caretaking the world | pull up a chair

November 16, 2007

teaching to see

he rolled out of bed the way he usually does: somersault off the pillow to sprawled on his back at the end of the mattress, head dangling, flopping like some sort of upside-down rag doll, not too far from the ground. a perfect inverted perch, he decided, for keeping watch out the window.

that’s when he called me. “papa is out on the roof. he’s hopping around. i think maybe he’s looking for breakfast.”

papa, for those who’ve not hung in this house maybe so long, is not the little one’s name for the tall guy with tortoise-rimmed glasses. it was not he who was hopping around on the roof, although i too would have come running for that. rather, it was the red bird, papa cardinal, a character here who goes by only one name.

after broadcasting every breath papa was taking, out there on the roof that juts just below the window through which he was watching, the little one reached for the ledge. or maybe i reached there first. the point was, one of us reached for and grabbed the binoculars.

suddenly, the boy hanging there with his curls topsy-turvy, wanted to learn how to look through the little glass circles that, through the wizardry of optics alone, bring the world as close as the end of your nose.

as i tried–it’s clumsier than you would imagine, believe me–to line up the circles, tried to narrow then widen the space in between so it fit the very same space on the face that is his, as he attempted to make it all clear, and not blurry, not too close, not too far, not staring down at the gutter, but trying to get that ol’ bird in his lens, i realized really i was teaching the boy how to see.

how to regard. how to watch. how to take in the world without any words.

how to notice the pinhole there on the side of papa’s small beak. how to study the feathers he fluffs when it’s cold. how to see the ballet of the leaves in the trees as they shudder there in the november wind.

he was, for a while, finding it hard. the bird was nowhere in sight. all he saw were the nail heads there on the shingles.

not quite the subject of choice for intro to looking, a beginner’s class in the fine art of things to do with your eyes.

ah, but once he got papa there in the cross hairs, he didn’t move. didn’t flinch. just froze like a boy with a bird in the palm of his hand. which, almost, it was.

he might still be there now, only the clock nudged us on, the clock and the notion that school had a bell that soon would be ringing.

but, like clockwork, each morning since, he somersaults off the end of the bed, grabs the looking lens from there on the ledge, and begins again to scan the sky, and the trees, and whoever decides to land on the roof.

he’s even tried it at night. though it’s a little bit hard to make out a star with a mere binocular lens. i explained that’s where the telescope comes to the rescue, but that would be the next class in the series, and we’re only just fumbling with this.

last night, drying off from the bath, he explained that really he’d like to see clear to africa. he was hoping perhaps he could raise the lens to his eyes and see faraway.

far, faraway, he explained. he’d like to see maybe a lion or cheetah. and surely a tiger.

“and some day, when i’m 7 or 8,” he informed, “i’m gonna get real binoculars and try to find any sorta kinda nest. so i can look at a fox’s nest, or a bird’s nest, or a squirrel’s nest.

“i would really like it,” he went on, sliding a leg into his red flannel pajamas, “if papa cardinal would just stand there, and didn’t move completely.”

it needn’t be exotic, i’m thinking he knows, for what you see through your lens to be utterly gripping.

i couldn’t be more tickled that he’s taking so deep a fancy to a sense that can take him so far, a sense that will bring more wisdom and glory than he or i or any of us, really, can ever imagine.

to see is to know, is to understand, is to absorb.

to see is to take in, from the thinnest strand of a spider’s web laden with dew to the last dying ember of a star as it streaks through the cosmos, the whole of God’s breath.

and i mean that without the d. although the breadth and the breath aren’t far from the same. but if we consider the whole of creation one deep exhale from the in and the out of something like lungs wholly divine, then really it’s all, well, supremely breathtaking.

and it is not every day that any one of us gets a chance to instruct in using the eyes for all that they’re meant to take in: the way someone fidgets a spoon while making a point at the table. the color of sky as the last beams of the day paint it a pink you’ll never forget. the glint of the moonlight on a pine branch heavy with snow. the gleam in the eye of someone you love.

and, oh, what of the things we can’t teach, the ones we only can pray they learn on their own: how not to miss the twinge of the hurt deep in the heart; the sparkle of love blooming; the look of intent, of paying attention; how to notice a soul draining toward empty.

