Thanksgiving With My Beautiful Annabel Lee
Goodmorning. Hope you had a nice thanksgiving. Mine turned out to be stressfree here at home at Owl Farm. I had the usual Woody Creek contingent (minus the Stranahans who are in L.A.,) and also as usual, I ate tofu turkey, while the others ate a real bird.
One of Hunter’s favorite dishes was turkey dinner. I made it for him on a regular basis all year long and he just couldn’t get enough, particularly when I would set it down in front of him with steam rising. We would order these huge smoked turkeys from Kentucky, and I’d carve off a hunk just the size for one serving at a time. Sometimes I’d make the meal with asparagus, sometimes spinach, greenbeans, or snowpeas — served with potatoes, sometimes baked but usually mashed with butter and milk. Once in a while I’d subsitute the potatoes with Wild Rice, or Risotto. He liked his Cranberries with or without walnuts, (I made the stuffing for him ALWAYS with equal amount celery to walnuts) and the gravy, he loved the gravy on everything but the veggies. He ate those with butter and lemon. He loved vegetables – always ate them first.
Besides watching him at his typewriter, maybe it is watching him enjoy his food that I miss the most. By the end of my first year living with Hunter, he had gained almost 20 pounds! So, it was a pleasure to cook again this Thanksgiving.
This was the second thanksgiving without Hunter. Was it easier? I’m not sure. But I’m so happy to be home with my friends and family and my permanent entourage of 2 purring cats and 1 happy dog following me in every room in my sweet Hunter’s home. Yes, it’s so good to be home.
I visited one of my favorite people in the whole world last night and somehow mentioned a poem that Hunter turned me on to. Every since, it’s been swimming around my mind — over and over — all night long and this morning. Hunter loved for me to read it to him, over and over. I liked Edgar Allan Poe, but hadn’t read Anabel Lee until I met Hunter. So, why not post it for you. It’s simply beautiful. Enjoy:
Annabelle Lee
By Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me
Yes! that was the reason
as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we
Of many far wiser than we
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
–the end—
Until next time, your melancholy friend,
Anita Thompson
p.s. Edgar Allan Poe wrote Annabel Lee about his young wife who had died the previous year at their home in the Bronx. Of course, in the early 19th century, there were no buildings yet, just gentle rolling hills that lead into the sea. Today, from the cottage where he wrote the poem, the only thing that resembles the natural environment of that kingdom he speaks of, is the green lawn that is fenced in around the little house, then surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of NYC Bronx buildings. Regardless, I highly recommend a visit.
P.P.S. Ed’s service was beautiful. Fantastic music, good speeches by good people, and lots of laughs and lots of tears. It brought up some thoughts I’ve had about Hunter’s memorial and Hunter’s legacy, that I’ll address sometime in the near future.
