed potatoes (because my dad loves them), and cabbage (because he also loves cabbage). He’s the tricky one for meal-planning; I knew Mom would be happy with whatever.

Speaking of Mom, she came over to visit while I was finishing up. She rolled in on Dolly, her shiny red Rollator walker, and said she had run out of bubble gum. I keep a huge glass jar filled with Double Bubble. When I can see the green table-top through the bottom, I know it’s time to go to the discount club for another tub.

“Maybe we should just eat down here,” she said, “and then you wouldn’t have to carry hot dishes up the stairs to the apartment.”

“We can,” I said. “I’ve finally cleaned the place up so I don’t think any of us would catch a disease.”

She laughed, but she knows The Cellar doesn’t get the attention that the rest of the compound gets. It’s off limits, even to the housekeepers. That means I’m the only one who cleans down here and I am only an occasional custodian.

“Well, that didn’t work,” she said. The bubble gum slipped right through Dolly’s wire basket. “What can I carry this stuff in?”

“Here, let me get you a bag,” I said, and handed her a zippered sandwich bag from the pantry shelf.

“Oh, I didn’t have to have a bag. I could have just used a coffee filter,” she said.

“A coffee filter?” I asked. I’m sure I winced and made forehead furrows with my brows.

“Just needed something to wrap it in. I don’t want you to go to too much trouble.” She turned Dolly around and sat on the seat.

“I think this roast is done, maybe the cornbread, too,” I said.

“We better go get Daddy,” she said.

I opened the back door. With the weather as warm as it is, Dad could be in any spot of greenery at any given time. Peas are planted, cabbage set, tomato stakes in the ground. He’s threatening to head down into the ravine to clean out some more brush and vines.

“I’m on my way,” I heard him say from the patio, just a few steps away.

“I bet you’d like a drink,” I said. Normally, he has his one drink at 5 P.M. but he had put in a good day’s work already. I figured he needed something to soothe the sore bones.

“Oh, I would. Will you make me one, Sis?”

I needed some milk for the potatoes, too, so I sprinted up the stairs and returned with an ounce-and-a-half of bourbon in one glass, two ounces of milk in the other. Back downstairs, I poured Diet Coke and plunked ice.

“Oh, that is good,” he said. “What do you hear from Dave?”

Dave went to Seattle last Saturday to be with his dying mother. His sisters and their spouses were there. I was here. Mom and Dad said they thought they were keeping me from being there to support Dave. I assured them that we had talked about it and decided that both he and I would be better off if I stayed home to run the household.

“I miss him,” Dad said. “You know, Mom and I have been talking about what we want when we go. I’ve decided I want a funeral right down here at South-end Methodist. Lady Ann can take care of it.” (Ann Cover, the pastor.)

“Well, I’m sure she can,” I said. “Does this mean you don’t want your service at Granville?” (Granville United Methodist is the church Dad was pastoring when he retired, at age 80.)

“No. We got to talking, and there’s not a handful of people we know left up there that would be able to come to a service.”

“Just lost your attachment, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess. Or maybe I’m attached here now. They’re all older than us, anyway, so if it’s hard for us to get around…”

“Well, whatever you decide.” I placed trivets and hot bowls on the table.

“You already have our Living Will,” Mom said. “And, next week, we’re going to sit down and plan our services. No need of you kids having to do that.”

“No. That’s true,” Dad said. “We don’t want you to have to do it, you know, when we could do it right now.”

“Well,” I said. “Let me grab this cornbread. Are you ready to eat?”

“I sure am,” Mom said. “I didn’t know I was hungry until I started smelling this dinner. It smells so good.”

They eased their legs under the table and swapped pork and potatoes.

“Let me dish you up some cabbage,” Mom said to Dad. “It’s hot as fire.”

I sat and speared a piece of pork, reached for the cabbage.

“Hooooooooooo, that cabbage is wonderful,” Mom said. “I mean, really good.”

“Everything is good,” Dad said. “This is the way I like to eat. Boiled cabbage, and it’s fixed exactly like I like it. It’s soft and it’s spicey.”

