Leftovers. What would Thanksgiving be without them?
Becky and I have been working our way toward the back of the fridge, popping container lids to see what culinary remnants reside inside, basing our meal decisions partly on the differing spoilage rates for the various scraps, but also on what looks good. After our small holiday gathering — Which mostly adhered to CDC guidelines — family members carried a large share of the food to their homes, so we have not too many leftovers to deal with.
I think about other leftovers that I could and should deal with here in the first week of the last month of this strange year 2020.
Looking around our house I see leftovers from the last of the garden harvest, herbs and seeds spread out to dry on flat surfaces including the piano. Sweet, pungent notes from last summer. I see ceramic and wooden pumpkins, autumn knickknacks pressed into service from October to Thanksgiving. The dried plants are ready for jars. The autumn decorations should be wrapped up and stowed away until next fall.
Outside, we have not many leftover choirs from end-of-season yard work. Curling up the one remaining garden hose still out. Raking, clearing and mulching leaves that lie spread on the small areas of lawn while allowing the rest to rest on the ground and go back to the earth. Becky deciding that she no longer needs to cover the leftover flowers in the pots on the porch during the cool nights. It’s time to let them go.
A coronavirus vaccine seems to be on the not-so-far horizon. It is a concern that lurked in the back of the mind during most of 2020. This worry that the pandemic and its social changes and disruptions will stretch on for years seems to be fading. My guess is this particular fear will soon become nothing more than a leftover remnant of the year 2020.
And then there is the political stress we have lived through for what seems like forever. Politics is never not part of our lives, but during election years it understandably dominates the public and private topography of our minds.
This year’s angry arguments, line-drawing conflicts and partisan machinations were a large and, to some of us, dismal part of the daily buffet of news and opinion. Now, the noise and heat seem to be winding down, and an effort to bring some normalcy to the never-ending power struggle seems to be in play. Perhaps I am not being too optimistic, maybe it is not too much to hope that before long this particular political struggle will be just a leftover to be scraped into the trash bin of 2020.
I sometimes imagine these moments right after Thanksgiving and before the rush of the Holiday activities as a brief pause, a calming intake of breath, before we once again charge into our day-to-day struggles of life. This year is going to offer us a holiday season different than any we can remember.
But what does one expect from this, as Queen Elizabeth II might say, annus horribilis? No matter. In a few weeks, I will be tearing off the last page of the calendar on the fridge. Just another leftover piece of paper to discard.
