Jam-Tinted Toast

Yesterday I was putting jam on toast, and I had a vivid, spontaneous image of my father doing the same when I was a little girl. He had just come home from the hospital after his first heart attack, and he was feeling hopeful, cheerily committed to developing healthier habits. He was showing me that you apply the jam, then scrape it off, so that what you have is just a tint of jam on the bread. That gesture, his voice in my head...it was as though he were there with me as I tinted my toast. I love how funny, random little memories like that are gifted to us. I have a vast repository of these, and none of them seem trivial.

So my day started in sweetness, and then I walked with Kelley along roads we walked when we were young. Kelley and I met when we were teachers together, becoming closer when we escorted the 8th graders to Washington, D.C. We were friends through deaths of parents and siblings, marriages and births, and many other passages over the decades. We traveled to New York for our 55th birthdays, strolling across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan to visit the rose garden at the Botanical Garden, walking to the Frick museum in pouring rain, dazzled in Times Square at the exact moment of Manhattanhenge, our presence in that very instant pure serendipity. And now we are a pair of grandmothers in a pandemic, taking time out for masked tea on a rock by a dried up creek, careful to avoid the poison oak.

And in the evening, in the course of a zoom conversation with some other friends, one of them, Joey, shared an epiphany she’d had about how to respond in the aftermath of the election, the incumbent’s refusal to concede, and the noise and obstruction of his followers, who seem so alien and brainwashed. She is a lovely person, my friend Joey, the kind who makes you want to be a little nicer to everyone. Her realization was that it is essential that we do not hate, and that we find pathways that allow options and dignity even to those who opposed us. In other words, we need to take the high road, and not become what we loathe in others. She didn’t say this in a preachy way, but rather gentle and maternal. She seemed luminous when she spoke, and certain. Despite anger and exasperation, I hereby resolve to try harder to set an example and navigate gracefully. We’ll see how it goes.

We’ve all been held hostage on a runaway train, but now we're getting a steadier captain, and we need to figure out how we can help on this shared journey. There’s always a poem, for starters…maybe many. How pleased I was to come across this one by Nikki Giovanni:

“It’s a journey . . . that I propose . . . I am not the guide . . . nor technical assistant . . . I will be your fellow passenger . . .

Though the rail has been ridden . . . winter clouds cover . . . autumn’s exuberant quilt . . . we must provide our own guide-posts . . .

I have heard . . . from previous visitors . . . the road washes out sometimes . . . and passengers are compelled . . . to continue groping . . . or turn back . . . I am not afraid . . .

I am not afraid . . . of rough spots . . . or lonely times . . . I don’t fear . . . the success of this endeavor . . . I am Ra . . . in a space ...not to be discovered . . . but invented . . .

I promise you nothing . . . I accept your promise . . . of the same we are simply riding . . . a wave . . . that may carry . . . or crash . . .

It’s a journey . . . and I want . . . to go . . .”

I’m almost ready, fortified by jam-tinted toast and cowboy coffee and the presence of my beloved dead on the seat beside me. In the meantime, I am thrilled by the light and low tides, and I feel remarkably complete. The wind has left a tumble of oranges beneath the trees, and bright memories are rolling around in my head, and everything I know is telling me to make this journey count, and do it with a flourish.