The Empty Spot at the Table

My old friend Felicia writes a blog called "The Gratitude Project" in which she gently explores the effects of incorporating conscious expressions of gratefulness into our daily lives. Last Thanksgiving, she let me write a guest column. This year, I reclaim it.

“Let me start by saying thank you to Felicia for inviting me to make a guest appearance. This is hugely satisfying to someone who grew up rehearsing what she’d say to David Letterman in the unlikely event that she was not busy delivering a thank you speech at the Academy Awards. In fact, I have spent much of my life practicing saying “Thank you” for honors that I never received.

In other words, gratitude is more complex than my parents ever taught me. After meals, my sisters and I would fold our hands, bow our heads, and give thanks for the food we’d just eaten or else surreptitiously fed to the dog under the dining room table. “We thank Thee, Lord, for meat and drink; we thank Thee, Lord, for everything: Amen.”

How nice it was to cover everything so quickly, and believe me, many speed records were set at that dinner table! Turns out only one thing was missing from that everything: Meaning. You see, meaning comes with naming. English teachers are not the only ones scribbling “Too vague. Be more specific” in the margins of our life stories. What we fail to name will elude us, just as certainly as, even if, as in Orthodox Judaism, we give it a name so holy we dare not pronounce it. Naming adds meaning and momentum.

At the dinner table of my childhood years, no one was really grateful, except maybe those who’d experienced the Great Depression years. At my family’s Thanksgiving table today, though, before the soup tureen is brought out with its tantalizing curls of steam spilling out the ladle slot, there will be a wide mouthed ceramic urn in the middle of the table. In this urn will be as many little slips as I can stand writing out the night before, each about the size of a fortune cookie paper. The urn will get passed around the table and each of us in turn will reach in and pick a slip to read aloud and complete.

“This morning I was grateful for clear skies for my drive here,” says Auntie Jo, beaming more brightly than any November sunshine. “The last time I got really sick, I was thankful for Kleenex with aloe and for over the counter Claritin,” Kenny announces without hesitation. “What I am thankful for more often than anything else is health,” says Jesse, to a chorus of “Boo!” and “Too boring!” “Right now, I would like to give a special thanks that Aunt Nancy stopped trying to improve her absolutely perfect dressing recipe finally and putting things like chestnuts in it!” says Madeline.

Everyone will get to speak a specific gratitude. Some people will answer in a way that makes us laugh. Almost everyone’s answer will bring out smiles. Some will be so serious that we all grow somber for a minute; others will send us into giggles. Almost assuredly at least one reply will provoke a little political repartee and another, probably from my dad, will elicit groans because it will be something predictable about patriotism that he manages to get in every year.

And when my mom answers, no matter what she says, we will all struggle not to cry because this year is the last time she will be at the table with us; her time on earth is very close to being done. Every answer will bind us more closely.

We are most grateful for her and for the years we have had together, rushing through our table prayers, spinning through our bedtime prayers, mumbling through the endless church prayers, but thankful every minute for the love that holds us together around this fine old table. This year, wherever you are, speak some specific gratitude. Tell someone you are thankful for the love or just the plain old time and the stories they have shared with you. Tell them even if you need to call them on the telephone. You don’t always get another chance, which is no less true just because you’ve heard it before."

My mom was not with us at

this year's table. I don't even believe she was watching us from above, despite the fact that my Dad would like us to believe she is. And yet here we are around the table again, still laughing, telling bad jokes and embarrassing stories, and grateful for everything that allows us to gather again.

A Thanksgiving Poem for You

Things I Didn't Know I Loved
by Nazim Hikmet
translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
Koktebele
formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side

I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
except the Sea of Azov
or how much

I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

19 April 1962
Moscow

Envisioning a New Egypt

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Let’s ask Ahmed Harara about that. Ahmed Harara is the young Egyptian who lost one eye in the violence around Cairo’s Tahrir Square this January 29. A rubber bullet is really as good as a metal slug where the destruction of soft tissue is involved. Ahmed, along with the scores of other stalwart and inspired Egyptians who filled the central square of Cairo with a new and rousing cry for freedom, found the deposing of the Tyrant Mubarak ample recompense for the patch he wore over his left eye socket.

It’s now ten months later. During those intervening months, Tahrir Square resumed the steady flow of traffic in a whirling dervish of a dance around its curves. Hawkers along the curbs sold mementoes—flags and tee shirts, posters and scarves – commemorating the ouster of Mubarak on January 25. Now, Ahmed, along with tens of thousands of stalwart and inspired Egyptians, has returned to Tahrir Square. On November 19 Ahmed was there to protest the military government which took hold of the reins of power this winter. This gathering, too, has cost Ahmed dearly. He now wears two patches. Ahmed Harara is blind.

