cafemama ... lovably behind schedule and out-of-date.
begin, again . january 03 . 2010
If it is one thing it will be breakfast; if it is two, dinner. Three and four and five are lunch and chickens scratching and compost turning; six and seven and eight are reading, writing, sewing. Nine and ten, clean kitchen counter, well-swept floor.
In this decade of newness, I begin again. I gather up the corners of myself and hold aloft, as I sweep in mess and disappointments and spoiled peaches and deep, clefting hurts and unwritten words and unspoken loves and tomatoes left on their vines and carefully-drawn plans, never referred to again. I sweep in these sentiments: no, I will not type them, they are in there and I will carry this bundle to the highest peak, the undead volcano perhaps, and I will open up my arms and let the corners go. There! My hands are brushing together, satisfied; I open my mouth and close it, letting tension flow from the muscles between ear, lip, rain off our steep roof. Splish splash pitter schweeep.
I had gone to bed early, New Year's Eve, suffering from a headache that probably stemmed from indulgences in sugar, or argument. And so I was almost all asleep when the new decade struck, and as it did the fireworks began. At first it was just a pop-POPPOP! to the west and then another, south, and then all around me, popPOPpop-SHPEEEEEE-popPOPOPpop, near and not so near, as if the entire world was celebrating in one grande finale that was also an issuance, an embarkation. I had been feeling quiet, introspective, becalmed and with this aural consecration I rejoiced and gave thanks. I fell back into my sleep, full of hope. Despite it all.
In our home, there is a presence, a cloud, that much though I swipe palm against palm, much though I practice with deep breaths and prayers and promises to stay calm, spurn anger, I cannot whish (wish) away. It hangs, dark and often pierced with thunder, lightning, maelstroms and hailstorms. I have no power over it; it is not mine.
It is this which grips me: despite all our best ideas and identifications, simply knowing of what a loved one suffers is ineffectual, useless. I can name this, but I cannot mend it. I offer up cool and rational ideas, diagnoses, alternatives, perspectives; I give him his choices. In some moments, I am met with another rational adult. In others, I am only launching myself, arms akimbo, into the whirlpool. I grasp anything I can.
And so, I wish to begin, again. Each day is new, a grey mystery of an opportunity to practice enough so it becomes both rote and referent, example and exercise. I wish I was going to church with my family each Sunday; I wish I had breakfast on the table every morning when the boys awoke; I wish I could go to bed each night with a clean kitchen, toys put away, knitting quietly folded by my cozy chair, bookmark progressed through a work worthy of my quiet time. I am grasping at this, getting a little at a time. I am working toward the goal.
But while I work, it will be the briefest of quiet times, prayerful states: each morning, I look out the window and open my eyes to the sky, really see; and later, as I pour my French press pot of coffee into a mug, I inhale the aroma deeply, and I give thanks. I thank God for creating these berries; I thank him for the farmers and the buyers and the roasters; I thank him that, at least, I have this day to start anew.
pain, left behind . december 31 . 2009
"And you. You must have had at least one parent who raged," said our new couples counselor. Her office is in a very Portland old house, around the corner from the house where Jonathan spent many of his worst, bitterest, most painful times as a child. In the very Portlandest of ways, it is full of odd yoga classes, acupuncturists, Pan-Asian cushions and wall hangings, many sorts of green teas. I am only jarred for a moment as Jonathan says, "no! Her parents are wonderful!"
No. It was, I realize in a reflective instant that shocks me back 10 years, him. My ex-boyfriend of nine years. The pain he caused me, the anger I nurtured, is still here, burbling in the pit of my stomach, spurting hotly from my throat, despite the genetic distance it is reflected in the eyes of these boys, this one, wise-beyond-years, blonde; this one, sweet-smoldering, brown-eyed, everyone's friend until; this one treasure-child, soul of my soul, onomatopoeic echo.
When I left him, it was for the children who would one day call my womb home, the love I already had for them, I had far more strength and courage and power for them than for myself. It has been these past months and this ear-splitting now that I have known that I did not leave him, not well enough. I have brought him with me.
