Osler's Razor

On Christmas eve, I make soup in my mother’s tidy kitchen.

It’s a chowder, really, with lots of milk. It takes time to make it the right way, since it needs to be balanced. Milk is a delicate thing; it can be overwhelmed by spice or grease or heat, and it must be surrounded with things in moderation. Into the chowder goes simple food: Potatoes, and ham, corn, bacon, onion, carrots, and perhaps some fish.

The first thing to do is to brown the bacon on the bottom of the soup pot—not too much bacon, or the grease will be too much; it needs to be just enough to prepare the way for all that will come after. While the bacon is cooking, I haul out the potatoes, and peel them over the old steel sink, then cut them up into cubes with the onions and carrots. Teetering on the edge of the cutting block might be a glass of wine, and I have to be careful not to unsettle it as I chop.

When the bacon is done, I pour in a bit of the wine, to mix with the grease, let it dance a little, and then throw in the onions and wait until I can smell it, the scent of something common and wonderful. It all goes in slowly: Some more wine, and the vegetables, the corn, and finally the milk. It is then that it all comes together, when I can see the swirling white, and feel a little fear that it is too hot or too full or too thin, and then, always right them, I feel it.

The thing that I feel is the urgency of the travelers who must be fed, the ones awaited. These travelers—they are tired, worried, hungry; and they might not have a bed to sleep in tonight, because it is crowded with other travelers. It’s not a thought, it’s an emotion, and it’s overwhelming. I start to act differently.

It’s time to chop the ham which will go in last, and I reach for the good knife and I cut it thick, big chunks that will fill up a soup spoon with just a little bit of corn hanging on the edge like the last men in a lifeboat. Time is short now, I can’t let the milk boil, but this soup has to be rich and I grab the really great wine and make sure no one can see, and I dump some in, and pile in even more of the ham in a feverish rush. If there is fish, I cut away all but the best parts which are firm and free of bones, and slide them in gently from my palm, and then I call to the others. The travelers come to eat.

It’s hard not to cry, because I know it isn’t good enough. I’m not worthy to feed them, and though they are grateful, I am sad that it can’t be more, that in this season of love I have only carrots, onions, potatoes, milk, bacon, and ham. Could it ever be enough?