TRADITIONS
Having made an apple pie once, I now make an apple pie every Thanksgiving. Having been called upon in, I believe, 2005 to compose and deliver a Thanksgiving grace, I now do it every year, which is a way of warning those who don’t already know this that whatever you do on Thanksgiving risks becoming tradition, and inviolate. It doesn’t matter if the tradition makes sense. For instance, the ocean in Maine is forbiddingly cold, even in August, but ever since Thanksgiving ’06, when my son Peter went for a swim off the beach, a Thanksgiving Swim is always scheduled for late afternoon, when the gloom of a late autumn twilight can add to the bleakness offered by low clouds, sleet or spitting snow.
The first year, Peter swam alone. Now, other guests join in as gumption or machismo demands, and the rest of us stand around in our boots and parkas, holding towels at the ready and shrieking in sympathy. Last year, our Brazilian exchange student Olivia took the plunge, garnering points for bravery. This year, our friend Marie went into the water clad in a lime green bikini and white vinyl go-go boots, definitively winning the prize for style.
This morning, my husband and I enacted what will be a bittersweet new tradition. Three of our children are, as of this year, in college. So, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the college-bound had to be hugged, cautioned about the various threats that might await them on the highway, and waved off down the driveway. Our house—which has been noisy and cluttered for a week—is strangely quiet now.
Glass Heart Prayer (from Thanksgiving, 2007)
Blessed is the breath of the glassblower, who
With skilled and steady exhalation
Heats the gritty solid of the heart
And with his breath expands
My heart until a wider vessel is created;
Until my heart’s capacity is such
The whole world can be embraced in love. Blessed Be!
Even though a heart’s walls ache as they expand
Even if glass must, of necessity, grow fragile
To encompass
As it shines.
Allowing light, more light, more light:
May the glassblower breathe and breathe until
With the slightest tap my heart
Flies and shatters into sand.
Blessed be the breath of the glassblower
Craftsman of fragility
Artist of the shatter and the shine.
Amen