really so much of it is only just seeing by feeling. it’s braille, after all. so much of the seeing that matters. it comes through the gift of the eyes, but also the touch of the skin and the skip of the heart.

but, alas, in these mornings of teaching to see, i realize i am bound, i am tethered to only the lens bobbing there on the end of the cord that slips over his head.

the rest of the teaching to see i will teach without lenses. i will teach, day after day, for as long as i’m here. i will teach my children to look and look closely.

i will teach them the glory of God is there through the lens. but they must open their hearts, as well as their eyes, to soak in the sights.

it is the often unnoticed to which i must teach them to pay the closest attention.

the five senses, most of the time, come already installed. but not always, and in the absence thereof we notice how much of the world we get or we miss through the eyes and the ears, the palate, the skin and the nose. and even in cases where all senses are up and running, still there is refining and learning sure to be done. if we pay close attention. far as i know, it’s a lifelong dedication. did someone or something teach you, unforgettably, the fine art of seeing, of watching, of looking quite closely? what are some of the fine points of life you’d so miss if not for the grace of your eyes in the first place?

today is the day of the birthday of my sweet cousin julie. and tomorrow, my mother, the one who i realize, so many mornings as i sit to start typing, has informed so much of the way i see through my lenses onto the world. to both, i send the deepest of blessings and prayers for a year just ahead that is filled with great sights. and the knowing, deep in both of their hearts, that you are so loved. happy day of your birth. be full of joy.

2 Comments

September 28, 2007

a prayer for the grownups of children who struggle

this is communal. there is, far as i can tell, not a soul who doesn’t at one time or another come into the ranks. there is no corner, sadly, on this market. no me-me-me thinking you are the only one who knows what it is to lie deeply awake–and not that you’re counting the holes in the ceiling.

hardly.

you’re racking your heart and your soul and your brain, even your belly, trying to figure out, devise some plot, to push back the struggles that threaten to swallow your little one. or maybe your big one.

you are no less than moses at the red sea, i tell you. you and your rod, standing there, palms raised, as if.

as if you, who does not possess any magical powers, can reach into the brain of a very young person, reach in and straighten some wires. get synapses connected. make them see. make them hear. make them not be afraid. make the letters that spill on the page line up in some sort of sense. instead of backwards and jumbled and utterly, thoroughly awful. so misbehaved, that alphabet.

as if–oh, God, please–you could stand in the halls or the lunchroom, or off to the edge of the playground. make the mean kids go away. stop the big ones from picking on little ones. or the other way around. splinter the words being hurled, the ones that are ugly and poison and might sting forever.

it is hell and it’s lonely besides.

barely a soul is willing to advertise the truth of the matter: not a one of us is merrily sitting back, watching little people skitter through life. as if it’s a pond and they were on skates and they’re gliding. making true loopdy-loops.

nope, i am no researcher, or taker of census. i have not knocked on doors asked, excuse me, is there suffering here?

but chances are good to better than good, the answer is yes. very much so. why, thank you for asking.

in my own little world, in just the last week, for instance, i’ve heard all of this: a child who tried to jump out a window. twice. one who died. one who can’t hear very well and it’s making her mad. you would be too. if all day you struggled to make out the words on everyone’s lips. and the lips didn’t move very slowly. not at all.

i’m not done: a boy afraid to turn out the light. another who won’t. a child who cannot see the big picture and hold onto a small fragile thread. it’s one or the other. and sometimes you really need both.

there’s a girl who keeps having seizures; no one knows why. but do you think, for a minute, her mother rests easy, whenever she’s not in her sight, whenever the phone rings? there are two boys who are watching their lives rip in half, as their parents divorce and it’s not always pretty. and two girls i know who won’t eat. no more than an apple cut in very thin slices. and she’s the one making progress.

my point here is not to make you feel drowning. my point here is just to take a deep breath. whisper a prayer. maybe think twice when you next feel alone. when you happen to think you can’t bear it. when the waves of your worry, and your lack of solutions, pull you down under.