“I like it a little bit crunchier,” I said as I smiled in Dad’s direction, “but I know to cook it a little longer when you’re going to eat it.”

“Uh, uh, ummmmmm. Sooooo good,” Mom said. “What did you put in it?”

“Bacon, salt, pepper, onions…oh yeah, I chopped up an apple in it, too.”

“Apple?” Dad asked. “I don’t taste any apple.”

“No, but it sure helps it,” Mom answered. “It sweetens it a little.” She laid her fork down. “You know, I believe this is the best cabbage I ever ate, bar none.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “Oh, I forgot. I put some Tabasco in there, too.”

“Just the right amount,” Dad said.

“But I think it was the apple that really did it for this cabbage,” Mom said.

“I forgot to ask what Dave said about Mrs. Revell,” Dad said.

I told them she’s about the same, that she was slipping fast and that she could not live too much longer, especially since the advanced directive kicked in.

“I hope she doesn’t,” Dad said. “She was such a sweet little thing.” He recalled the time that she visited after Leo, my father-in-law, died.

Mom and Dad helped themselves to more cabbage, more cornbread, more potatoes. I remembered the first time I met Mary.

Dave and I went to Terry, Montana, the year before we married, to his aunt and uncle’s 50th anniversary party. Mary and Leo were staying at Terry’s hotel, a very loose term, I thought, for a short strip of flat-topped buildings on the edge of town. They looked like lawn sheds.

“I think they call these bungalows,” Dave said. He tapped on the door.

“It’s cocktail time,” Leo announced after the introductions. He produced a leather carrier with two worn spots for two bottles. Inside the top were little bands that snapped to hold a jigger, stirrer, and two glasses turned upside down over the bottle necks, a napkin for each to cushion the glass on glass.

“I’m ready,” Dave said. “Do you have another glass?”

“Get that glass in the bathroom,” Leo told Mary. She took three steps and turned around with a glass.

“We need one more,” Leo said. Mary turned again.

“No, thanks. I’m going to pass,” I said. “I’m not much for mixed drinks.”

“Are you a wino?” Mary asked. She had a big grin on her face, so I figured she was kidding.

“Yes, I guess I am,” I answered.

There was a big crowd at the celebration, a dinner at some kind of lodge. Family and friends joined in a cacophony of greetings and catching up. Uncle Floyd asked Dave to introduce his guest. Dave stood and pointed across the room, where I was practicing with a trio of cousins. We were to sing a song that one of the daughters wrote about their parents to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and we had to fit the rehearsal between guffaws and giggles.

Mary sidled up to me right after the song. “Did you hear how he introduced you?” she asked, a big grin spreading. “He called you, let’s see…” She started to chuckle.

“His ‘traveling companion and confidante.’ I heard him,” I said.

“‘Traveling companion and confidante’,” she repeated. She shook her head and laughed. “He’s always been a jokester. He reminds me so much of my brother. When Dave’s around, somebody’s always laughing. Bill was like that.”

I already knew about Bill. When Dave and family lived in Spokane, Bill would drop in to visit when he was in the area. But he always called and pretended to be someone else. Sometimes he faked an ethnic accent and pretended to be lost and in need of directions. One time he tried to confirm the address where he was to deliver ten large pizzas.

“Bill always kept something going,” Mary said. She wasn’t testing me to check my reaction to Dave’s “joke”; she was simply welcoming me to her “son of fun”.

Mary and Leo came to our April wedding and they returned to Nashville for Thanksgiving the same year. We observed cocktail hour, Leo and Dave with scotch and water, Mary with her bourbon. I intended to just have my glass of wine. But Mary said she felt like she was drinking alone and wished I would have a bourbon and water with her.

“Okay,” I finally said that first night, “but I’m mixing mine with Coke.”

I sipped. Mary sipped, daintily it seemed, but she finished ahead of me. Here she came, scooting around the kitchen island, her glass extended toward me.

“I’ll have a little refresher,” she said. I mixed another drink.

“You better have one, too,” she said.

“I’m not sure.” I wasn’t sure, but I tipped my glass and made room for another.

