‘What are you making for Sunday lunch?’ asked the housemate. ‘Is there anything you need from the shops over the mountain?’
Mary, happily. ‘Jubilee Coronation Chicken with curry and mayonnaise! This was served up in 1953 by Rosemary Hume and Constance Spry for the brand-new Queen Elizabeth II. I am going to give the chicken an Asian twist, lighten up on the mayo and slice in a little mango, toss some watercress, and then we too can join in all the waving of Union Jacks and Prince Philip mugs and Royal hoopla. The last Diamond Jubilee Monarch, Queen Victoria, has all her diaries online and she reads just like a chatty blogger. I’m enthralled with royalty. ‘
Housemate: ‘Did I ever tell you that my uncle was the mayor of S— and entertained the Royal family on their tour of South Africa in 1947? He said both Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret played footsie with him under the supper table.’
Mary: ‘Wasn’t this your uncle the gambler and philanderer from Putsonderwater? He also said that he was descended from three American presidents.’
Housemate:’But the family says Frikkie was very handsome when he was young, except for the jug ears. He told jokes about flying pigs and bulls’ testicles and could strum a banjo like Tommy Dorsey. He gave Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy new words all about a cattle farmer on his wedding night. Back then he was known as a ladies’ man. Nowadays he’d be known as a sexist pest.’
Would the uncle from Putsonderwater have been less of a liability than outspoken Prince Philip? We shall never know.
Our friends Anthony and Trix (made-up names) are moving away to Zambia because A has a new job to do with the financing and building of a bushveld hospital. This sounds like a very bad idea because Trix has lupus and needs frequent medical care and urban comforts, but she is wildly excited and planning to take up wildlife photography. We are invited to go up there and spend Christmas sitting under thorn trees eating free-range African chickens that I know from experience are tough as old boots since they outrun wild dogs and lynxes and have more lives than a cat. I will miss my friends. At this time of life, each loss or separation feels like deprivation, a connection and intimacy that can’t be replaced. David Whyte’s poetry echoing in me:
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
On, then, into the adventure and ups and downs of life, pushing out the boat into that chilly exhilarating current and hoping for the best. The Catholic priest who is the housemate’s new best friend may be coming over for lunch on Pentecost Sunday and perhaps roast lamb might be more appealing than a weird retro chicken mayo dish. Taking myself to the back of the garden in cold sunlight to sit drafting fiction in a notebook, dogs sprawled on the grass around me, the sparrows and wagtails loud in trees overhead. Reflecting on vulnerability, illness and healing, what helps us through that dark night — reading Jennifer Nix on coming through the ordeal, facing what has to be faced:
All the while, I obsessed over whether I deserved someone else’s kidney. As my husband, family, and friends stepped forward to be tested as potential donor matches, I couldn’t stop asking myself whether my heart was true. “The Crystal in Tamalpais” found me a month into my confusion by way of the coincidences and connections that occur when a heart and mind are open to poetry. My childhood exposure to Catholicism didn’t infect me with any particular religious faith, but as I stared down mortality, I craved contact with something beyond the self—some advice, some confession, perhaps some ethereal, knowing comrade to steady me as I sat in examination and waiting rooms or lay awake in bed every night.
All around me there are friends waiting, a curious time of uncertainty — waiting for an operation, waiting for divorce papers, waiting for a house sale, waiting for test results, waiting for bankruptcy hearings, waiting for a son to be released from prison. I hope the waiting is over soon and that there will be healing and new beginnings.
Here is David Whyte’s poem in full:
the world is tired also.
no part of the world can find you.
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
you are not beyond love.
tonight.
further than you can see.
the world was made to be free in.
except the one to which you belong.
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
that does not bring you alive
Be sure to wear your best Pentecost red when the priest comes for lunch.
What a fun idea! The dog has a snazzy red-orange Pentecostal collar too
Wonderful.
So good to hear from you Ang, you are in my thoughts so often. I love autumn deep in the country
Frikkie sounds interestingly bawdy. I wonder whether the Queen is ever bawdy in private. Too much stiffness isn’t good.
I felt that way around clergy, as if they were someone who would not appreciate a good joke or a conversation that wasn’t religious. I realize the stupidity of that as an adult.
Everyone needs a little bawdiness — and family relatives sometimes seem larger than life. When I was a schoolgirl at an Anglican school and then at a Marymount convent. I also thought people were their roles, but of course they are not
weird retro chicken mayo dish–HA. I have been substituting Greek yogurt in place of mayo when cooking, and it works great! I actually found the tip on one of the cooking blogs you link to.
Lou, I make homemade mayonnaise with just a little egg and a very light oil, plenty of lemon juice. But yoghurt is one of my favourite ways to do tzatziki or raitas or with curries and laksas. I also have yoghurt dips with a little Thai sweet chilli jam and chopped mint, lime juice. Delicious.