The Cooking, The Cleaning

I cooked.  I made the whole thing: quartered turkey in a buttermilk marinade, green beans, a variety of roasted potatoes, asparagus, stuffing, and a can of cranberry sauce.  No help.  Just for me and mom.  We had a bottle of wine, not too much, and everything was tasty.  But my mother misses Ili.  She told me.  I am not as much fun as I should be.  I don't enjoy the prattle of group entertainment, and I'm not so good at small talk.  That doesn't mean I think I'm profound.  I may be nothing at all.  But Ili made my mother feel good and maybe safe.  I need to be more. . . something.  

I marinated the turkey for hours, then my mother came over as I cooked.  We chatted as I worked and she had a glass of wine.  Good Old Mom.  The day was cloudy and little spits of rain came down for minutes or seconds at a time, but I worked the grill and everything was fine.  My friend, the art collector, came over with some fudge that he had made.  We sat and talked awhile about this and that and it was good to see him.  It was nice to have a third for a bit.  He had a glass of wine and we talked about travel--he is well-travelled and one of the three Brando friends who got cheated out of the trip and the money to Kenya years ago--and then he excused himself and was gone.  

My mother and I served up dinner and ate excitedly.  I mean, man, it was all so good.  For both of us, though, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, as they used to say, and the hours of preparation were finished off in mere moments.  

"Let's go for a walk," my mother said, and we strolled evenly around the lake.  Good Old Mom.  

And then we returned home and had some more wine and chatted as the day sailed away.  Then she, with half the fudge in hand, too, took her leave.  

It wasn't quite dusk, and I decided it best to take a Vespa tour to see the remains of the day.  I drove slowly with no destination, just looking about to see what Thanksgiving Day looked like in this part of town.  Dead silence.  Everything was still.  The air was cooling and the light fading, and so, a little bit hollow, I turned and made my way home.  

Now, in the gray/blue dusk, I sit reading and drinking the first scotch.  Deciding on a Cohiba cheroot, I go to the deck to sit and smoke and drink and think.  Alone.  There is grayness and a stillness and the good cheroot and the simple scotch, and there is the other thing, too, the aloneness that is peace which is not quite emptiness but is a hollowness that must not become a void.  The blue of the fading light passes through me and colors me, but it does not quite overtake me.  I cannot allow that yet.  There is a melancholy that we love that must not be allowed to deepen to despair.  I take a last draw on the Cohiba and put the glass to my lips.  The smoke and the whiskey pass through me, too, and I am succored.

That was last night.  This morning, again, the day is gray and rainy.  My fortune.  A "Jazz for Reading" mix plays and the coffee pot is almost empty.  I spy an empty scotch bottle sitting on top of the liquor cabinet, the "library."  I'm not sure about anything just now.  My days away from the factory have not invigorated me.  Just the opposite.  This day seems to hold no promise.

I want a studio again.