Pythian Games

There is a special soothing quality to following a ritual. Every Friday night I have my own specific ritual to follow. It used to involve a husband, children, grand-parents. It used to involve a great deal of laughter, of smiling. It used to culminate in a huge Sunday luncheon that ran over far into the night. It used to include movies and stories and games. It doesn’t include anything but me these days. I have no time to spend mourning that fact.

Friday evenings after work I go to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for the cakes I make. I find the best quality flours and sweeteners and whole spices. Fresh eggs. Fresh milks. Fresh flowers. I take everything into the kitchen with me. I toast the oatmeal in a certain pan. Then I grind it in the old grinder, cranking it by hand, into finer and finer dust. I sift the white and the brown flours together, adding in the oatmeal as well. Baking soda. Salt. Hand-made vanilla. Cracking eggs into the dish, breaking and separating yolks from whites. I hand-beat the whites til they stand up in firm little peaks. Then I whip the egg yolks and the cow’s milk and the goat’s milk and the honey together. I pour the liquid into the mostly dry ingredients and I stir. And I stir, by hand, with a hand-carved wooden spoon. I tenderly fold in whipped egg whites, moving the batter over and over itself. Then I grate each individual herb and spice, and spoon them into the batter as well. I do not line the muffin tins, but I do take lard and smear in into every alcove; after which I toss in flour and swoosh it around til all the lard is covered over. I tap out any excess flour. With another special spoon, a spoon my husband had carved and my youngest son had painted, I dip batter from the main bowl into each individual muffin tin cup. Into the wood stove, burning wood that I had myself chopped and stacked the year before, sweating tears and blood over the dead wood at my feet. While the cupcakes bake, I clean the kitchen. I wash every dish by hand, soaping them with the cloth I knitted up myself, the image of a frog embedded in the stitches. Then rinsing them in the bowl of fresh clear water drawn from the well in the back yard, situated near the still tiny pear tree we planted as a family the summer before … everything happened. I stack everything up in the dish drainer, item by item.

As the cakes finish baking, I pop them out of their tins and rest them on the cooling racks. Later after they’ve cooled I set them inside the woven picnic basket, on the liner my youngest daughter had sewn herself with her own nimble fingers, embroidering the edges with leaf details as if the wind was blowing each leaf willy nilly across the pale yellow checked fabric. I cover them with the edges of the fabric, closing the top of the basket over them to keep them safe until the week-end arrives.

Nothing really happens with the cakes on Saturday. They sit there quite prettily, ignored and loved at the same time, on the edge of the kitchen counter, right by the back door, while I go about whatever routine I decide to follow for that day. Sometimes on Saturdays all I do is stay in bed, trying not to cry. Other times I am up before the squirrels and the chickens, digging in the yard, in one garden or another, planting, weeding, or some combination thereof. I usually fall into bed on Saturday nights, exhausted beyond the point of weeping, my dreams filled with hope of the morrow.

Sunday mornings, dawn they wide and clear, or small and dark, always fill me with the same joy. The same wild inexplicable hope.

I get out of bed and walk into the den. I put in a yoga dvd and throw out my yoga mats. My hand-sewn, hand-made padded yoga mat. Over that my normal sticky mat. I run through an hour’s routine, building my strength and flexibility, draining my mind and body of stress. Awakening to the Light within myself. Bowing to it. I have orange juice and some plain buttered toast, from bread I made myself, with butter I made myself, sweetened with just a touch of the honey from the hives in the lower pasture. I stand under the hot stream of the shower, steaming the entire bathroom up, scrubbing my skin with soap my children and I had made together. It lasts so long, smells so good, cleans so well, on so many levels. Drying, powdering, smoothing, brushing, dressing. I pull on a comfortable skirt, one of my light linen blouses. Plop a hat on my head that covers my eyes from the glare of the sun, even when it isn’t out when I first head out the door. I never forget to grab that basket of cakes. I forget my keys, my bag, my driver’s license. I have even on occasion forgotten my shoes. But not once have I ever forgotten that basket.

The drive takes awhile. That was its original appeal, the family all together in the car for three, three and a half hours, singing, laughing, play travel games. I try not to cry when the memories overwhelm. Some days I don’t notice that the tears have streaked my cheeks until I get out of the car, when the wind hits my cheeks and freezes the tears there as it dries them away. I carry the basket the ten minutes into the woods, following the animal driven path, between trees and brush and fallen debris. In the middle of this innocuous little wood, there is a small pond, full of bull rushes and cat tails, frogs and lizards and butterflies, fish and ducks and dragonflies. In the spring and summer, there is a plethora of golden flowers, some spritzed with red, some dappled with blue. In fall, the leaves turn a myriad of colours, being blown against the edges of the pond, lying there adding such an amazing scent all their own to the air. Winter finds the pond iced over, covered with whites and greys.

This Sunday it is clear, a nice clear spring day. The skies threaten to drip rain later in the day. I started singing, that low Welsh lullaby I had sung to all my children, treating to forest creatures to the tune, in my crackling crow’s caw voice. I can laugh out loud there, singing and skipping, dancing through the dale as if I were some nymph of faery tale legends.

There lies the edge of the lake. Singing out loud, I break up the cakes, one by one, scattering the bits and crumbs over the land, into the water. The geese had come before the ducks this year and they crowded closer to me. I throw some specifically just to them, just for them. Then I continue. Once the cakes are all broken and dispersed, I shake out the basket lining and stand the at the edge of the pond, staring out into nowhere. And I pray. And I pray.

I pray. I pray. I offer up my cakes. I offer up myself. I offer up my soul. I sing. I chant. I sway. I do not step away. I stand there, morning light streaming over me, aiming to clear the dark spots from my soul, clean me up and make me spotless and whole all over again. I am never sure how long I stand there, doing what I do. I never realize how late it is, until I get home. Too tired to eat. Too tired to stand. I sink into a hot perfumed bath, feeling aches and pains in my body that I had not felt before my return. I do not check my email; I do not even feel a twinge. I refuse to have voice mail or an answering machine, much to my friends’ dismay.

When I am done, I clamber into my bed, so wide and empty, not cold, curling up against the back of my dog as she sleeps, snoring away in her slumber. I say another, a different little prayer, and then I set my soul loose, and fall into my own deep space, far away from here.

by Raven TK

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