One of my favorite pictures.
John and I enjoying a happy time at his ranch.
Renee came for Sunday supper
tonight, and we had a high old time talking about everything from Jacob’s
upcoming prom to osteopathic medicine. Sunday supper is a longstanding
tradition in my family, the sense that it should be just a little bit better, a
little bit different from ordinary supper. When I was living at home and my
brother gone to college or the Navy, Mom rolled her tea cart into the living
room, in front of the fireplace, and we had a casual, light supper—a souffle or
cheese strata. Today, Sunday supper is still special—we try to have everyone
home and the menu is carefully chosen. Tonight Christian cooked an Asian beef
and green bean stir fry, and, mixing cultures a bit, I fixed a Lebanese potato
salad. Christian didn’t think the two would go together but admitted tonight
they did complement each other
But tonight it was the Sunday
suppers of my children’s high school years that were much on my mind. My big
brother, the patriarch of our family, died yesterday morning at the age of
ninety-two. He was my last surviving blood relative and the man I knew all my
life would protect me. Everyone asks how I am, and the answer is “fine, but
teary.” John and I have lived in close proximity probably more than not—as children,
of course. He went to boarding school as a high school junior and was never
home again, but in 1961, he declared I needed to get out on my own and took me
off to Kirksville, Missouri where he was studying osteopathic medicine and his
wife was working on a master’s in English. I too worked on that master’s. That
move set the course for my life, including marriage to an osteopathic student
and a doctorate in English. I moved to Texas in 1965, and he to Colorado in
1966. In 1980, he moved to Fort Worth to join the faculty of the Texas College
of Osteopathic Medicine.
In the early 1980s, John and I
found ourselves both single with six teen-agers between us. Sunday suppers
became an institution. We gathered at my house each week, inviting stray people
we thought needed to join us—the parents of my goddaughter often, a good friend
recently divorced several times, the kids’ friends. I fed anywhere from ten to fifteen
those nights. Presence was required for the kids unless they had a job
obligation, which some did. John presided over the table, led us in grace, and
ceremoniously served the meal. Table manners were strictly monitored, mostly by John, and I’m proud to say today
all six of those kids have great table manners.
I loved cooking those dinners.
Mostly they were a success, though sometimes not. I remember a turkey
Wellington recipe which I have long since lost to my regret, and I distinctly
remember one night I did a marinated butterflied leg of lamb (I must have
thought I was a rich woman). Sometimes we had a turkey or a casserole or
whatever I chose. One night, when my office was working on a regional cookbook,
I fixed a cornbread/hamburger casserole I’d found the recipe for. John took one
bite, looked at me, and asked, “Sis, is the budget the problem?”
Probably though the kids most
remember the conversation. John went around the table, asking each person
perhaps what they were grateful for or what they had done that week. No one was
allowed to shrug it off—you had to have a cogent, intelligent answer. The
classic that everyone laughs about to this day is the time we were asked what
we were grateful for. Megan had brought a new beau to dinner (in retrospect quite
brave of her) and the young man stood (his first mistake—none of the rest of us
stood) and said, “I am grateful for Megan and her beauty.” The adults managed
straight faces, but the teens couldn’t handle it. To this day, everyone laughs
about this.
Today, Sunday dinner is served
around the coffee table in my cottage, a far cry from that crowded, formal
dining room on Winslow Avenue. But John will always be at my dinner table—and in
my heart. We had our differences, particularly political—how he grew up in a
staunch FDR/Mayon Richard Daley household and turned out a conservative is
beyond me. But we learned, especially in our golden years, to put those aside
in favor of our strong bond. We loved to talk, for instance, about the Indiana
Dunes where our family had a cottage or Chicago, about which these days I am
more nostalgic than he was.
John was sick, mostly
bedridden for over a year, and our togetherness, such as it was, was always by
phone—he lived south of Granbury on his ranch. We talked every few days, and I
always ended the conversation with, “I love you.” It was hard for him, and he’d
say, “Back at ya.” So here’s back at you John!