MADNESS AND LOVE MIXED: Interlude — The Home and the Heart

We smell the scents of Thanksgiving swirling through the multilayered veil of mercy. Stuffing, buttered biscuits, gravy over mashed potatoes, green beans, yams, turnips, ham, chicken and turkey, cranberries and pickles set neatly in crystal dishes.

We see the family bustling in a narrow, galley-style kitchen with a black range. Our mother—an older vision of who we might have looked like had we aged so gracefully—moves with that careful, measured smile as pristine as a brisk winter’s morn and twice as rare.
She’ll bustle in tomorrow wearing her blue vest over a festive red turtleneck, ruby earrings shining against her stunning white hair. She is us in twenty-some years. She leans over to check the turkey, steam escaping in a heavy gout. She waves it away, leaning back.
We ghost through Thursday’s memory today, smiling at what we will not see.

From the pantry at the far end of the galley steps our older, shorter sibling. Still dyeing her hair to hide her age. We consider again why she cannot see that beauty begins within before it ever manifests without. We must be so consumed with internal alignment that we quake at the thought of rebellion against it. She looks tired—the kind of tired only a single mother of two beautiful kids can carry. Lined. Trying to use foundation to hide it, failing. Flustered.
She gives off serious Martha-from-Bethany vibes: a pure heart, but missing the truth of her own battleground.

We drift to the dining room through the curtained pantry, phasing through the fabric like a breeze. Past the dim laundry room on the left and the wobbling machines protesting the load. Through the living room to our right, bathroom down the hall to the left.
And there he is—our dad.

Tired, sleeping with his mouth open in his leather mechanical recliner. Snoring fitfully like a man haunted and broken, yet still clinging to the ignorant blessing of not knowing his own sorrow.
We weep within the cupped hands of our soul—for him, and for who we once wished he might have been. We know the cost.
He startles awake.

For a moment—just a sharp flicker—we see the stunning intelligence, the native and trained cunning, the spiritual perception. He senses our ethereal pre-presence as Spirit.
And then, like every time before, he sloughs it off like a lazy barnyard hog under direct light.

We chuckle softly and slip further along, passing the kitchen to our left, bathroom behind, syncing more fully into eternity’s layer so we don’t alert the most perceptive and most easily deceived younger sister. She looks like us if we shaved ten years, gained a few pounds, and lost a few inches. Younger, more vibrant, still tangled in the pathological lies she’s believed since childhood. If only she could see that her goodness needs no embellishment.

We round the corner into the second living room where Kody the massive husky lounges in her tan recliner and Lady the old golden retriever rests on her blanket-covered maroon couch. Both flick their intelligent eyes toward us as we turn again to the dining room.
There stands the Table—massive, square, well-crafted.

The table our dad built himself. His craft and care etched into every joint. Our soul aches wishing he approached family with half the mindfulness he gave to wood.

We see our niece Niya with her fiancé Mat seated along the left wall. They laugh, sharing private conversations behind her raised hand. Her hair is braided in twisties—blonde for a change—radiant against her warm manilla skin. Mat smiles along, polo crisp, golden aviators gleaming, collar popped.
They are in love, and we observe with compassion.

To our right sits the son that was never born, staring suspiciously at the printer like it offended him. His hair is freshly cut, clothes chosen carefully, presentation sharp.
We smile, wishing he could see how we see him—radiant, foolish, beloved. Both family and child. A silly kid needing time to play with his toys, even the ones that aren’t technically toys, like 3D printers.

We gave you all we had, and still give—leaving you the legacy all mothers never allowed to bear must leave. Brown hair shot through with white, goatee trimmed, wearing the green Montana sweatshirt we bought you. You smile as you observe, tired circles beneath your eyes like you stayed up a little too late playing a game with us.

We see the table as it stands—laden with food and nourishment beyond the physical. And we understand that the truth of the holiday is not about the eating, but the sharing of the same familial bread. To eat the presence of one another as a body and embodied family, to sup on the shared love, to banish the disturbances.

Perhaps the truth is this:
We must swallow division with Love in all its forms, even when it costs us everything.
We must become the thing we wish to receive before we can ever receive it.

We slowly step back from the future layer and return to the present where we sit with little Louie curled at our feet, guarding us from stray drafts and wandering cold.
Steiner snoozes and snuffles softly as we settle again into the Ever-Present Now by way of two days hence.

Until the next pre-whiff of revelation.
Or ham.