Thanksgiving Musings

‘Tis the Season and I am sitting before a fire (OK it’s Prescott AZ so it’s a gas fire.) enjoying a second cuppa --a very strong, rich but ‘decaffed’  (My word to avoid all the ie, ei spelling issues, so sue me!) brew, colored with half and half to a mellow hue that works for me, but perhaps not for you.

I just drove 3000 miles to east Texas to visit family, leaving October 30 and back on my birthday Nov. 15, all this well before Thanksgiving, right?  And yet Christmas music, decorations, and demands to buy gifts NOW assaulted the senses all along the way.  Thanksgiving felt as if it received short shrift out in the world of money.  That’s  perhaps just fine with me for I prefer Thanksgiving.  I love the time of year.  Depending on where you live Stateside, you may be in the full throes of autumn colors, flirting with winter or grateful for that first norther that blows into the south and drops temperatures as much as 30 degrees in fifteen minutes.  I love that Thanksgiving gives us few to no reasons to separate ourselves along lines of faith or how we practice our faith.  We can all give thanks without getting in the other person’s face.  

I suppose vegetarians and meat lovers might yammer away at one another.  And there is always the GREAT DEBATE on Yankee stuffing made with stale white bread vs Southern dressing made with stale cornbread—the former tasting gummy and tasteless to southerners and the latter tasting grainy and perhaps just foreign to northerners.  But I noticed at the Ruffner/Markham/Otwell 48 year old, outdoor  Thanksgiving  celebration, the subject did not arise and both styles graced the groaning board.  

This local family tradition begins with Cowboy Coffee, made by matriarch and good friend, Elisabeth Ruffner.   The coffee grounds are tied in a cheese cloth and dropped gently into boiling water.  After steeping to some mysterious point that Elisabeth knows in her bones, you get a coffee that you can’t see through  (Yaaayyy!!) and guaranteed to float a horseshoe and of course when you get home, you have to check for extra hair on your chest.  All this is done over an open fire out in a meadow with mountains scalloping the horizon,  hard blue skies, a light, cooling breeze---ah perfection my friends.  Absolute perfection and we haven’t even gotten to the food, conviviality of old friends, the making of new friends, the chance to feed an apple to one of several horses, the scrunching of a canine guest’s ears.

We were missing a few friends who have passed on, but although we felt their absence we are grateful to have had them in our lives.  So I’m thankful for Thanksgiving—no presents to buy, not many triggers for arguments (sporting events notwithstanding), gorgeous food, family traditions, remembrance of that very first Thanksgiving --when the gratitude perhaps had more at stake, survival itself and the hope and expectation of a new life to create out of an unknown land, but a place made bountiful through the knowledge shared with our forebears by those who had already come before them in their own search for a new life.

I really love Thanksgiving...

Meditation on Touch

A few weeks back I tasked myself with writing a monologue for performance.  I've written about eight to date, but ideas weren't coming at the time and I decided to simply write two sentences and then follow wherever they led.  Below is the piece that came from that exercise. When I finished, I realized how important touch is to our species. Comments welcome.

I don't know how long I've been here.  Do you? Some times when I sit really still in that corner over there and lean into the seam where the walls come together and close my eyes, I become the room.  The room breathes with me, completely in sync, until I can't tell where my body ends and the room begins.  And I imagine the walls and the floor becoming soft.  My body sinks into that softness and then the warmth comes.  I feel small, and wound in a cocoon of flannel.  I look up and see a face with blue eyes, full lips curved in a smile and then the finger comes and touches my nose; the knuckle grazes my cheek; the hand  cups my head.  My heart grows still; all my nerves concentrate on that hand.  I stare into the eyes of this stranger who will not long be a stranger--my mother.


I don't know how long I've been here.  Do you? Some times when I sit really still in that other corner over there and lean into the seam where the walls come together and close my eyes, I become the room.  The room breathes with me, completely in sync, until I can't tell where my body ends and the room begins. The wall and the ceiling take on the shape, the feel of a bed.  I'm lying on my back, knees bent and I watch as the big, tanned rough hewn hands gently take my feet, tickle them and then begin rotating them like the crankshaft on a steam engine, slowly at first and then fast and faster...faster and faster until the face above the hands b reaks out in laughter and my little body confulses with giggles.  Then I'm pulled into the air against a huge chest smelling of tobacco, Old Spice and feel a beating heart not my own, but my father's.

I don't know how long I've been here.  Do you? Some times when I sit really still in that third corner over there and lean into the seam where the walls come together and close my eyes, I become the room.  The room breathes with me, completely in sync, until I can't tell where my body ends and the room begins.  The floor becomes grass and the walls the rough bark of a tree.  I feel hot tears slipping down my face.  Then a paw, slight, on my leg and then another, heavier, and a cold touch against my nose, a raspy, wet stroke across my cheek, furry warmth burrowing under my crossed arms, forcing them  open.  My hands knead the contours of the body, feel the comfort of bone and sinew, the touch of compassion from my four footed friend.

I don't know how long I've been here.  Do you? Some times when I sit really still in that last corner over there and lean into the seam where the walls come together and close my eyes, I become the room.  The room breathes with me, completely in sync, until I can't tell where my body ends and the room begins.  And the floor becomes damp sand and the walls his  body--arms encircling me, legs twining with mine, skin against skin, damp, cool, lips against my neck, breath tickling my ear, heart beating against my back, droplets of water from his hair tracing their way down waterways between my breasts.  An ocean of touch--the touch of my lover.

I don't know how long I've been here.  Do you? Some times when I sit really still  on the floor and  close my eyes, I become the room.  The room breathes with me, completely in sync, until I can't tell where my body ends and the room begins.  And the floor becomes a meadow of flowers swaying lazily in a warm breeze.  My hands spread across the expanse of belly and I grow still, listening and seeing with fingertips and there it is, the somersaulting of life, the tiny punch of hand and foot--this, our first, most intimate touch--the touch of my child.


I don't know how long I've been here.  Do you? I've all but forgotten touch, the touch of anything, anything living, alive with pulsing, warmth,with...Life.  All I know is the touch of these walls, this floor-- hard, unyielding, cold.  I long for touch with a pain that threatens to unravel me.  Some times when I stand really still in the center of the room and close my eyes, I become the room.  The room breathes with me, completely in sync, until I can't tell where my body ends and the room begins.  And I wait; I wait for touch  to come, any touch.  It does not come.  A moment of terror, of despair, of unutterable loss wells up. Then I take a deep breath and smile, close my eyes, imagine my body expanding outward into the walls, into the beyond, into the forever and then it comes, finally, the touch of a hand on my head, gently caressing, so slight that  I think I almost imagine it and the walls and floor and ceiling dissolve and I am enveloped in touch, touched by pure touch, touch that feeds the spirit and erases all pain.  Touch that tells me I exist, that I am here now, and that I am not alone.


I don't know how long I've been here.  Do you?  That's OK.  It doesn't matter--because when I close  my eyes and smile, you touch me.