i got to this notion the way i usually do. i thought and i thought. i listened and looked and tucked away stories. i jimmied my heart to the wide-open valve.

and all week i rode the waves of a sea that’s not far from despair. there is a boy who i love who is utterly stumped by parts of the school day. the parts where the words and the pencils are. in first grade, as you might imagine, that is a fairly good chunk of the day.

it is, at this point, still a mystery. as if there’s a fog that isn’t yet lifted. we can’t quite make out the landscape. i asked him last night, when word after word was coming out backwards, what it felt like inside. he took his hands and scrambled them all through the air. i heard my heart crack then.

and i know that that crack is not only mine. i know it rises up from the houses, all over the towns, all over the hillsides and valleys below. all over the world.

it would be headlines, i suppose, if there were a house where never a worry there was. or maybe the grownups in charge are made of something other than my flimsy cloth.

i am not, however, one to cave in to worry. no, i find it a friend. an ally, in fact. it stirs me, propels me, gives me whatever it takes, to take on the very steep climb up the waters that will not be stilled.

the prayer that i pray then is this: that even in the depths of our darkest night shadows, when all that we fear comes out of the closets, leaps ‘round the bed, bangs on the pillows, we might picture each other. know the communion of trembling hands. hearts that will not surrender.

that whatever it is that haunts and plagues all of our children be kneaded away. by heads that are wise. and hearts that are deep and filled with infinite chambers.

that we don’t wrestle alone. that the great and tender hand of our God settles quite firmly at the small of our backs. fills our lungs, too, with the breath that it takes to blow back the winds that are chilling. settles the waters. gives us a chance, and a hope, of making the climb, to the crest of the wave.

where, if we’re so blessed, we can look out at a sea of children who have managed to swim. and are stroking and breathing. and making a magnificent splash.

that’s what i pray.

how about you?

13 Comments

March 7, 2007

the grilled cheese that launched a kitchen

phone rang yesterday mornin’. it was jim, the man who built our kitchen, builds our dreams, i always say. he needed to stop by, pick up some hinges, make sure they fit the corner cabinet he’s building for my dishes, the ones stacked in moving boxes in the dark corner of the basement for four years now.

i am nearly certain plates and cups are broken. it would defy all of newton’s laws for that fine old china not to be broken, what with all that’s been dumped on its head.

but, like an ostrich, i’m not looking. and then, when i unearth a chunk of plate, a half a saucer, i will put on my best zen, and say i’m lucky for what’s left, for they all came to me the easy way, from folks cleaning closets pretty much, knowing i’d be trusted guardian to their treasures. gulp. (did you hear me swallowing my chagrin?)

ahem. back to jim, and his stopping by. last thing i said before we hung up was, “i’ll crank the griddle.” he laughed. he knows that the griddle is synonymous with grilled cheese, and grilled cheese around here is synonymous with jim, fueling jim, fueling him for years, in fact.

in the latest installment of jim’s-grilled-bread-with-cheese, during the 12 months that was supposed to have been three that it took to build our farmhouse kitchen, i musta slapped, slathered, sizzled some 1,000 grilled cheese. gone through 500 loaves of hearty wheat, nearly as many bright orange blocks of cheddar, enough butter to charm a cow.

every day, round lunchtime, even on the days when we were inhaling dust or ducking under dripping wires, i cranked the firehouse stove i call my own, and i sizzled up at least three if not more grilled cheese. then, on paper plates some days, jim & crew shoved aside just enough saw dust not to get more crunch with their cheese, and sat down to lunch. many a day, i sat down too.

and the grilled cheese always sealed the deal. always said the thing unspoken, though i’ve told it to his face plenty of times, and in print in the newspaper, too. the grilled cheese told jim & crew that they were not some hired workers, they were integral, essential, pretty much part of the family.

if they could build me my dream, hammer through headaches and near frostbite, for cryin out loud, jigsaw through knicked thumbs and delayed orders, powerdrill through the hassles of a stolen van and a lifetime’s lost tools, i could slap cheese on bread; butter; grill.

to be honest, not every day was a happy day on the long road to the farmhouse kitchen. at least one or two days jim wanted to kill me (like the day we discovered that the cabinet doors i’d described and the ones he ordered–and was starting to hang–were decidedly not the same).

