In the death that signifies the end of the growing season, I wondered if I would ever know forever.  Then I met it for dinner.

 

Until it’s time to carve the turkeys, I work almost completely alone on the day of the community turkey supper.  Bob is madly cleaning the house for some out-of-town guests we’ve never met who are coming in for the feast and need a place to stay.  The girls are at a Halloween party.  I am staring down a bushel of butternuts and an assignment for one and a half gallons of gravy.

Before I begin, Bob and I slip out for a walk.  We say little.  The maple trees are bare, their leaves mouldering into the soil on the hard ground.  The frost clings to the edges of the lingering oak leaves, the Queen Anne’s lace have dropped their seeds and closed their blossoms, welcoming the season of death.  I sigh at the beauty, happy to see another growing season come to a close for the sake of a winter’s rest.  But I’m sad, too.  In these moments, I can see the elegant beauty in the balance that hangs between life and death.  Yet I am a living creature.  I cling to the notion of living forever.  I still wonder where, in all this balance, I will ever touch eternity.

When we return, the kitchen smells sweet from the cooking squash.  But it doesn’t smell like the turkey supper.  Only a part of it.  I could be roasting a turkey, simmering cranberry chutney and boiling potatoes, and it wouldn’t smell right.  It would smell like Thanksgiving dinner, but not the turkey supper.  The cocktail of aromas — from the dampness on the concrete floor that comes from the back rooms down stairs in the hall, to the wood frames and floors that make up that building, mixed with the scent of all the foods, can only be had in that place, on this day.  Cornelia, my friend who organizes the affair, has offered me a free ticket in exchange for my labors, but I turn it down.  I don’t care about eating.  I just want to be in there to smell it as it all comes together.

I need my time alone on this day.  Cornelia has offered to send me kitchen workers to lighten the labor.  But this time of scooping squash, melting butter and whisking it to a paste with potato flour is like a meditation that transports me back to my own childhood in this town.

Back then, aside from my job of gathering apples with my brother, I was only a passive participant in the event.  Ladies from the community prepared the food, the men maintained the building and helped serve, set up and clean.  I didn’t understand all that.  Through a child’s eyes, it was pure magic that spontaneously emerged on the day of the feast.  It was only when I came into adulthood and felt the keen loss of these community dinners as our population died out and young folks moved away, that I began asking my neighbors…Who cooked the turkeys?  Who made the mashed potatoes?  Who held it all together?  Who will make it happen again?

We were sitting in my kitchen celebrating my 40th birthday a year and a half ago, when Cornelia leaned over to me, pulled her curly mane of hair back from her face, squinted her eyes with intensity and informed me “we will.”

It took twenty years of mourning their loss before I understood what it took to make a turkey supper.  It isn’t stellar culinary skills.  It isn’t well-known keynote speakers or popular bands that will  attract attendance.  A community supper draws its energy from people who identify with this place, who have been willing to come down in their spare time to help Cornelia and Greg scrape paint, jury rig plumbing, fix the water system, and hook up heat.  It’s the workers who are willing to show up to clean the floors, wash dishes, set tables, serve the dinner, clear the tables, clean the floors again, wash dishes again.  It is about folks who will spend all day peeling apples and stirring pumpkin custard, grating cabbage, boiling potatoes, stirring gravy and scooping squash.

And then it is about the people who come.  Many folks who come are tied to West Fulton.  They grew up here, they carried memories from their own time sitting with their families in this hall.  And many come from outside our town borders.  They’ve heard about our labor, about this community’s growing self-love.  They come to be a part of us for one night.  By joining us, they help us to see ourselves in our shining moment.

This year’s supper goes more smoothly than our inaugural reinstatement of the dinner last year.  Once Bob and I have carved the turkeys, I walk amidst friends and neighbors, hearing stories about my community’s past, listening to compliments from outsiders about the food we grow here, the spirit we all share.  I drink it in, each conversation helping me to glitter with pride.

We return home, exhausted.   I light the fire so the spare room will be warm for our guests, then we all find our way to bed.

But Bob and I don’t sleep for long. We are both awake by three in the morning.  The fire has gone out.  We rebuild it, then sit before it in the dark, watching as it sparks to life and warms our faces.  No words pass between us, and my head falls to his shoulder as we savor the memories from the previous day.  My mind swirls as it revisits the stories about my community’s past, as it continues to envision how we will grow even stronger in the future.  My thoughts grows muzzy, my eyelids heavy.  I close them, and the glow from the fire penetrates their shade.   Sleep, the sweet kind that comes with joy from a job well done, is returning.  But just before it does, I open my eyes once more, remembering my question from earlier in the day.  Will I ever touch eternity?  And I realize that I’ve been touching it all weekend. I am touching it in this moment.  Eternity is community, where memory feeds the future, and the two embrace in the present.  And if they have a chance to share a meal together, both grow stronger, creating forever.