Finding comfort in just being there
Sugary Showdowns, Winter Sundays, Hayden, Jon Batiste, and Caldeirada
I have told snippets of this story before for other reasons. But I’m telling it today because it has me thinking about comfort.
When I was in college, I came home to find my much beloved, very brilliant uncle dying of AIDS. The family had gathered—which was the norm—at his house for Thanksgiving. Mostly, it was my aunt’s family and friends. They were brilliant and funny and so good. They created documentaries. They made vaccines. The headed pediatric units as ivy league schools. They created organizations to fight pediatric AIDs. They were the kind of people who become both doctors and lawyers.
Every time, I got to interact with them, I thought, “Wow.”
This time, though, it was one of the most pivotal moments in my life because I knew my uncle was dying. We all knew. He wanted us gathered there. He wanted to hear the happy discussions at the table even if he had to be in a bedroom in his bed and only could catch the bass and treble of the speakers—the people he loved in the other room. He wanted to smell the turkey and pie as their flavors wafted through the house.
He choose that.
He found comfort in it.
When he asked for me to go into his room, I knew there was nothing I could do for him. There were brilliant doctors out there eating turkey who could do nothing for him. I just sat there and held his hand.
Even holding hands took effort for him. He asked me if I would pick up the gauntlet because he was going to have to let it go. I knew he meant our family, to do my best, to try to make people who hadn’t even been born yet proud of me, but also to calmly work toward the causes he calmly worked toward as a lawyer, judge, and board member of a lot of places: compassion, kindness, equality, justice.
He wanted to do more to make the world better. I leaned over and told him that I would try even though I am not a lawyer or a judge. I told him that I’d pick it up for him.
We held each other’s hands.
And we saw each other, breathing together in that little bedroom turned hospital room. There was comfort in that.
Sometimes the most comforting thing you can do for someone is to hold their hand or sit with them, even in silence as the world moves forward beyond the threshold of the door. And sometimes the most comforting thing you can do for yourself is to see moments of love and brilliance and beauty in other people’s loves and exult for them, you know? To be happy that they have them. To wish them love.
And that’s what I wish. I wish you all love.
THE PHOTO
I don’t know these cool humans. I was out covering a Sugar Showdown for our paper and they were posing with each other, being so wonderfully joyous, embracing their full goofy.
I started smiling. It was impossible not to smile.
And I took a photo of them with their okays. Aren’t they beautiful here in this moment? I really love them. Their souls are just shining out.
A POEM
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Copyright Credit: Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Copyright ©1966 by Robert Hayden. Source: Collected Poems of Robert Hayden (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1985)
SOUP: Caldeirada
I’ve adapted this from Feasting at Home.
This was a big deal soup when I was a kid. My dad’s sisters would argue over it. My mom preferred old fashioned and dairy based New England clam chowder to all other fish soups. But, she wasn’t Portuguese, as the aunts loved to tell her repeatedly. :)
You can absolutely substitute other fish in here. I tend to only share vegetarian soups, but this one is a soup of my childhood and I couldn’t resist. It was a big deal because anything Portuguese was a big deal, but also because saffron cost a lot.
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, rough chopped
2 tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup white wine
4 cups fish stock or 2 cups water and 2 cups clam juice
large pinch saffron, crumbled
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves or allspice
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 bay leaves
1–2 tablespoons fresh thyme (lemon thyme is nice)
1 lb potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
1.5 lbs fish fillets- (boneless, skinless) wild cod, haddock, sea bass, salmon (or feel free to mix in or substitute shellfish- clams, mussels, shrimp, etc.) cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces.
Instructions
Get a big and heavy pot or dutch over. Put the oil in it. Turn the burner to medium heat.
Saute the garlic and onion in that oil. It takes 5-6 minutes usually to get it so it is soft and golden colored and smelly.
Once the onions and garlic are like that add the tomatoes and all the juice that comes with them. Cook them until they are soft. That’s usually 4 minutes or so.
Add wine. Try not to drink all the wine while thinking about politics. Let the wine simmer in there for about 2-3 minutes or until it has dissolved.
Add the stock or clam juice and water. Add the saffron and the allspice or clove. Add the paprika, salt, pepper, bay leaves and fresh thyme. Feel accomplished. That was a lot, honestly.
Add potatoes
Bring that stew to boil.
Once it’s boiling, put the cover on, lower the heat.
Simmer it for 15 minutes or so. You want to be able to get a fork into the potatoes in a nice way.
Add that fish. Turn it to medium heat. Simmer it. Stir it a tiny bit.
Do not stir with passion because the fish will likely break apart. Passion does that.
Cook for approximately 4 minutes. Maybe three.
Turn off the heat.
Taste it.
Adjust it to your tastes with salt and pepper.
EXTRA BONUS COOLNESS
If you find comfort in joy, spend a moment here. The tone switches dramatically about 1-minute in.
If you feel like sharing this, that would be great. But no pressure!