but through it all the cheese was grilled, the apples were sliced, and in the end, the jim who walked in yesterday, pulled out a stool, sat down and bit off a corner of my grilled cheese, he’s one of the dearest hearts in my life. we endured, fueled, in good measure, on that oozy cheese.

it just seems right to me, and food for more thought for another day, perhaps, that the souls you invite into your home, to build your home, to wire your home, to get the toilet flushing, they are part and parcel of the woodwork, the wiring, the very innards of what makes your house not just a house but a very live theater with all sorts of characters who fill the stage with their charms, their quirks, their persistence and their considerable capabilities.

it is a bond not paid in dollars. it is far beyond obligation. it is, far as i can tell, a kind of love best served crunchy on the outside, oozing in the middle.

i’m curious, have you too forged bonds with folks who make your house keep ticking? or, if you’re a soul who does keep houses ticking, how’s it feel when you’re made to know, in no uncertain terms, that you are, simply, indispensable and far beyond just another worker hired for the job?

p.s. those are, obviously, jim’s hands up above, holding that grilled cheese. i love those hands, working hands. as i kept clicking, while he chewed, i was raving about the hands–knicks, calluses, rough spots, the whole shebang. he chuckled. said that was a first. said i oughta go watch seinfeld, some episode where someone–i should know who–becomes a hand model. oh well, in the comedy i call my life, jim’s hands will do. just fine.

5 Comments

February 21, 2007

mama altar

it started as i drove home from the grocery, my eyes stinging with tears.

i’d gone in to grab some orange juice, a perennial thirst in this house. ran into my friend adreine, who runs the front end, who over the years, as she’s rung up my eggs, shoved my gallons of milk down the beltway, has filled me in on her longing, her longing to please grow a baby. all around her it seems, everyone else is getting good news, getting pregnant. not adreine. she, nearly 40, has had month after month of the no news that is very sad news in the baby department. as we talked, i wiped a tear from right by her eye, her beautiful, beautiful eye.

then i drove home, crying too.

i know what it is to bang on the locked gates of heaven and feel like nobody’s home, nobody’s listening. i know what it is to want, more than anything, the round lump of baby in your so-aching arms.

just a few days before the grocery i’d walked into a quite crowded room but could not miss the lightbeams shining from a friend. a friend who this time, for the first time, wore a billowy top that shouted, without hesitation, “i’m pregnant. i’m waiting.”

the beam on her face reminded me of ones i’d once worn. i couldn’t help–again–my own tear or two, moved by the joy of remembering. but as we talked i found out she too knew what it was to hold her deep breath. she’d lost one little girl, and she was scared, scared to trembling, that she could lose this one too. not that there was any reason she would. just because she’s a mama who’s been there. and once you’re there, it’s terribly hard to not think you’ll land there again.

i’ve been in that place myself. know what it is to wear a miracle ’round your middle. know what it is to hold your breath for nine very long months, so afraid that the miracle could so slip away. i too lost a little girl. once stared at the fuzzy gray lines of a baby stone still in my womb. looked into her face as she slipped through my fingers. left her behind in a little wood box, dug into the earth, on my papa’s own grave, in the drizzly cold of a cemetery, 12 years ago.

i know the dark and the light of fertility. i know its abyss and its mountaintop. i know the breathlessness of the ascent, and the gasping for air when you’re pushed off the trail.

i am forever a woman whose heart was seared by the loss and the triumph of childbirth.

i am, i’m afraid, a card-carrying member of the sisterhood for life.

and you do not abandon your sisters.

you build them an altar. you say a prayer, yes. but, even more, you build a prayer tableau and you take it to the next power.

you gather the makings of your prayerful intentions, the physical manifestation of what it is you are asking. it’s something that women, indigenous wise women, have been doing for ages. my friend mary ellen has taught me. my mother, who builds may altars, has too.

it’s there when you’re not. it’s there when you wander past, reminding. nudging: whisper a prayer. don’t forget. don’t leave those women alone. hold them close in your prayer.