A friend of mine in Cairo, an idealistic young man who would probably take issue with that adjective, thinking himself a firm realist, is also back on the Square. He writes, “Cairo is the only place where the young are not afraid to die but are still afraid to tell their parents they’re heading over to Tahrir Square.”

Here in the US, it’s so easy to be scornful of what the Egyptians are trying to accomplish. “Did they actually think that the military would voluntarily relinquish power?” my learned friends, safely tenured, write on Facebook.

No. They did not. But they dared to hope that the incredible pulses of the Arab Spring might coalesce into a current so strong that only the lightest of flowers and the purest of intentions would float on its forward historic waves. And hope, more than knowledge, is what carries a revolution to conclusion.

The Egyptians are doing a mighty endeavor. Conciliatory gestures and charades are being repulsed by the demonstrators. The Islamic Brotherhood along with the military government is scratching its covered heads.

Whether or not the demonstrators

in Tahrir Square win, they are fighting the good fight. And having given both their eyes, they are still facing tanks and rifles with cobblestones.

ADDENDUM: Several days later, as protests continue and public support for protests builds, the host of the popular evening talk show had the following to say, “They want us to believe that our eyes do not see what they see, that even when they see they don’t see, and that if they indeed see, it means nothing?’ ”

A Bad Case of the Clap

I live in a small city with an outsized cultural agenda. Living in a place that is consistently in the top three best educated cities in the US has significant cultural advantages. Education and erudition are old bedfellows, and while formal education has terminal points for most of us, erudition requires constant feeding, for unfed erudition is better known as its ignominious alter ego, pedagogy. In my little city, we enjoy almost constant intravenous feeding of lectures, exhibits and theatre, of choral and orchestral music, of the best intellects of Europe and Asia and even America, along with outstanding artists from every corner of the world, including our home state of Wisconsin.

This is among the enduring reasons life is good here, almost compensating, if the show is good and the post show conversation stimulating, for the unfathomably frigid winters and the sweltering sweatiness of the suds sweetened summers. And it’s no wonder performers agree to present their works here; it’s the Land of the Standing Ovation.

Seriously. It doesn’t matter what

you do on stage here, the crowd will rise to its feet. Oh sure. Sometimes the audience is slow. Sometimes it takes a few bows onstage before the first faltering fan pushes to her feet. Then her seatmate rises, followed by the couple behind them, whose view of the stage is now blocked. Eventually, if painfully, the whole audience is standing, clapping like a beach full of seals.

Here’s a guideline people in small cities need to apply. If you find yourself debating whether to stand to applaud a performance,

then don’t. Standing ovations are not meant to be the result of a meditated decision making process. Standing ovations are impulsive, irresistible manifestations of exultant joy and satisfaction with the material presented. One stands because one cannot stay seated.

And I do not mean those who would stand because they are so tired of sitting that they just cannot wait another second to leave the theatre.

Please. For the sake of all of us

who value legitimate expressions of appreciation, keep your approbation appropriate. When you demean your expression of gratitude, you demean the value of our striving for greatness as well.

O Tannenbaum, Darn Tannenbaum

I hate to say this, but the Gub's right, and for once I am not alluding to the orientation of his alation.

Wisconsin's governor announced yesterday that the tree going up soon in the rotunda of our beloved capitol building is in fact a Christmas tree, not, as it's been formally called, since 1985, a "holiday tree."

There is no generic holiday tree, unless

of course you count the Festivus Pole as a tree. (Do you know that in 2005 Democratic Governor Jim Doyle did actually erect a Festivus Pole in the Governor's Mansion? It's now in the State Historical Museum.) But an evergreen tree lavishly decorated with strings of lights and shiny objects is, let's be frank, a Christmas tree. Ironically, it is a Christian symbol with avowed pagan origins, a connection to both a pagan past and the present commercialization of Christmas that some of the stricter Christian denominations actually view it as anti-Christian. (Could we make a successful judicial argument for removing the tree from the capitol based on its anti-Christian nature?)

From any perspective, a Christmas tree or a holiday tree does not belong in a government building. Except perhaps the Governor's Mansion, which is, after all, a residence in which a family lives and enjoys free speech. Deck the halls with lights since we are all craving light in the dark heart of winter, but don't string them on an evergreen.

We need to be vigilant about keeping the right of free speech distinct and entirely separate from any governmental right to preach. Let the shops around the Capitol put up trees if they choose.

The Androgyny of Being and Nothingness

There is a member of my family who was born about 20 years ago, a single child to two intelligent and loving parents who have somehow managed to stay married through all the inevitable and largely unremarkable challenges to that status. The three of them have lived with much happiness and only occasional sorrow in a nice house in a good school district with solid careers. This 20-year-old is someone with whom both my own children have spent prolonged visits, at both houses, even when we have lived on opposite sides of the country. This person has been, in short, a close relative, known, loved and always welcomed.

