Of Soup and Bones and Simmering Things

It's after Christmas and all day I have had the smell of a twenty-four-hour soup stock in our house. I roasted two chickens for our family Christmas dinner and decided to make soup stock from the leftover bones and gristle rather than discarding it the way I usually do. I saw a neat recipe in the daily newspaper and was intrigued. The recipe tells me to dump all the bones and skin of the chicken, together with some diced carrots, celery, onions, parsley, thyme, rosemary, and sage into a cheese cloth, tie it up, put it in a crockpot, fill the pot with water and simmer for twenty-four hours.

While my soup was simmering, I took some time to just relax beside the Christmas tree, something I really longed to do after all the activity of Christmas preparations and family gatherings. I have twin nieces who, like me, love to read and write. Their Christmas present to us was a story each of them had written. I decided this would be a good time to enjoy reading their gift.
To my surprise, the first story I picked up, entitled The Song Over the Bones, is about a grandmother making soup in her kitchen, while her granddaughter looks on. The grandmother has a habit of telling stories to her grandchildren while she works in her kitchen. She is wise and she knows that telling a story has its rules and so does listening to a story. Just like simmering the soup stock for a long time brings out the flavor, thinking at length about a story we have heard "keeps us asking questions" and brings out shades of meaning. The secret lies in the the long slow simmering process.

The grandmother emphasizes the fact that each of us, with the unique life we are living, is a story; a story only we can tell by living it. "When we sing the Song Over the Bones, we let our song loose into the world, we set it free. It lopes through the forest in search of other songs. A story needs other stories to hunt with, to howl with, to fight against, and to run away from."

Each person's Song Over the Bones is as different and unique as the person who sings it. 

The advantage of having lived a long life is that I can begin to see the shape that my story is taking. I can go over each chapter, one by one as I have lived it -- the successes, the failures, the delights and the tears. A friend of mine, older than I am, wrote in her Christmas letter about "the birth pangs of life stretching us into something new." We learn slowly, but that is not lamentable, it is how it is meant to be.

Slow simmering of the soup stock brings out the flavor and gives us a Song Over the Bones that is rich in texture and delicious to the palate!

The chicken noodle soup we had for supper tonight was very flavorful and I have more soup stock saved in a jar to share with friends over lunch.