and so, spurred by those faces, one in deep longing, the other in deep hope, i came home and started to gather.

i gathered talismans of hope and believing. of my own dreams that had finally come true. i pulled from my top drawer the little pregnancy test, the one that i’ve kept since the cold afternoon when the plus sign turned pink and my dream that would never come true, started to come. i reached in the drawer by my bed, lifted the armbands of delivery, one for mama, one for baby. i plucked the most blessed mother of all. and a gold-winged angel to boot. i snatched a few tulips from the kitchen, decided blood red was a color quite apt. i even remembered the tiniest prayer book, one that once was my mother’s. and then i laid them all on a rectangle of lace made by the grandma i never knew, the one who, at 40, gave birth to the man i called papa.

i made an altar for the mamas to be. the two that i know and the hundreds and thousands i don’t.

we are a sorority who share a particular pain, often unspoken. sometimes you haven’t a clue who your sisters are.

but once you’ve been where they are, you can never again look into the eyes of a woman afraid, a woman desperately longing for life, and not join her brigade.

you pray, and you pray mightily. you get down on your knees. you beg at the locked gate of heaven. you make deals, if you have to. and you pray to God that you do not hear only the echo of your deep incantation lost in the canyon of No.

you know what it is to hear the sound of your heart cracking. you do not leave a mama abandoned. you do not leave her to tremble, to quiver alone.

you muster the force deep inside you. you envision a babe, safe and asleep, in her arms. and you pray to God that someone is listening, someone comes through for those mamas.

if there is a sorority of promise, you are signed on. for ever, for life. and so i bow down at the altar.

please, whisper a prayer for the mamas. for adreine, for trish, and for all of the ones whose names we don’t even know.

5 Comments

February 19, 2007

meatballs en masse

first you multiply. then you forage. then you start rolling.

it’s meatballs en masse, the roadmap:

ten pounds of steer. quarter acre tomatoes, chopped, pureed. bag of onions. eggs by the half dozen. breadcrumbs, a handful or two. dried crinkled leaves, ones wearing the nametag sweet basil. garlic, don’t forget the garlic. we decidedly did not.

the garlic, the onions, bathing in oil of olives, that was the point. we didn’t want just to feed our friends at the shelter with a mere plate of food. we wanted to feed them all afternoon with the sounds and the smells of somebody cooking. somebody cooking for them.

we wanted them in on each act of the production, as they stood in the alley, huddled on the stairs, waiting for the man with the key to please let them in from the cold. very cold.

we made meatballs for forty. started hours ahead. we wanted to slow cook. with two hours to go we had a flotilla of balls, all adrift in an ocean of thick, red, tomatoey sauce.

there is an alchemy to cooking on slow that does not happen when you wham-bam the dinner. an alchemy especially rare at a soup kitchen.

but we carved out a whole afternoon for this slow dance, me and my 13-year-old. we chopped, and we poured. we stirred and we seasoned. we wanted a feast for our friends.

and they are our friends. t-bird and papi. robert and eddy. the elegant man in the soup kitchen line with his navy blue blazer and shiny brass buttons. the lady who religiously wraps her plate in cellophane before she puts on the food.

they are, some of them, full of hope. papi, for instance, has a dream that he and his sweet potato pies will some day shove mrs. smith and her apples off the grocery store shelf. and just last night t-bird mentioned how he wanted my friend sherry’s chicken wings-and-sausage-and-meatball recipe, cuz it was going to be the first thing he cooked when he got his apartment. some times they tell you month after month, sometimes for more than a year, that their apartment is coming, any day now.

so every third sunday of the month, we feed them. feed the hungry. feed their tummies, yes. but even more, feed their soul. slow cook for them. put tulips on each table. offer brown bags and a basket brimming with brownies and oranges, strawberries in the deep core of winter. take leftovers and turn it into lunch for the next day.

as my friend elizabeth mentioned last night, it had been a very long day squatting at a sandwich shop from 7 in the morning, an hour after they’re kicked out of the shelter, ‘til 7 at night, when they are allowed back in. “i thought i would lose my mind. i had nowhere to go,” she told me, piling her plate with spaghetti, forgoing all but one of the meatballs. she came back for brownies and pound cake and raspberries three times.

