The Caller -- for Sara Blakeman
Late fall, early holiday morning, snow falls thickly. Worried about our meal, we drink chocolate, and try not to talk, because our talk gets us in trouble. We make to do lists, view our land (fields, peaks, rivers, mounds), spot something new on our hill. It is a circular, pale, flesh toned, object, with a dark strip of fabric surrounding her center. We look at one another, pull on boots, hats, step outside, scale our hill. Up close we see that the dark fabric around her center is lace, and that she has a face (eyes--closed, thickly lashed--nose, mouth) but no neck. We detect a moist patch between her lips and her nostrils. With fingers, we lightly tap the unidentifiable visitor. Her skin is soft, smooth, even glistening and, to our touch, she feels, despite being dusted with snow, warm. She does not move. A child picks up a stick and prods her. We tell him: Don’t you harm our visitor. We rarely get visitors. We enjoy visitors, even cherish them, so when one arrives we treat her well, we don’t poke her hard.

The visitor does not roll, or budge.

We try not to talk, but we do quietly question whether her presence has to do with our holiday meal preparation.

Annually, we have troubled holiday meals. It is possible that word of our difficulty gets out, and that we have been sent an overseer.

If she is an overseer, and if she disapproves of our meal preparation and arrangements, we will certainly be severely punished.

Daily, we share meals together, and talk, with no pressure. But holiday meals are a time where degrees of pressure are expected, even required. Holiday meals are an opportunity not to fail. We are forbidden to grow panicked or nervous. Such mood changes signal failure, even if the meal itself turns out high quality. And talking weakens our ability to perform under any kind of pressure.

So far, our annual holiday meal performances fail. And this means that each year we are penalized for our series of failures.

We look at our visitor. We do not know, we have no way of knowing, if she is a guest who hopes to join in our meal, if she is assigned to help with our performance, or if her mission is to watch and report on what we do, or to invent and deliver new forms of punishment.

Snow falls hard. We carry our visitor down the hill, bring her in our home, set her on our kitchen counter.

We cut potatoes, rinse the roast, pour ourselves warm wine spiced with cinnamon, go to our rooms to dress.

When we return, we see she still sits on the counter, but has changed shape. She appears to have slightly melted. One of her eyes is wide open. We take a deep breath, stand straight, allow ourselves to hope that this is a sign of approval. If we can just once perform correctly, we might be able to greet our new season without dread of penalty or any kind of retribution.

The Caller
for Sara Blakeman

by Lynn Crawford

 
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