His pain, his fury, his begrudging the world its ease, its happiness, its pretty light way. This has come with me though I rejected it always, fearfully at first and then with certainty, realization, conviction, love. That path was not for me.
Yet it has continued with me, dogging my heels, a path that winds through my life of its own volition: a volition that is his and mine and that of all those in all of our lives who have sought power, control through fear and volume and insults and rage. 10 years ago, I knew, but could not sever this tie, still under the thrall of a love that was always wrapped, twisted with indebtitude, mutual suffering that was not mutually suffered, social and relational and physical power to which I never should have yielded. But did.
Here, I tell myself, take back the power. Take it back with words and truth-telling, take it back with prayer and God-pleading and the strength you can find despite yourself, make this family anew. Find a new childhood for these children, still young enough to see the power of love and peace, still sweet enough to grasp my hand and walk with me to the places I want to take them, still wide-eyed enough to wake up on a morning and look out the window with me, see orange-touched clouds over apartment buildings and pine trees, sunrise coming and say "OH!" with light everywhere through them, to point in a voice that is clear-but-not-evident and say, "moon, mama! Moon!"
Because this is a day in the calendar which engenders such decisions, I feel that I can gather 17-and-then-some years of this too-slow comprehension, to tell the story: "Jeffrey was not, was never kind to me," that I can form in myself a purging, I can order that demon anger OUT!, that I can pick up the Lego bricks and calendula seeds and fabric bits and apple cores of love all around me, that when I open my eyes each morning I can see every raindrop filled with strength and peace and ability to love this family through the hardest and most wonderful times, that I can snap its photo and let the words pour out until you can see this trail aright: I will leave this pain behind.
gifts . december 25 . 2009
I am watching the boys play together with Legos and cars and tiny dollar store teddy bears, and while of course it is not going perfectly (there was sugar, and too little sleep, and these are these boys) I am in a rare mood, drunk on the buoyant nature of the day. I am flushed with a sense of greatest accomplishment -- never have I spent my money so completely and well, every penny nearly, and the boys all, to a one, thrilled.
Everett's gifts were Legos and more Legos, from Grandma and Grandpa and me, as I am waiting to read to them it has been 24 hours of studious, joyous play only interrupted by a spare eight hours of sleep. He worked through the instructions on each and every set, completing one and going on to another. He is in the most serious rapture and both he and I can see day upon day upon year of like play to come. His dad, too, is only now returning from two hours of riding his new bike, purchased on Twitter credit. He said something on Facebook: this Christmas did not turn out terribly as expected, he was surprised by a gift beyond all of my capacity to love and give this holiday season.
And there are books at my feet, a pile of best-loved Christmas books (must get the last reading in before it's too late, the very tail end of Christmas' even, anticipation spent hours ago), and it occurs to me how all of them end with a depiction of Christmas morning and the gifts; perhaps they're barely unwrapped, only peeking at what's in store for the receiver. And even in Corduroy's Christmas, the one with the little flaps to open and see what's inside, many of the boxes are still beribboned, unopened. The joy is so brief as to be unremarkable, a counting but not an accounting.
But gifts! What is a gift without discovery, sparkling eyes, smiles that turn all the way to tears, the hug of a teddy bear so spontaneous it can't be captured on camera, hours-days-years of love, gratitude, memories, Truman saying "this was from that OTHER Christmas," Monroe already tagging everything remotely associated with this season mimas. "Mee-mish," he says with joy, mimas bear, mimas train, mimas paper in red, mimas scissors we used to cut the paper chains. I put the books down and ask my boys, "are you grateful?" and they are, yes, yes, they look at me with eyes that are true. "What are you most thankful for?" The answer is "Legos and trains and cars and bears and Bakugan!", socks too, everything, they say.