for a very long time i have cared about feeding the hungry. i once criss-crossed america, trying to find out why so many, in so many places, were so hungry. from potato farmers in maine, to salmon fishermen tucked into pacific coast towns in northern california, to old wizened folk in chinatown in the city by the bay. from iowa farmers to out-of-work steelworkers in the sooty hills of west pennsylvania. from the rio grande valley to the high plains of the navajo reservation. from the bare-bottomed children of cottonwood, mississippi, to the big-eyed ones right here in chicago. children going to bed at night with a pain in their bellies. mamas and papas going to the same bed, with the same pain, worried sick. not knowing where in the world they’d find food for tomorrow.

and so, one measly sunday a month, me and my boys we slow cook. the little one, now old enough to scoop, always begs to dish out dessert. then he fills a plate, wanders into the dining room, takes a seat, strikes up a conversation.
there is nothing like watching your children learn what it means to slow cook, to deep feed the hungry.

feed vt. 1. to give food to 2. to provide something necessary for the growth, operation, etc. of 3. to gratify.

some of us spend much of our lives feeding. to consider the act of feeding, the gestalt of it, not merely the chopping and stirring and spooning of x, y and z onto a plate, is to have something to ponder. please, pull up a chair. pour out your thoughts on the transitive verb, to feed, in all of its unspoken definitions…

6 Comments

February 1, 2007

oranges-and-chocolate brigade

i got to thinking about frozen people. got to thinking about folks with no choice about being in the cold.

what got me thinking were the folks i was passing as i made my way through the bone-chilling day. the crews cutting down trees, their limbs barely moving as they hoisted their saws in their orange puffy suits. a guy, red-cheeked, frost-bearded, standing in the middle of the road with a pole, measuring something that couldn’t wait ’til a day with bearable temperatures.

i thought of the mail carriers, the garbage haulers, the firehose aimers. i thought of the crossing guards, the meter readers, the ruptured water main fixers. i thought of my friend who bundles up like an inuit, she says, and walks 20 minutes to work, her cheeks so numb she probably can’t smile when she gets there, not for a good half an hour.

then i really got to thinking about frozen people. i started thinking about dirt man and tax man and refrigerator man. i thought about shorty and squeaky and a guy named everett, who’d built himself a multiplex of boxes up on a platform so the rats couldn’t get in, down in the bowels of the city, down under lower wacker drive.

i met the whole civilization of under-street inhabitants a year or so ago, when i tagged along with two saints, named frank and kay fennell.

frank and kay do an amazing, uncomplicated thing: they flip open the trunk of their car, they fill it with boxes of home-cooked food, and every thursday night, for 17 years now, they drive down to the depths of the city.

they cruise the streets of lower wacker, park, stick their heads around corners, poke behind pillars. they open their trunk, spoon hot food on plates, pour glasses of water. they feed the hungry. and this time of year, they feed the near frozen.

you might have heard all the news bulletins. the city is begging the homeless to come in off the streets, off the sidewalks where they stretch out on a pile of flimsy blankets, inch as close as they can to the heating vents at the bases of shimmering towers.

well, the folks who call the streets home, aren’t much interested in leaving. they’ve got reasons aplenty why they can’t stand the shelters. and if you ask questions, if you listen, you hear the pain, you hear the fear that keeps them locked where they are.

i wrote here the other day that my first instinct when arctic winds hit is to hunker down, to draw into my cave. well, sometimes, i told myself as i thought about frozen people, you need to dig beyond that. sometimes you need to pull up your second instinct.

and that’s when i hatched what you might think is a laughable idea.

but, heck, this world needs something to laugh about almost as much as it needs something else: the courage of plain old anybodys to get up, to get out of their houses, to walk up to a stranger, a cold, hungry stranger, to hand him or her a brown paper bag, a bag filled with oranges and chocolate and the solid conviction that if we don’t notice the cold hungry stranger, if we don’t let him or her know that he or she isn’t forgotten, we might as well pack it up, call it a day, shut out the lights, sign off the planet.

i call it the oranges-and-chocolate brigade.

