The Kitchen, After Hours
The Kitchen, After Hours
Dear Joseph...
November 21, 2018
Dear Joseph
“Women and vegetables.”
Hanratty has been busy in the kitchen for hours. He is making soup, salad, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, roasted vegetables, dinner rolls, pumpkin bread, cookies, brownies, cakes and more.
He is also serving beer, wine, Cherry Coke, Fritos, and is playing music from Detroit, Europe and western Canada.
“Women and vegetables,” Hanratty says again and winks at me.
I ask him what he means as he cuts up celery.
He keeps working while he talks.
“Women are better than men. They just are. Women are more compassionate, more kind, sympathetic, empathetic and beautiful than men. Not all women are perfect, good God do I know that. But, on the whole, women are vastly superior to men. The more time you spend around women the more kind and understanding you’ll be. The more time you spend around women you’ll be more exposed to spirituality, openness and optimism. The more women you have in your life the more you’ll understand, accept and support women, girls and people of different colors and backgrounds and you’ll care more about animals, plants, the earth and, probably, yourself. Women are better than men. They just are.”
Hanratty dumps some celery into a bowl and begins chopping another stalk and talks some more.
“Vegetables are perfect. Vegetables make you strong, make you healthy, make you light and keep you honest. Vegetables need care, they need water and they need light. But just a little. Then they grow on their own and spend the rest of their existence giving back to you. Vegetables make you smarter, cleaner and happier. Surround yourself with a garden and you’ll know peace, you’ll know love, you’ll know patience and acceptance. And you’ll never kill or hurt. Vegetables and fruit never die. They grow and give to you and then they grow again. Vegetables are eternity. They are serenity. They are all you need and should be all you ever want.”
Hanratty puts down his knife and looks out the window. It’s a cold night and Thanksgiving is just hours away. He has a tattoo of a moon on his wrist.
“Women and vegetables,” he says again. “That’s what I want it to say on my tombstone.”
He returns to chopping vegetables.
It will be his last Thanksgiving. I wish I’d known that then.
He left me his motorcycle. Sometimes, including on a lot of November nights, I’ll go out in the garage and sit on it and think about girls and remember Hanratty playing the piano or watching basketball. I’ll run my finger over the letters on the gas tank…Kawasaki…and I’ll see Hanratty in the moonlight. And I’ll wonder what God did to him. –TK
Wednesday, November 21, 2018