That midnight, I experienced the worst heartburn of my entire life which, at that time, was less than fifty years. I vowed, aloud, “No more.” But she sucked me into the same pattern the next night, and the one following the next. By the fourth evening, I made an air-cross in front of her when she started toward me.

“You’re not drinking tonight?” she asked.

“Well, Ma, I think I’m just going to have a little wine,” I said.

“Don’t you want a bourbon? With me?”

“I have enjoyed it, but you have drunk me under the table.”

“Oh, neither one of us has been drunk,” she said, shaking her head.

“No,” I answered, “but I can’t take the heartburn.”

“I’ll have a little refresher,” she said, and handed me her glass. “You just drink wine.”

Early in the week, Dave asked his mom to make an apple pie. “Not for Thanksgiving. Just for us,” he said.

I peeled and sliced Granny Smiths while Mary measured flour into a bowl for pie crust. “You know he’ll wind up eating apple pie for breakfast tomorrow,” I told her.

“Oh, yeah. I like pie for breakfast, too,” she said. “I’ve got a sweet tooth.”

“I could never make decent pie crust,” I said.

“I put an egg in mine,” she said.

I reached into the refrigerator for an egg. “An egg?” I said. “Interesting.”

I stopped and watched her ball up the yellow dough and take up the rolling pin.

“I bet you’ve had this rolling pin for a long time.”

“It was a wedding gift,” I said. “The first wedding.”

“What year was that?”

“1970,” I said.

She stopped rolling and looked at me. “I’m trying to remember what I was doing in 1970.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing in 1970—in 1970,” I said.

We both laughed and she said, “Well, one thing you did was you got two wonderful sons. Dave told me all about them. Did you know I had another son besides Dave? He died when he was a baby, from cystic fibrosis.”

“No, I didn’t know. That’s a hereditary disease, isn’t it? And none of the other kids had it?”

“Oh, there were two more that died as babies. They’re buried up at Ronan. That’s where Leo and I will be buried.”

When the pie came out of the oven, we only let it cool for about half an hour. The filling was sweet and tart—at the same time—and piecrust was good. I mean, really good.

“I believe this is the best piecrust I’ve ever tasted. It’s so flaky…and it tastes so good,” I said. This is the best I’ve ever had.”

“Put an egg in it,” she said.

Mary died peacefully last Wednesday night at home with Vicki, Dave, and Sandee at her side. She was cremated. We’ll take her ashes to Ronan in July to bury her with Leo and the babies. I like to imagine that she and Leo are doing all those things that gave them so much pleasure here: growing a couple hundred roses—mostly Old English varieties, hunting for mushrooms in the woods, or hiking up a hill to a huckleberry patch.

Maybe she’s already made a pie for Leo. I wonder if they ate pie for breakfast. I know the piecrust was good. Mary’s piecrust is the best I ever had. She always put an egg in it.
***

We’re changing doctors; well, Mom and Dad are. When we all first moved here on the ravine, we chose a primary care physician for them from a list provided by Dr. Scoville, Mom and Dad’s cardiologist. We couldn’t get in with the first on the list and the second was out of the country for a couple of months, so we went with the third. Dr. Scoville told us, “They are all fine doctors–but access is going to be very important for you. Choose one that’s available and has good coverage and one that you can be comfortable with.”

We loved this young physician, all of us. We described him to others and to ourselves as “sweet as he can be, and very laid-back.” Whenever we needed to see him, we could always get an appointment within a couple of days, usually the same day as the call. So why are we changing doctors when we got such good access?

Dr. Jones (Heavens, no, that’s not his real name!) has missed too much. Missed the mark. Been dead wrong–perhaps deadly wrong–on too many issues. There were also signs of frustrating inefficiency in billing and coding and office management.

We missed Dr. Jones’s first miss–I’ll explain. Both Mom and Dad had a complete physical in June. I remembered the conversation about his “swallowing problem” and his “stomach trouble” much too late (of course).

We brought a list of current medications, including vitamins and over-the-counter varieties. Dr. Jones asked, “Does the over-the-counter Prisolec take care of the problem?”

