A Letter from Iowa:  Margaret’s Soup

Read at the Deep River Congregational Church
by the Rev. Timothy Haut
November 24, 2019

Dear Timothy,

Life goes on in Blue Grass, although lately it has seemed more like winter than fall. Normally at this time of the year we are still in the afterglow of the harvest.   The cornfields are golden remnants of the summer’s crop, and often great flocks of crows, or Canada geese on their southward migration, comb the fields, pecking and honking, for the gleanings of the ears that have fallen to the earth.   The bronze leaves of the oak trees rustle in the November wind¸ and pumpkins and gourds stand guard on the porches of Blue Grass. But this year Mother Nature has played a lamentable trick on us, with a couple of snowstorms already and weeks of bitter wind and weather on top of it. And to boot, our great river has been at flood stage most of the fall—the longest anybody can remember.

Today the snow is gone, at least for a while, and your Uncle Arnold has time to let Roger Kretschmar fix his snow-blower before he has to use it again. He was very annoyed during the last snow. He had barely started on the driveway before he ran over a dog chain he had fastened to the corner of the garage in case our grandson David brought his dog along when he came to visit us a couple of weeks ago.   I heard the big bang inside in the kitchen when he hit the thing, and then everything went quiet, except for your Uncle Arnold who started swearing using some German words he learned from his uncle.   That chain was wrapped up tight inside the blower paddles, and was almost as useless as Arnold. So now he has brought his handyman expertise inside the house.

A few days ago he decided to attack the drip in the kitchen sink faucet, and went down into the basement to get his wrenches so that he could replace the tap with a new one he bought at the hardware store. He said it was an easy job and we didn’t need to get a plumber, and that is always a dangerous premise with Arnold.   Probably he should have turned off the water before he tried to remove the old tap, because the water shot up like Old Faithful and drenched him before he could get down on his knees and turn off the valves under the sink. What a mess in the kitchen.   But I know that this will not end his determination to be my handyman. But this little accident is a small thing in the big picture, I suppose.   I try to remember that when I'm tempted to blow my stack and let him have it.   After all, he says he still loves me after all these years together, and I guess I love him too, even when he does something stupid.

I had lunch with Margaret Halvorson last Thursday, and I was laughing with her about Arnold's tendency toward misadventure.   I recalled last Thanksgiving when he got the idea of placing a handful of dried corn at everybody's place at the table.   He read somewhere in a magazine that the tradition of putting a few kernels of corn on each Thanksgiving plate was to be a reminder of the abundance of our blessings.   It said we should remember the spirit of the original Pilgrims of New England, who after a first hard winter, had to ration their small supply of corn to get them through until they could get another harvest in. And with only that corn to survive on, they were still thankful. So before he went to bed on Thanksgiving Eve, he took one of the ears of Indian Corn off the front door and spread the kernels around our dining table.   When everybody came to the table on Thanksgiving, some of those kernels had been replaced with little brown mouse droppings, and I was horrified, and I had to stop and wash all those plates again. Arnold just laughed and said that all God's creatures had to have Thanksgiving dinner, too. But there will be no seed corn on the table this year, I promise.

I guess I should be grateful for my humble blessings, too, even Arnold.   Margaret's husband, Karl, is in the nursing home, after all, and she makes the trip to Muscatine just about every day to visit him.     He's can't remember a lot of things, and Margaret isn't even sure that he knows who she is most days.   She gets up close, right in his face, and hopes that maybe if he gets a good whiff of her he'll remember. Sometimes all she wants is a twinkle in his eye, or a little sign that he remembers. More than anything else, she wants her husband back, the one she's spent over 50 years with. Sometimes she tells him, almost desperately, "Karl, I love you!"   And he just gives her a little smile and says, "That's nice."

She thought that maybe she could bring things with her to remind him of their life together. She tried bringing food to him, things that might bring some familiarity of the thousands of meals she had cooked for him over the years.   The fact is that she isn't a great cook, but she's always tried to be creative like the chefs on TV, and Karl was her guinea pig.   So she recreated some of her notable achievements and brought them to the nursing home in little tupperware containers: such things as her meatloaf with prunes hidden in the middle, and her tuna noodle casserole with crumbled potato chip topping, and ground ham balls in grape jelly sauce.   He would eat a little, but nothing seemed to awaken his old appetites.

She had the idea of lugging their big photo album to his room, and she turned the pages for him to look at all the memories of their life. She pointed out the beautiful portrait of them on their wedding day.   He laid his finger on the long wedding gown and nodded, "She's beautiful."   "That's me--and you!" she exclaimed, and he laughed, shaking his head in disbelief.   She showed him the picture of their two now-grown children opening presents in front of the Christmas tree in their living room when they themselves had been young and joyful.   And her hand shook a little as she pointed to her favorite picture, a candid moment in which the two of them, holding glasses of champagne, kissed each other at their 50th anniversary party.   It was a kiss which she thought at the time went on a little too long, but she hoped it might stir something in the man again. But he just stared at it, as if he knew this was somehow important but he couldn't quite remember why.

