Life is not an adaptation of a famous cartoon strip. Maybe.

January 29, 2007 | Category: In My Life

!00 and some days ago, it rained.

I made a pot of soup.

I'm always making a pot of soup.

How many hours have passed over days, weeks, months? With my shoulderblades dancing as I chop-chop-chop with my favorite blade against the plastic cutting board. Maybe slower now, since being sick. Maybe more of a waltz, or a tango - chop-stop-puff-chop....

The snap of the carrots. The wet shuffle through the onion. The slicing long into the heart of the celery.

The steam tickling up from the silvery stock pot as the mirepoix boils.

The feel of the counter pressing into my back as I ponder up where to go with my prepared canvas.

An amethyst swirl of beets? The earthen bubble of puffy white mushrooms? The tang, with a fistful of fresh basil, of simmering tomatoes? Or a do I twist back to the onions, cutting long loopy curls? Reach for a fine port to share with the pot - a sip for me, a gulp for the soup.

It has been a rainy autumn. A rainy winter. It has been mud tracked through my house so thick that, unmopped, it hardens into something that takes scraping off with a butter knife... and much muttering of swear words.

Spiders huddling in our corners.

We waited for the brittle cold, that still has only flown through here and not yet stayed. We salted the stairs again and again, ripping the paint down to wood with all that salt. But no ice to save us from.

The winds have howled through our attic. They have gnashed at our trees, ripping through limbs. Sticks rain down in the night, to be gathered in the morning.

Little damages. Cracked birdfeeders. Scratches on the cars.

We dip the green-sapped sticks in old candle wax, and use them to start great roaring fires in the fireplace. And then, when the rain slips down the chimney, it makes a sudden hiss. And a pop.

It's a long 3 months to be forever refilling the windshield wiper fluid. To be seeing different doctors. To be making and taking appointments long put off. Of stunning moments of clarity that I have not let my shame pull me from.

But I'm not there yet, in stitching it together. I am still remembering the soups. The recipes, all in my head. The different steams and tones and jewels of it all.

I'm remembering the hours spent with my Bear-cub beside me, measuring. Making himself sandwiches. Wrinkling his gorgeous freckled nose at my soup even as he learned to read by recipes, held with a magnet on a can of chicken stock.

Rolling around in the big bed in the dusky afternoon. Maybe one of us jumping, a little. Full of soup and sandwich snack. Waiting for Daddy to come home so we can be all together, our little family.

Meanwhile, pushing my leaping cub to pay attention, to point out the words he knows as we read from a a big book full of vibrant cartoons about a red-headed boy (yes, like you, beautiful Bear) and his friend, a tiger (yes, like your own tiger there, tucked under your arm.)

"It's a magical world, Hobbes, 'ol buddy..." we read. Admiring that the boy gets to be in front of the sled. And that the tiger gets a bright scarf.

And they shove off, down a hill. "...Let's go exploring!" he shouts into the wind.

"Where's the more?" Bear asks me, leaning down from his jumping to turn the page, only to find there are no more pages to turn.

"There is no more," I tell him.

"Of the book?"

"Of all the books. That was the last thing the cartoonist drew of Calvin and Hobbes. This is the end."

Bear stops leaping all together. He huffs, standing still. "No," he says.

"Yes," I refute, flipping the book to the back cover again.

"No, Mommy. Member? They're going exploring. That's the begining. We just don't get to watch anymore."

Oh, I think.

There is something important here. Something in this moment, in the gloaming of the winter sundown. In this exact space on this crumpled bed.

Something....

"I'm home!" CD shouts, bursting in with wild winds slamming the doors open as exclamation. Bear spings off the bed with a high bounce and a shout, "Daddy!" And I follow, more slowly.

Something. Almost ready to be known.

(to be continued...)

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