Thanks to Todd

I always look forward to Thanksgiving, to filling up on food and family, but this year I anticipated its arrival with more eagerness than ever. My brother was visiting, heightening the occasion to new levels of affection and culinary competence. His presence is always a solace, an aid to my anxiety even when he purposefully annoys me, but I crave his comfort more than ever lately. After all the changes in our respective lives, his stability cures my near-constant aching. He's my always brother, our names spoken in succession when we were young as if we were not two but one. 

We met at Bastille in Ballard, where I had swarmed the farmers market with half of Seattle to procure fresh produce for the upcoming feast. There I waited, sipping on sparkling rose for lack of pen and paper, and waited, waited for the moment when he would walk in, blond hair, red beard, black eyebrows and perfectly my brother from head to toe, and grab me in a just-right sized hug. 

The waiting and anticipation, I think, extends his too-short stay. And the way I miss him now so much, after he is gone, is itself a lingering of his presence.

When Thursday arrived, the sun creeping through thick-slatted blinds in my mother's sewing room, Todd and Mama and I assembled ourselves slowly. The three of us, the core and heart of my family, sat at the kitchen table, a hub around which the rest of the house awoke and revolved out of sight, as they read Black Friday coupons and I the comics and obituaries, digging into a Costco pack of croissants. Todd cut out and handed me an ad for an Easy Bake Oven, always the thoughtful older brother. I listened to him and my mother discuss the price of Sonicare toothbrushes with complete earnestness. Tentatively fed, Mama and I ventured out for the mythical "last quick trip" to the grocery store as Todd and his new wife stayed behind to prepare for the day. Upon returning, we walked the dog through the wetlands near Mama's home. 

In the early afternoon we finally settled into our three separate stations in the kitchen, my mother armed with recipes, my brother with passion and I with my new knife skills, ready to together create Thanksgiving for a dozen people. I played sous chef, chopping vegetables for my mother's dressing, peeling potatoes for Todd's roasted garlic mashed potatoes and finally rolling out dough for my own impromptu pear-apple-cranberry pie and julienning celery root, parsnips and golden beets for my side of slaw. 

We spun around each other like three whirlwinds, each focused on managing our own projects but lending help as needed, my brother and I lost in my mother's maze of a kitchen. Hours flew by in minutes as we measured and sweated and stirred, my brother concocting a chicken heart dish and a cranberry relish, my mother simmering stock for the gravy, roasting one turkey as my step father deep fried another, and I loved them and pined over the dishes we stored on the cold porch, keeping my pumpkin cheesecake company. 

Guests arrived, walked into the kitchen, poured themselves wine and then quickly backed away. Later, of course with the feast laid out and the turkey carved, we couldn't convince the kids or parents to end their games. Todd's chicken hearts stole the show, at least on my plate. Our soon-to-be-step-sister-in-law looked on horrified as Todd and I popped the whole hearts into our mouths and his wife cut them daintily to ogle the anatomy. Halving one like a perfect textbook diagram, she pierced it with her fork and shoved it in Nancy's direction saying "Look, it's really a heart!" Nancy cringed in complete horror. These are the moments I treasure. 

In the Thanksgiving-themed focus of food and family, I have to remember that the latter is always changing. My step-sister and her two children recently moved from California and are living at Mama's house, my step-brother is recently engaged, my brother recently remarried, and I'm recently broken up. Bugs' parents and brother had joined our clan for the past two Thanksgivings, and I don't want to say that their absence this year left a gaping hole or anything, but they're certainly missed on some level and the whole affair felt different. There was a certainly a lower wine consumption, largely in part to Todd's and his wife's religiously-rooted abstinence. 

The grandkids went to bed around the time that Lacy and The D arrived for dessert, bearing pumpkin and cinnamon gelato. Mama and I drank port and we all laughed over lost games, and I ate seconds of both my cheesecake and pie. I'd take seconds on all of it if I could. Seconds on the cooking and clinking our classes in thanks, seconds on the hello hugs and good-by hugs, on Todd's chicken hearts and card games and the late bus ride home with tupperware.