“No, not really. I guess it helps,” Dad answered. “But see, I have this problem and they’ve worked on it before. I have a blockage” (he patted his chest) “and they had to go in and stretch it.”

“Hiatal hernia,” I said. Dr. Jones nodded.

“He throws up a lot,” I said. He nodded again.

“Well, he said that’s the way it’s going to be,” Dad said, referring to his old doctor.

We went on to another subject and the physical was over. We left with instructions to continue the current course of medications, call if we needed him, and return for an annual check-up.

In January after that first physical, Dad took an ambulance trip to the hospital with untreated reflux that led to what we used to call “bleeding ulcers.” He was passed out on the floor and incoherent when those muscly EMT’s carried him down the apartment’s steep back stairs. After the hospital stay, he went to the rehabilitation facility for three weeks where they got him walking again.

Then Dr. Jones missed Mom’s gallbladder attack. A covering physician on a weekend called it (over the phone) and sent her to the emergency room. She had surgery the following day. Two misses by Dr. Jones. A few days later, I brought up perhaps looking for another doctor…

Number three was this past week’s diverticulitis. After two visits with Dr. Jones and prescriptions for reflux (yes…), I took Mom to the emergency room on Thursday where she got a CT scan, a quick diagnosis, and some prescriptive antibiotics.

I did not begin the conversation this time about finding a new doctor. Mom did. We have a new, long list of internists and family practice caregivers to choose from. We’ll find a good one, already have one in mind.

The thought occurred that, yes, access is important, but it’s not the only thing.

“Access” has come up in conversation around The Compound several times lately; I suppose you could say “access as it relates to politics“. Politics is defined by my online dictionary as  “of or related to the citizenry, the state, the government, public affairs, public administration, policy-making…” Mom and Dad and Dave and I talk a lot of that sort of politics.

Last week, we agreed that access is almost the only thing for a very large group of people around the country–well, even right here in our own city. Vanderbilt and St. Thomas have done a good job of locating clinics in communities with low access to transportation across town. But we all know that the uninsured in line for treatment in those local clinics–as well as the emergency room–are but a fraction of those without the ability to pay for healthcare. Mostly, the uninsured go without care. Most wouldn’t go to the doctor with a bellyache, even a bad one. I think of my friend who chooses to pass kidney stones alone, at home, because she just can’t face owing thousands of dollars for a trip to the ER.

Most of the uninsured go without maintenance medications, those pills and elixirs to control high blood pressure, hyperthyroidism, cholesterol–and reflux. Those who are fortunate enough to get treatment at a clinic or emergency room may not fill the resulting prescriptions. They may have access to a pharmacy but lack the means to pay.

Just a couple of days ago, we talked about another kind of access, access to food. Groceries.

There are areas of town that are named “food deserts.” Those who have taken up the mission of feeding the hungry know about these areas where the only place to shop, if there is one, is a small corner “stop and go”. Sometimes the prices in such places are double what one would see in a larger grocery store. Sometimes that’s the result of price-gouging, but many times the higher prices are what allow that merchant to be there. Many times, that corner market is the only place accessible on foot.

For our neighbors who live in food deserts, access is critical…but it’s not the only thing. One has to have means.

Now, here on the ravine, if we don’t like the looks of the grapes at Kroger, we go to Publix. Or Wal-Mart. Or Maxwell’s. Or Harris Teeter. Mom can’t find canned purple plums except for at one location, so we just add that store as an occasional stop. In the summertime, we make trips downtown to the Farmer’s Market for squash, tomatoes–several varieties, melons, peaches, greens…I can’t remember it all. One of the wholesale clubs is our PRN stop. (PRN…a medical notation for “as needed.”) We order teas and spices online.

Do we have access, or what? And means. We have means.

The Kroger at Elysian Fields closed last week. I wonder if that creates a new food desert in Nashville. That closing has to eliminate access for some somebodies, and if that Kroger’s shoppers find a new store, it just may take more means to get there, more means to pay there.

Change doctors? We can do that. Choose between food stores? We can do that. Drive pretty much where we want? Yes.

We have access. But it’s not the only thing.

 

Please allow me to share our Christmas letter for 2011.

2011 Newsletter