Meatloaf and the Common Good

 

This is the Pyrex bowl in which my mother always made meatloaf.

And yes, being overseen by the Shawnee Pottery mid-20th century vintage pig bank and cookie jar in which she never kept cookies. Or coins.

I still make meatloaf in this sturdy old bowl, the same way she did: for every pound of ground meat (hamburger only in Mom's house) add 1 egg, ketchup and Worcester Sauce and salt and pepper to taste, packaged Italian bread crumbs, and enough milk to bind it all together. Set the loaf on 3 strips of bacon and put 3 more on top.

For some reason, making meatloaf for a family had me thinking about the cultural values that must be top of all our minds since the election, then January 6, then January 20.

The other overseer of both my mother's and my Gram's kitchens were magazine photos of JFK taped to the walls.

It was important to them to have a Catholic President -- not because he was a member of the same institution as they, but rather because they shared his values.

They believed in asking "not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

I suppose it sounds terribly old-fashioned and simplistic to call up this old warhorse, but I'm grateful that our new President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris are asking the same thing.

They're focused on how to help working folks rather than put more dollars into the hands of Big Business and the 1%. They're focused on ending the pandemic: on track to get more than 1 million doses of vaccine not just manufactured but into people's arms by March. They're focused on rebuilding our nation's sorry infrastructure -- think Texas in an ice storm -- because our roads and power and internet and communications are what regular people like you and me rely on to survive and to thrive.

And maybe because we too often don't share a common belief in the goodness of this universe, in which we are so small, and thus in the power of our communities -- I just don't get Republicans. Their very transparent selfishness and lust for power and control boggle my mind. I don't want to believe in it. I don't understand those who support it. I don't want you to believe in it, either.

In the faith in which my mother raised me, there was no room for living a life based on anger and resentment. We didn't have much, but what we did have -- family, a roof over our heads, meatloaf -- was a gift and a blessing not to be ignored.

My mother had multiple, painful, ineffective eye surgeries before she was 10 years old. She had a full hysterectomy at 17, in 1941. She couldn't have children. She married a man who was legally deaf.

Together, they adopted first me and then my brother. They built a home on land given them by my Gram and on my father's machinist salary. By the time I was 11 years old, we were ALL working 12 hour days on a gravel pit-turned-campground my dad had envisioned and was managing, and on which we were living.

My parents were deeply grateful. They had had plenty of experiences that could have led them to live lives of anger and resentment -- and they chose not to.

This is just one of the many wonderful articles of faith which they passed along to me. I am grateful, too.

#pyrex

#meatloaf

#commongood

#jfk

#growingupinCT