"Take A Deep Breath, Pal."

Right now, there is a helicopter circling the bay outside my window. This usually means that they are looking for something, or someone. It always puts me on edge, waiting to hear if they’ll circle back around again, if they’ll stop, dead still in one spot, or if they’ll fly away, call it off. Sometimes they are tracking a shark. Sometimes, they are participating in the worst day of someone’s life. It’s made me think of the sirens that plagued every waking hour of my friends’ and family’s lives in New York this spring. And about what a human blessing and curse it is to be able to be both irritated by a sound, and to extend some unconscious empathy for the reason it’s happening in the first place. Aren’t we terribly selfish animals? Isn’t our capacity for empathy, for sympathy, so incredibly advanced? We can feel it without even trying to, even while we’re distracted or annoyed.

Today, we are halfway through December. I have no idea how that happened, either. 

December is a complicated month for me, as it happens to be filled with some of my favorite peoples’ birthdays, some holiday traditions that I treasure deeply, and some memories that feel like — well — white-hot knives. I often wonder if this is true for you, too. Do you feel deep existential melancholy wrapped up in nostalgic pleasure every year around this time? Do you also dread it, but feel relieved once it’s here? Once you can wrap yourself in it in the dark? 

This year has forced me to think a lot about how my grief isn’t special. I’m not being self-deprecating — neither is yours. I don’t mean that it isn’t important, that it can’t shape the rest of your life, for better or worse. I only mean that it’s a feeling we will all have to incorporate into our lives at some point. I’ve been thinking a lot about how many more people around the world have had to incorporate grief into their lives this year, maybe for the first time. In the US alone, over 306,464 families full of people are incorporating new grief into their lives. Marking new anniversaries. Remembering last conversations. Doesn’t that feel awful to think about? Doesn’t it feel comforting to know that we’re not alone?

This particular December has been quite disorienting. I am blessed to live in a relatively low-risk area for COVID-19, with a small quarantine pod of people dedicated to each others’ health and safety, and a tremendous amount of outdoor space. I have been, alternately, spending the rainy, dreary days like today, inside, wrapping myself in the quiet comfort of grief and melancholy. I have felt deep despair over the number of deaths our compatriots have experienced without so much as a moment of silence on a national scale. I have thought about my dad a lot, who, in case I haven’t already mentioned it to you dozens of times, died thirteen Decembers ago. I have wanted so much to talk to him about what we’ve all experienced this year, but also felt such relief that he didn’t have to live through it. He would have been irate. He wouldn’t have shut up. He would have been so disappointed. He also would have read a lot, perhaps even written a lot. He, like me, would have consumed enough news to choke a rhinoceros, and he would have grilled steaks with my mom, and listened to records, and eaten his weight in Skittles. Isn’t that nice to think about? That even though someone has been gone for so long, you can still imagine perfectly what they’d be like today? 

On the bright, sunny, unreasonably warm days of this December, there’s been a lot to celebrate. There have been embarrassingly good birthday dinners. There have been beach walks where your nose doesn’t even run. There have been opportunities for outdoor socializing with the people I always mean to catch up with more. There have been babies born. Yesterday, on one of those unreasonably warm, sunny days, I got to meet a pair of fourteen day old twins on their porch. I got to talk with their parents about their feeding schedule, their exhaustion-induced late-night hallucinations, their unexpected joy when they realized how loudly their babies were going to keep farting on them. I can’t believe how small their noses are. I can’t believe their unbelievable luck to have been born on (what is hopefully) the tail end of a pandemic. I can’t believe how much I wanted to hold them. To be a bed for them to rest comfortably amidst the chaos. I can’t imagine bringing a child into this world right now, but I’m grateful that nice people around me are still managing to do it. Isn’t that a funny trick of biology? To know that something would make you so anxious and exhausted, but to still want very much to be farted on by a tiny person?

In the in-between days, when I am neither consumed by the occasionally inspiring creativity that heartbreak can induce, nor out in the world celebrating the tiny interactions with people I love that now feel so special, I need to be distracted. Somehow, the feeling of being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel has made the tunnel feel much longer and much darker. We’re going to make it, but we’ve lost an unfathomable amount. It’s more than I can handle without someone to cook for, someone to write for, someone to soothe, somehow. It will not surprise you to hear that, on these days, my thoughts turn to cooking something for a long time. 

A friend recently made my mom’s brisket and announced, “UMM, tell Sue Orchant she is pure magic.” 

Mom, Joe said you are pure magic.

My mom’s brisket recipe has always been a legend in my mind. It wasn’t particularly scarce, she made it for just about every Jewish holiday (“Do you have any idea how many Jewish holidays there are?” I screeched at my husband, recently), but I don’t recall ever getting sick of it. You have to cook this for at least two and a half hours, usually three and a half, depending on the size of your brisket. You have to be home while you do this. You have to exercise some amount of patience, while you smell the most delicious smells on earth lacing every room. As a teenager, I used to stomp around the house, waiting for it to be finished. 

“I can’t get excited about eating anything else while I’m smelling that,” I would lament.

“I know,” my dad would commiserate, smirking. “Take a deep breath, pal.” 

Isn’t that ridiculous? How often he reminded us to do that? And how often we still have to remind ourselves?

Listen to This Shit: I Made You a Playlist:“Sleet, Sleet, Sleet” on Apple Music“Sleet, Sleet, Sleet” on Spotify

Sue Orchant’s Brisket

4-6 lbs. brisket
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 large onions, sliced
2 tbs. olive oil
4 15oz. cans tomato sauce
4 cans of water (tomato sauce cans) [*Ed note: this is one of my favorite cooking directions of all time]
1/2 bottle of red wine
12oz. mushrooms, sliced
4-8 carrots, sliced in rounds
1 bunch fresh dill, chopped
salt & pepper
3 bay leaves
3-4 potatoes cut into chunks, if desired

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Put an oven-safe roasting pan or dutch oven on stove (over two burners if it’s a big one) on medium-high heat. Add oil and brown sliced onions and garlic.

3. Season the brisket with salt, and brown it on both sides in the pan. Remove the pan from the heat.

4. Put brisket fat side up and add tomato sauce, water, wine, mushrooms, carrots, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Sprinkle the whole surface with dill. Cover roasting pan and put in oven for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, checking a few times to make sure the liquid hasn’t reduced too much.

5. Add potatoes (if desired) during last 2 hours.

6. When the brisket is tender, remove it from the gravy and slice across the grain. Put it back in the gravy and keep warm until you’re ready to eat. But, I mean, you’re ready. You’ve been smelling it for hours.

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!