my guardian angel in these matters, kay fennell, once told me: “we decided it was our job to sustain [these people] for whatever their next step would be. and that might be just to stay alive for the next 24 hours.”

so i went to the store, got oranges and hershey bars, reese’s cups, too. grabbed a stash of brown bags and started to fill. this morning i’m headed down to the bowels of the city, where dirt man and tax man were last seen on the grubby old blankets inside torn cardboard boxes, desperately trying to keep their flesh and their blood at least half alive.

before i even get there, i know, i’ll pass the men who hawk papers in the middle of oncoming lanes. or one of the folks who hover at intersections, dodging green lights, with the signs in their raw, frozen fingers. “homeless, please help.”

it’s not much, oranges and chocolate in a brown paper bag. but it’s fuel in the cold. and it might be something a little more than that.

it might maybe say, in case anyone’s listening, that we will not let the cold and the hungry lay down one more night thinking the world has forgotten, the world has gone cold. that’s a lot to ask of plain oranges and chocolate. but if we don’t ask, who will not wake, frozen, all through?

here’s the plot, simply: take a few lunch bags. toss in oranges and chocolate, anything else that you fancy. haul ‘em into your car. you don’t need to drive to the depths of the city to find cold folk. how ‘bout this: when you see someone out working, someone without much of a choice, roll down your window, stop your car. reach out your arm, get out from behind the wheel, even. put your brown bag in his or her hand. smile. say what you will. then go on your way. or bring ‘em home for a hot home-cooked dinner. your choice. always your choice.

report back…

6 Comments

January 14, 2007

in his words…

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

“I have a dream today.

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

“I have a dream today.”

–martin luther king, jr., august 28, 1963

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January 11, 2007

h + 2 ohhhhs

that would be water, people. the subject is water. water, specifically, for the birds.

oh no, they moan. she’s at it again. the bird lady is flapping her wings. she’s squawking, she is. she’s going round and round like a broken bird record.

now, now, good people. calm down in your nests. this won’t be a lecture. more like a soft little nudge of the gentlest elbow. it’s just that the news is so stunningly good. and so stunningly simple.

for years i have heard my bird-loving mama cajole and remind, put out the water. well, you know how things go when your mother reminds. you forget. you get busy. you don’t do what she says.

but my bird buddy, that tim joyce fellow i told you about. the one i am talking to for my birdscaping story.

well, he said, ‘put out the water.’ and somehow i listened. actually, barbara the wiser (aka my mother) gets due credit here.

see, at the fancy bird shop they sell all sorts of gizmos for giving your birds plain old tap water. and the pricetags for these thingies? they start at $49.99 and go skyward from there.

well, ol’ barbara the wiser she never met a gizmo she thought that she needed. so she rummaged around, down in the basement, in the garage, and she came up with a banged-up plastic plant saucer that would do just the trick.

years back i had put down the cash for one of those water heater-upper coils; the problem was, since we moved here four years ago i wasn’t sure if i’d seen the darn coiled thing.

presto, it was, believe it or not, in the logical place, right there in the garage, nestled with other bird things, next to the garden things.

so, my mama, she plugged it in. just plain old tap water, the coil, the saucer.

and what to our wondering eyes did appear?

listen up, people, this is the good part: birds by the dozens, birds by the flock.

it is as if some magic elixir was out there in the saucer. some bird cocktail that’s got them all chirping. yo, they are warbling, one to the other, there’s water on maple. take a dive, take a drink. or some bird flutter like that.

so the moral of this little tale is no more than this: if you want the birds, put out the water.

more essential than seed. cheaper, by far. all you need is a tap and a spigot, a saucer, and a means to keep it from turning into a big block of ice.

certainly, you could pop for one of those coily gizmos. i haven’t seen one for less than $49.99. or, try one of these, nearly for free:

barbara the wiser heats up a kettle of boiling water and pours it atop the ice that’s formed overnight.

the fine folk at the cornell lab of ornithology, about the smartest bird folk in the land, suggest putting an ordinary lightbulb into a flower pot, and then setting the saucer of water on top of the pot. the bulb, plugged in and turned on, mind you, will put off enough heat to keep your bird bar ice-free and fluid.