She had hoped that something would break through the clouds of dementia, and for months she waited helplessly for it to happen. She had heard that sometimes there could be a little window of awareness and light that would open up, and she wanted to be there when it did.   But she confessed to me that even if he didn't recognize her, she would continue to go see him and be grateful for the time they spent together.   "We practiced being thankful all our life," she told me after church last week, "so that we'd know how to be thankful on the days when it was hard. And this is the hard time. But I'm still thankful for him and for all the goodness we've had. Still, . . ."   She paused, and stood looking up silently, biting her lip. And then there was a miracle.

The next day when she went over to the nursing home, they had their little monthly church service. Rev. Metcalf from our Methodist Church went down there to say prayers and give a little message.   Two ladies in wheelchairs fell asleep and a man by the window would applaud now and then as Pastor spoke.   Rev. Metcalf talked about Thanksgiving and asked the residents what they were thankful for this year. Most of them volunteered the expected things:   their children and families, food, health, that sort of thing. An old farmer volunteered that he was thankful for Bag Balm to use on his cows' udders, and the woman next to him started telling him where she used it on herself. Another woman raised her hand and spoke in rather frail voice: "I have lost most of the things that have been good in my life.   I have no family left.   Most of my teeth are gone so I can't chew the foods I most enjoy. I can't hear very well either, but sometimes I close my eyes and hear music in my mind, and I'm grateful for that.   And then I don't feel totally alone."   That was the cue for Rev. Metcalf to invite them all to sing with him the Doxology, which he figured everyone knew by heart.  

Margaret told me what happened next: "It was then that my Karl perked up.   All those years we sat together every Sunday in the fourth pew on the left hand side of the old Methodist Church, and we had a little ritual.   He'd hold my hand when we sang that Doxology, and he'd lean in close to me and sing his own set of words:  

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above ye heavenly host,

But you're the One I love the most.

There in the sun room at the nursing home that gathering of old bodies and hearts sang a rather disorganized version of that old hymn, and Karl sat quietly until everyone had segued into a final, muddled "Amen."   Then I heard his beautiful baritone voice rise over the rest, "But you're the One I love the most."   Rev. Metcalf looked over in surprise as I burst into tears of joy."  

Margaret will be with us on Thursday as we gather around our old dining room table to share our Thanksgiving. I'll make the turkey and the stuffing and the green bean casserole which is my Arnold's favorite part of the meal. Others will bring potatoes and yams with marshmallow topping, and my grandson David has volunteered to make a pumpkin pie as he fancies himself something of a chef.   Margaret will be bringing her soup, which is always an adventure.   She keeps a big glass jar in the refrigerator, into which she scrapes all the leftovers from her suppers, and then she adds water and heats it up when she wants something easy for dinner. She calls it her "eternal soup."   She says that all the flavors have time to blend, and who knows how long some of those bits of flavors have been in her refrigerator waiting to make it into a soup bowl.

But she claims her soup is always delicious, a lot like her life.   Mixed into the accumulated mix of her years are wondrous joys--the little girl she once was, on a swing tied to the oak tree in her parents yard, laughing as she pumped her way into the Iowa sky;   the young woman in love carving her initials into that same oak tree with a young Karl, sweet and almost passionate;  the mother she became, holding a baby in her arms, singing her to sleep;   the woman whom she is now, standing in the yard on an unusual November night, catching snowflakes on her tongue.   And there are all the little things she loves, too: the smell of morning coffee, the sound of summer rain on a window, the feel of fresh sheets on the bed, the scent of her husband's shirts hanging next to her dresses in the closet.   And mixed with all these joys are the disappointments and sorrows, too: the scar on her leg from when she fell on the playground when she was eight years old, the death of her parents, the loneliness of watching children leave home, her unfulfilled wish to be somebody of significance who could make a difference in the world.   All of these things mixed together in the soup of her life, just like you and me.     And that will be there with us at our Thanksgiving, too, Timothy.

When we sit down at our table on Thursday, your Uncle Arnold will clear his throat and offer a blessing, which he may keep mercifully short considering all the food spread out on the table waiting to be lifted onto my mother's old china flow-blue plates.   I hope our gratitude will prepare us for whatever days may lie ahead, but maybe I'll ask him to finish his prayer with all of us singing the old Doxology together.   And maybe I'll let Margaret lead the chorus:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above ye heavenly host,

But you're the One I love the most.

Rejoice in the Lord always, Timothy. Be thankful, and keep us in your prayers as we keep you in ours.

Love,

Aunt Tillie

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