By New Year's Eve. 2020 becoming 2021. The worst year becoming — what? I don't know. I have stopped predicting. Prediction requires the assumption that the future is knowable, and this year has taught me that the future is not knowable, not even slightly, not even approximately. A year ago I was worried about Marvin's disease. I was not worried about a global pandemic. The universe has a way of expanding your fears just when you think you've catalogued them all.
Marvin was asleep by eight. The earliest yet. His world is shrinking temporally as well as spatially — fewer waking hours, fewer words, fewer moments of the full Marvin. The recliner holds him. The sleep enfolds him. I watch him sleep and try not to think about the metaphor, because the metaphor is too obvious and too painful: a man retreating, hour by hour, day by day, into a sleep from which he will eventually not fully return. I am an English teacher. I see metaphors everywhere. Some of them I wish I didn't see.
I made the cabbage soup. The luck soup. The tradition. I stirred the pot at eleven-fifty-five and thought about Sylvia, who believed in cabbage the way other people believe in God — with conviction, without evidence, with the understanding that belief is its own reward. The cabbage will not bring luck. I know this. The disease is not impressed by cabbage. The virus is not deterred by soup. But I make the soup because Sylvia made the soup, and making it connects me to her, and the connection is the luck. The luck is not in the cabbage. The luck is in the chain.
I called Miriam at midnight. She was already in 2021 — Tel Aviv is seven hours ahead. "How is it?" I asked. "It looks the same," she said. "The same wars, the same weather, the same hummus." I laughed. Miriam makes me laugh in a way that only a sister can — the laugh of shared history, of fifty years of Friday calls, of two women who grew up in the same bedroom and now live on different continents and still find the same things funny. "Happy New Year, Miriam." "Happy New Year, Ruthie. Make the soup." "I made the soup." "Then we'll be fine."
We'll be fine. The Rosen sisters have decided. The soup is made. The year is new. The man is sleeping. The kitchen is clean. We'll be fine. This is not certainty. This is not even hope. This is the stubbornness of two women from the Grand Concourse who have survived everything so far and see no reason to stop. We'll be fine. The cabbage says so.
The soup was Sylvia’s tradition, and I honored it. But there is another tradition — mine and Miriam’s, just ours — that belongs to New Year’s Day morning: a Bloody Mary, made properly, spicy enough to remind you you’re still alive. Miriam drinks hers in Tel Aviv and I drink mine in the kitchen where Marvin is sleeping, and we are together in the way that two people on opposite sides of the world can be together when they share the same glass. It is not cabbage. It does not bring luck. But it is ours, and that is enough.
Homemade Bloody Mary Cocktails
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 2
Ingredients
- 2 cups tomato juice, chilled
- 3 oz vodka
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish
- 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce (such as Tabasco), or to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon celery salt
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- Ice, for serving
- Celery stalks, lemon wedges, and olives, for garnish
Instructions
- Mix the base. In a large pitcher or measuring cup, combine the tomato juice, vodka, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, hot sauce, celery salt, and black pepper. Stir well to combine.
- Taste and adjust. Sample the mix and adjust seasoning as needed — more hot sauce for heat, more horseradish for bite, more lemon for brightness. The mix should be bold and savory.
- Serve over ice. Fill two tall glasses with ice. Pour the Bloody Mary mixture evenly over the ice.
- Garnish. Add a celery stalk, a lemon wedge, and a few olives to each glass. Serve immediately.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 145 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 12g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 890mg