We did not go around the table, during the year's Thanksgiving celebration, and say our rote annual thanks. Instead, this Christmas night, we tell ourselves that we will make our own book about the joy, not of anticipation, but of gratitude, for gifts given and received and used in ways that continue to surprise us. And as they are falling asleep around me, the deep breaths of better-than-anticipated, I think of my gifts. Not those under the tree but each of these boys with their challenges, the language that I cannot understand, the tempers and the fiery anger, the sensivity and the constant motion, the great and enormous need that each of these boys has for me. I think that I had not anticipated any of this, no, it surprised me in a flutter of pages far beyond the ends of picture books, and what it has required of me: patience, presence I cannot bear, money I do not have, love I cannot give, generosity more than I can muster: for this, I am grateful.
paying the bills
walnuts for the rich . october 29 . 2009
They are part of the percussion section of October's orchestra here in this corner of my block, and they are the snare drums. In a heavy rain storm or on a windy day, they report with their crack-crack-CRACKS so often I fear for my head as I walk to my bike in the back yard. It is how I know my neighbors' cars are arriving, the crun-crun-crun-crunchhhhh-split-crunK of walnut shells and meat, splattered, unrecognizable, over and among gravel. The bass of the apples and the bongo of the pine cones fall less frequently, but still: there is no doubt among the animal kingdom that the feast is upon us.
In past years, I've stood one-legged at my kitchen sink, watching the squirrels industriously darting back and forth along the fence's rim, bringing their co-op share of the walnut tree's bounty to whatever storage spot they've reserved in my front yard. If the drumroll hadn't warned me it was time to gather walnuts, this would have. But in past years, I've watched the squirrels dart with longing, and then bought my walnuts, shelled, by the one-pound bag, at the farmer's market. It has not been from any sense of great personal wealth; on the contrary, I have felt poor, in time, in knowledge, in space.
This year was ripe for a change. Liberated by my time in June and July picking green walnuts for nocino, when I first saw the squirrel dart past my window, nut in hand, I took a bucket outside and offered my seven-year-old a penny a nut. That first day, he made $1.10, and I picked up twice what he did; the second picking, he made $2.32. He won't pick up those with black muck still clinging to their shells, and I'm patient enough to rub it off with my fingers, a nearby leaf, or against pavement with my shoe (which, yes, stains one's skin, but I have no need for lily white digits), so I gather more than he does once more.
Today he was busy in a fantasy game involving leaping off hills of dirt with a large stick, so I picked walnuts myself, and they were everywhere, so plentiful I was in mourning, waste everywhere. The neighbors had not picked up their share, not the next-door neighbors whose tree this was, nor the apartment dwellers whose cars were subject to herald by these underfoot delicacies. My back ached as the sun set, and I stopped just shy of my bucket's limit, five pounds of nuts. I would have had to pay at least $3.50 had Everett picked these.
Inside, in my kitchen, I selected three dozen now-dried walnuts from the stainless steel rolling shelves where I'd left them to cure, a little more crowded than a single layer, less than the recommendation I'd seen somewhere of "no more than three walnuts deep." They'd been there not quite two weeks -- three separate sources say "two or three weeks" -- but my downside was tiny (harder to crack, is all). Standing on one foot, I inserted my walnuts into the garage sale nutcracker and Monroe stood next to me, hungrily eating the sweet-bitter meats as I removed the papery bits.
A pound of walnuts, dry in their shells, yielded four ounces of meat (even accounting for snacking and a few imperfect nuts). I had plans: a conserve, with quinces and dark sweet honey from the farmer's market. Into my saucier they went, to toss over medium-high heat as they released their fragrance, I tasted and tasted and thought, I am rich! Rich in everything that matters. With my knife I chopped them and poured into the quince puree and watched, waited, stirred, expected, discovered.
It is said that we must greatly change our world, turn millions of acres into arable farm land by magic and technology, if we are to feed the growing population. But I wonder: is there a way to eat differently, change our lives, embrace the richness around us, and feed ourselves with what's already here? Everywhere, as I run, as I ride, I dodge walnuts and edible chestnuts and acorns, on school grounds and city property and in parking strips and in front yards, piled into heaps for pickup and take-away, and I think, poverty! It saps me, this hungriness, this dereliction, this malfeasance. And it is not just nuts, it is apples and pears and plums and persimmons and figs and grapes dripping, drooping, fragrant, out of reach over an overgrown back fence.
And I stir my quince-walnut-honey conserve, considering the limits of my new richness, greedy for more, more, more time to save the food, everywhere.
peek into the past . of daily apples and pinecones . november 18 . 2008
joy in the midst of the dailiness of life