But let's stop there for a moment, among all those flashing past tenses of verbs that do best when they continue into the present. Does my description of this relative seem puzzling in its emptiness, vague in its pronouns,

lacking the intimacy one might reasonably expect from an opening paragraph about someone not only well-known, but allegedly well-liked? If you thought so, you might also intuit that right now as I type, I am nodding. This is an empty description of a young person who has been a part of my life for two full decades already. You really know nothing from what I've said here. Why?

This is an issue I call a gender-bender. This relative is at present deeply immersed and dedicated to the prospect of becoming gender neutral. And I hereby confess that I am finding it challenging to know how to go forth as if it doesn't matter that there is no longer a pronoun to use, to know that all the customary labels that have allowed me to fit this young person into my life: niece/nephew/grandson/granddaughter/boy/girl/woman/man have all been scraped into the disposal by the concept of androgyny. It has no androgynous handle. There is no mail carrier here or fisher or flight attendant. This relative is not an occupation.

Even the first name by which I knew this person as a child is gone now. It was too suggestive of definition, not of gender perhaps but of sex. I've unfriended this once close relative on Facebook because the photos I saw made me uncomfortable, saturated as they were with sexual transformation and the reformation of identity. I don't care if my relatives are male or female, but if there is no word for them, then how far can conversation go? We are not just individuals, possessed of one identifying name. This is not some stranger, whom I can introduce to you by saying, "This is The Relative Formerly Known as *. Asterisk is a student. Asterisk wants to be a singer when * is done with college." No. My relationship with * is familial. Asterisk is my....

It's complex. When the first name we'd used for 18 years was replaced with a new one, there were some murmurings in the family. "I only know the person of the old name...I love the person with the old name...what happened to that person?" It's just a name. A rose by any name, etc. But if this was really true, why would the rose rename itself a mum? Like I said, it's complex. Secretly, it makes me glad I've never had a significant identity crisis.

I don't know. Right now, it feels, for lack of language, that I've lost *. Language is part of every revolution. I'm ready for some new language here, that will enable me to reconnect with my lost *, and I'm really hoping it's not like some of the language that came out of the women's movement, the "wimyn" and the "woperchildren." If we have a chance to start using new words, couldn't they please be words fit for poetry?

You Can't Take a Helicopter to Heaven

It's been nearly a month since Apple founder Steve Jobs died at the age of 56 of pancreatic cancer. He is no longer on the cover of magazines. The piles of flowers and

the posters and letters heaped in front of Apple stores have been cleared away and replaced by a single nice clean Apple-endorsed image of a candle flickering within the Apple icon. The story is pretty much over.

Well, pretty much. Except for the bone pickings of loonies who have nothing better to do than to criticize the dead, and I don't mean historians. I mean the ones who smell a scrap of meat a mile away, like hyenas gathering around the edge of the clearing as dusk settles into

sunset. The predators. The ones who you might think were personally involved with Jobs for the personal way they are now attacking him. In our local newsweekly last week, a letter to an advice columnist castigated Steve Jobs for not "being there for his kids." "Pathetic," it calls him, for the bone-chilling sin of agreeing to have his biography written because he "wanted my kids to know me. I wasn't always there," Jobs confessed, "and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did." The writer's point? "To me, other people deserve our love more than Steve Jobs does." Well, duh. As if anyone is talking about loving Steve Jobs. No. We are talking about admiring him.

We are living in an age of the helicopter parents, adults who act like their children's soccer games and dance lessons are more important than, well, nearly everything. I know. I'm one of those people parents call when their twenty-something student "just doesn't really seem to care that he got a C in Calculus and a B on the Economics midterm." Just today, I had a young man come in to talk because his mother wanted him to study leadership in his final semester of college since she wasn't sure he had the ability to go out into the world and grab it by the testicles. We talked for a while, and I sent him off with some links to groups that led workshops on leadership skills and, I confess, the suggestion that he might do better to do something that let him exercise leadership instead of sitting in another classroom. I resisted the salient urge to suggest he learn what leadership really is by telling his mom he was a man now.

Only people utterly insecure in their own planetary worth would criticize the newly dead for their own personal shortcomings. The action of those who try to rob Steve Jobs of admiration and

respect reminds me of those deplorable creatures who haunt cemetaries with signs of vitriol hate and violence at the interment of soldiers brave enough to die in the course of duty while not asking, not telling. Again, the hyenas around the periphery, waiting for the defenseless.

How despicable to be so cowardly that the only people you dare to criticize are dead. How revolting to be a dung beetle when you have the skies open above you because you had the great good fortune to find yourself a human being alive in the United States of America.

Make the most of your own life. Don't try to inflate yourself by deflating others. Do something positive. And leave Steve Jobs alone. He died an untimely death extremely well.