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| photo by su-liu / flickr |
Gravy--"...the fat that drips from juices that drip from cooking meat, often made into a dressing for meat..."
Gravy boat--"Boat shaped vessel, or small tureen, in which gravy is served at table..."
Years ago one of my staff members brought in this manila file folder. She said: "Somebody told me to take a folder like this--write at the top, 'Gravy.' My friend told me to take some of the things that come into my life and put them in this folder." And then she added: "You might want to do this."
Well--it's been over twenty years since I got that suggestion. So, after my friend's encouragement I took the folder she gave me and scrawled: "Gravy" at the top. What a gift that was. So from time to time I would put all sorts of things in that folder.
Gravy at a meal is not the main thing. Gravy is the extra, the succulent, the yum-yum that just makes the food. I insist on Red-eye gravy every Christmas breakfast. It goes on the biscuits and the grits. I love the gravy we make from the drippings from the turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our dressing would not taste quite as good without the gravy on top.
But I digress. I want to talk to you about some of things I discovered in my much-too-full gravy file from just a few years. Mostly the thank you notes and birthday cards and articles from the paper spilled out on to my desk. Yep, my cup runneth over. Understatement. Birthday cards from my 50th and 75th birthday. They made those scary times bearable. Sure, I wanted to be 35 again and the kids little and my wife teaching piano in the other room. But those tiny notes and cards made my long, winding trip a little easier.
I pulled out this yellowing newspaper article.What's this? It was the article about my high school burning down. Nothing left--someone wrote. Not so. I remembered riding the school bus about ten miles to that school. I remembered faces of people in my classes. That gorgeous girlfriend I never got. Buddies and football games and teachers that cracked the door to a world I did not know was there. Those were hard-good times. Like all growing up.
Somebody sent me an ancient church bulletin with some article I had written on the back. It was my first foray into published writing. I think they paid me two cents a word. But--that was the beginning of the articles and the books I wrote. And now this blog.
There were thank-you notes and they sent me back, back through the years. Somebody family member sent me a wonderful picture of their Mama and Papa in their first-married years. They were members in the church I served and I loved them. They are gone but not forgotten. I kept that picture.
I pulled out that tiny note that I found on the pulpit one Sunday morning in Clemson. It read: "Dear Daddy, tell everybody today that I love you." My son was consumed with the microphones on the pulpit. Whew. That tiny love letter still takes my breath away.
I pulled out the last letter that my cousin Ray wrote before he took his life. It was the last letter that he wrote and he left it on his mantle. He thanked me for many things and wanted me to have his funeral--I did. I remember that smile and that wonderful man that could never get it together. I can still see his face and despite the pain I smile even today at some of the memories. He left us much too soon.
I have a couple of love letters that my wife wrote me before we were married. Over 57 years ago and she still puts up with me. No man could be more fortunate.
There is a photograph of my little red-headed daughter sitting on the steps of our Virginia house years ago. She has on all those fancy mis-matched clothes and her favorite shoes and her special dog-eared stuffed animal slung under her arm.
My cup really does run over. And when days I get grouchy and my feet hurt I need to pull out this file. Pictures of the dogs we loved and a snapshot of Princeton where' I spent many summers studying. Memories and momentous of Oxford and Italy and Amsterdam and on and on I could go.
Maybe if we all take out our gravy file--folders or scrapbook or just memories--and begin to stop and look and ponder. Of course politics is running many of us crazy. But that neighbor with cancer and those in my grief group struggling get by and my buddy slowly drifting away with Alzheimers--The lens on why camera slowly zeros in on the things that matter.
The last sermon I preached the day I retired was entitled, "Gravy." Despite the craziness of church and the mean-spirited ones--and there were not many--I told them that morning about Gravy--my gravy. I looked out that day on people who came from everywhere maybe to see if the old man could still do it. Who knows? I told them that Sunday morning that service was the best funeral I have ever been to.
Yep--the gravy I have tasted again and again may not be the largest thing on the table--
but without it the meals of my life would not be completed. This Thanksgiving ought to be remembering time for us all. Scatter your memories out on your desk--maybe make a list of what kept you going and still does. I guarantee if you think long enough you will be glad. And unless I miss my guess, there will probably be a lump in your throat as big as your fist.
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| photo by schlymay / flickr --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com |
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