Gifts, responsibilities, Vann & Harjo

At the bar of heaven,
shall we be expected only to say how we have done
with our fasting and almsdeeds, our pursuit of virtue?
Shall we not also be expected to say,

You gave me a love of music,
and I have tried a little to deepen it and sanctify it;
to love the magic you put into the souls of your children,
John Sebastian, Wolfgang, and Ludwig;

You gave me a love of words,
and the magic you make through people’s lips,
and I have tried not to belittle your gift;

You gave me a love of color
and I have tried to use your gift creatively in a sad, drab world?

And shall we not still more be expected to say,
You gave me, though unworthy, the love of these your children,
to keep me young and gay in heart,
and to help me in dark places,
and I tried to be prudent and let no harm come to them?

But also, I tried not to disparage the gift or refuse the responsibility.
Gerard Vann, OP

Joy Harjo’s famous poem, “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” recounts the events that happen at a kitchen table, recognizing it as a constant center around which our lives swirl. The table is the source of sustenance, the place of growth and decline, the center of our plans and our mishaps. It is protection and the life cycle and the keeper of our memories and feelings and laments. Harjo’s poem grabbed me many years ago, and I return to it frequently. Sometimes, I’m drawn in by the familiarity of the experiences and images she invokes, by the comfort and warmth that come with intimate memories, and by Harjo’s ability to capture every component of our lives and to tie it all back to one place, once place that is both our origin and our end. It helps me to frame my experiences, to see the “big picture,” and to distill what’s important and what can be left behind.

More often, though, I return to the poem because it transports me back to my mother’s kitchen. Ours was a full house — two parents, ten children — and for many years the kitchen featured a long butcher-block table. Most nights, there would be five kids on one side, five on the other (each of us in predictable seats), and our parents on either ends. While we were in grade school, we walked home for lunch most days (something I didn’t miss in high school but longed for in college) and, what I later learned was quite unusual, my dad would be home for lunch most days. Breakfast was a bit more chaotic, but every day my mom had prepared a full and balanced (if not always totally cooked-through) meal. My favorite image of the table, though, comes from when I was the last one left in the house and I’d come downstairs in the morning to find my mom sitting at her spot, usually half-way through her pot of tea and almost finished with the Tribune’s daily crossword puzzle (in pen). Many years before, probably as a young mother, she discovered the early morning hours, between her waking around 5:00 and the descent of her brood, as the only time she had for herself, the last quiet moment of the day. When I’d come into the kitchen, she’d look up with a greeting and a sigh of resignation, seeming to say, “Well, here we go.”

A couple of weeks before she died, just after she started hospice care, my mom and I planned her funeral mass together, and our planning was guided by a few very definite ideas. “Nothing sad,” she told me. “This should be joyful.” Regarding a eulogy: “Anything that lasts more than five minutes is verboten.” The gospel reading would be the parable of the sheep and the goats, her prayer card would include a verse from Psalm 27, and the program would include the text above. It’s not particularly well known now, but her sister had illuminated the text with pens and watercolor as a gift many years before. The illumination hung next to the table, in a spot where she could look up and easily glimpse a phrase or two. When my parents moved into a smaller house, the text and its place by the kitchen table moved with them. She never explained why she kept the frame close — she was not one to wax philosophical (in fact, she never articulated much in the realm of feelings) — but I never felt she needed to explain or justify it. I pictured her sitting at the table before sunrise, lunches packed, and breakfast prepared, flipping through the morning paper, and pausing before she started the crossword to read Vann’s words. Maybe she prized it simply because it was a gift from her sister. Maybe she used it as a kind of centering prayer, finding stability and fortitude before the flurry of morning busy-ness (how else did she maintain that calm and cooling demeanor?).

As I return to this text in the era of social distancing and isolation, the final line of the text stands out. “But also, I tried not to disparage the gift or refuse the responsibility.” Why would one disparage a gift? The trite example is a spoiled kid’s birthday, greeting presents with disappointment or the tone of “I already have that,” but, isolated for long stretches isolated from my relationships and routines, I’m aware of the disappointment I feel in my own creature comforts. I can Kondo my closet or rearrange the cabinet under the sink only so many times. Despite daily fluffings, our couch is growing flat and uncomfortable. When it comes to entertainment, I’m oversaturated — I can’t start one more series. And Zoom calls — don’t get me started. That kind of whining would get a cluck of the tongue and perhaps a look over her reading glasses that communicated, “Get over yourself and do something about it” from my mom. Throughout our lives, she was the only one who could really keep the family in check and in line and who would ensure that we were aware of and concerned for each other’s lives. That was her responsibility, the cost that accompanied the many gifts in her life.

She was our kitchen table. And maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe she just wanted a seat at the table or wanted to be one of the many gathered to celebrate or eat or mourn or laugh. Harjo doesn’t tell us what to do when the table weakens or collapses under the burdens it carries, what to do when the table vanishes. People who know loss know this absence, and it’s too easy to maintain the vacancy, to block off the space where the table once stood or even to leave the kitchen altogether. Vann helps me to respond to this absence — for him, the connection between gift and responsibility suggests that loving beauty is not just a gift, something passive for us to receive. It is our responsibility to care for the gift, to nurture it, and sometimes to become it. And sometimes, when I hear my mother’s words spilling from my mouth, or when I catch myself giving that look, I realize that in many ways, I’m becoming my mother. And I hope that I won’t disparage this gift, or refuse the responsibility.

If you feel so moved, please respond to the text or to an idea in the space below. A few requests:

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