Not fade away
Mick Jagger, circa 1969, from Rolling
Stone.
The centerpiece of
Thanksgiving dinner was a rockfish one year.
Kevin had caught it himself, straight from
the Chesapeake Bay. Mom stuffed it with
breadcrumbs spiked with chopped fennel and
onion, and there were mashed potatoes,
cranberries, and a nod to green, string beans
on the side.
We ate by candlelight, as usual, talked about
politics as usual. I wish I could go back and
capture those conversations, remember the
deep level jokes and high level discussions.
Almost any dinner with my mother and Kevin
was devoted to real conversation and humor,
sometimes dipping into reminiscence. It was
the closest we ever came to feeling like a
family.
Like the night a couple of years before Kevin
got sick, when he was just starting his PhD
program at Penn, and Augie the collie was a
puppy. I had taken the train from DC to
Wilmington to visit and things were unusually
smooth, no arguments, very little baiting. We
ate sautéed chicken over vermicelli in the
candlelight. The entire dish was sprinkled
with breadcrumbs toasted in olive oil,
garlicky and herby and delicious.
The conversation turned to the sixties. Kevin
had taken a year off from college in 1966
after being busted for selling marijuana (a
setup, he claimed) and he headed off to
California, hitchhiked down the coast. He
talked about Dylan going electric, mentioned
the rivalry between the namby pamby Beatles
devotees and the rebellious Rolling Stones
fans. There was talk of high school dances,
the moves and the moments. The radio was
playing music from that era and he and Mom
started to slow dance as I watched from the
table.
What do you do when a
family culture dies? When a powerful
personality disappears? The center did not
hold. We’re still trying to create our own
gravity.