This week's prompt for Brigit's Flame is Harmony. It follows neatly on the first two prompts for the month. In case you forgot or don't know, they were Beat and Flat. Strangely enough, although I thought that Harmony would be easy, every path I tried to take dead-ended. Until I hit on this one...


"Who has the potato peeler?"

"Me, Mommy," said five-year old Carrie. "I peeled the potatoes for you." On the long low folding table Kim's husband, Rob, had set up in the corner of the kitchen was a huge pile of potato scrapings and a pitiful pile of marble-sized potatoes.

"Oh, Carrie," cried Kim. "You--" and then she saw the excitement in the little girl's eyes. She was so proud of herself for helping her mother that the anger evaporated and all Kim could say was, "You did a great job, sweetie. Now why don't you go watch cartoons for a little while? Your cousins will be here soon."

"Yay!" cried Carrie. She turned and ran from the room.

When Carrie had gone, Kim rinsed the pieces in cold water and tossed them into a large pot.  "What am I going to do?" she said aloud. "There's not enough here for two people; what am I going to tell the other eighteen?"

"Does someone need potatoes?" Her husband, Rob's, cheerful voice made Kim spin around in time to see him come through the kitchen door carrying a ten-pound bag of spuds. Once she had finished kissing him, he said, "I saw what Carrie was up to, but I didn't have the heart to tell her she couldn't help so I just went out and bought these." He bowed low and presented the bag to Kim with a flourish.

The phone rang. "Is there anything I can bring?"

"No, Mom, we've got everything we need. Just bring Dad and a hearty appetite."

"So," said Rob as they sat together at the prep table, peeling potatoes, besides the great potato crisis of '08, is everything under control?"

Kim looked around. The turkey was in the oven, and the giblets simmering on the back burner. Pies cooled on the kitchen counter and the green bean casserole was ready to join the turkey in the oven. "I think so," replied Kim. "I can't believe that we're finally going to have Thanksgiving in our own home."

"Didn't I tell you when I proposed that together we'd make all of our dreams come true?"

"You did," said Kim. "But everybody says things like that. I--"

Rob leaned close and kissed Kim. Then he laughed and said, "Just how many proposals did you get that you know so much about it?"

"Just the one," she replied and kissed him back. Then she got up to baste the turkey.

Once the potatoes were on the stove, the organized chaos that Kim remembered from her childhood settled in. She stirred, she basted, and in her mind's eye she saw her own mother going through the same motions while Kim peeled potatoes, scraped carrots, and prepared the antipasto.

The doorbell rang precisely at noon. The table was set, the parade was in full swing on television, and the house smelled like home.

Rob's parents brought wine. They had barely had time to open the bottle before the doorbell rang again. Kim's parents, her two brothers, and Rob's sister all arrived in a group along with their spouses and children.  Everybody brought their favorite Thanksgiving Day flourish and the prep table was completely covered with dishes containing everything from creamed onions to nuts.

Suddenly the huge kitchen, Kim's pride and joy, seemed more crowded than the three by five-foot rectangle she had struggled with in their old apartment. "Everybody out," she cried. "This is my job and I can handle it all by myself."

Kim sipped at a glass of wine and listened to the sounds of a football game drifting in from the living room. "This isn't so hard," she thought. "I don't know what Mom was always complaining about."

But despite Kim's careful timing, the timer on the turkey popped up much sooner than she had expected. The gravy wasn't ready and the potatoes were still hard. The antipasto had been consumed to the last black olive and the sorbet was still mushy. As Kim frantically tried to stir the gravy, and to keep the casserole dishes circulating through the microwave she realized she had forgotten the biscuits.

She yanked open the oven door and surveyed the blackened remains of what should have been light, buttery biscuits. "Oh no," she cried as every smoke alarm in the house blared into life. Kim frantically waved a towel in the direction of the alarm. She couldn't escape the feeling that she was in the midst of a video game and the bad guys were winning. Kids screamed and covered their ears as the adults milled around uselessly.

"My first Thanksgiving is going to be ruined."

"Wait a minute," said Rob. "Don't you mean our first Thanksgiving?"

Moving quickly, Rob opened the back door and fanned the smoke out. Once the alarms stopped ringing, he herded the kids out of the room while Kim surveyed the damage. The turkey was all right, the potatoes were finally almost ready, and with all of the food they had, nobody would miss the biscuits. She went back to trying to get the gravy to thicken.

"All you have to do is add a little more flour," said Kim's mother. She gently moved Kim out of the way and drizzled a mixture of flour and water into the bubbling broth. "Go mash the potatoes."

"What can I do?" asked Rob's sister, Margaret. "You direct and we'll serve," she said when Kim hesitated.

In less time than it takes to describe it, everybody had found a job. By the time dinner was served, the chaos that had ensued with the smoke alarms had turned into a well-choreographed dance. Even without the biscuits, there was plenty of food for everybody there.

Kim took her place at Rob's right hand and sat watching her family pass around the plates. It was hard to hear because everybody was talking at once. The kids were fighting over who would get a drumstick, Rob's father was busy telling Kim's father the story of how he shot two deer with a single arrow; a story that Kim could have recited herself since he told it every year. The mothers were busy telling "can you top this" stories about Rob and Kim.

Rob leaned over to whisper in her ear. "Guess you won't be volunteering for this again in a hurry," he said softly.

"I guess you would be wrong. This is the best Thanksgiving ever. I just won't try to do it all myself next time." She gestured around the table at the rest of the family and then said, "This might sound like a lot of noise to you but--" she shrugged "--to me it's all sweet harmony."