a few other watery bird things you might want to know: the no. 1 reason a bird needs its water, is not simply for drinking but rather for bathing. yes, it’s true. a bird stays warm under its feathers. but for optimum fluffing, the feathers need to be clean. a bird with clean feathers is a bird who is cozy and warm. a bird in need of a bath is a bird who can’t fluff his feathers.

finally, you might love this little bit, a bird as it breathes exhales moisture with each little breath. i don’t yet know how many breaths a bird has per minute. but i’m hot on the trail of that little bird fact. for now, just know, that your bird it needs water. you do not want dehydrated birds tipping and flopping all over your world.

more to come. for now, class dismissed….

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December 22, 2006

eggs, cheese, an ungodly hour

soon as the numbers beside my bed flash 4:01 sunday morn, i’ll be unearthing myself from the covers, stretching a wary toe out into the cold and the black of christmas eve before most of the world gets with the program.

it’ll be time, as it has been for the past four christmas eve mornings, to wake a sleeping boy, now an almost-man child, and head out with our shopping bags and our crates of clementines to a soup kitchen where we’ll be the ones to turn on the lights.

and no doubt i’ll be carrying with me the story of nina.

for two christmases, nina was my compatriot in this pre-dawn drill of cooking the yummiest, oozingest christmas eve breakfast that ever there was.

nina, she took the hard part. a one-time caterer, now a mother of two–two girls under three, mind you–she went to town on her end of the deal. and i’m tellin’ you, the woman could cook.

you see, nina had a heart the size of montana. once, on one hour’s notice, when no one showed to cook sunday-night supper, she turned her little family’s tuna noodle casserole into tuna noodle for 40, and dashed it straight to the soup kitchen.

but the thing about nina was that she was admittedly, emphatically, not a morning person, and certainly not with two little ones who needed to wake up to their mama. so she took what she called the day job, gave me the night job, or at least the still-dark-out start of the shift.

she made the strata, a haute strata, mind you, a huge one, a strata bulging with eggs and imported cheeses, sausage, potatoes and God only knows what. what i know is that when i plated it up to that long line of hungry souls in the chill of christmas eve morn, their eyes how they glistened, their tummies they growled.

my end of the deal has to do with the 4 and the zeroes flashing at the side of my bed, nudging me up out from the covers. has me shuffling down the hall to rustle the sleeping heap i call my firstborn son. it’s been my job to gather all that goes with the strata: the cocoa, the candy canes, the great mound of marshmallows. since it’s christmas eve after all, and the folks we’re feeding are homeless or sheltered in bunks down below from the kitchen, 12 to a room, we go for fresh-squeezed orange juice, serious stand-up coffee doused with industrial-sized shakes from the cinnamon shaker, and sweet breads of cranberry walnut or orange and pecan.

for back-to-back christmas eves it worked just like that. we were a team, in touch through the phone. i’d talk to nina the day before to go over the plan. then, once home, and starting to wilt, i always called nina to give her play-by-play praise from the men and the women who came back for seconds and thirds of her strata.

i never met nina the first year, but i fell in love with her over the phone. and i wasn’t supposed to meet her the second year.

only there in the dark, on a christmas eve that was frost-bitingly cold, as we pulled to the back stairs to unload, i was startled by carlights at 4:40 a.m.. in a dark south evanston alley, you don’t want to be running into just anyone. and since nina always made such a fuss about not being up before dawn, she was the last one i expected to find there under the hood of a great arctic parka. i’d never seen her before, but i knew in an instant who those big brown eyes belonged to. “nina?” i called out. “what in the world are you doing awake?”

“we were running behind,” she started explaining. “we stayed up late doing the tree and never got to deliver the strata, so we just decided to stay up and bring it over now,” she said, laughing. and then barely a blink later, the vision under the fur-trimmed hood was gone in the dark of the too-early morn.

as always, the strata had the hungry and even the not-so-hungry coming back for more. and more. as always, i called later that morning to pass along every last kudo.

that was the last time i talked to wonderful, generous, spontaneous nina.

two months later, late at night, my phone rang. it was my friend harriett who lines up the cooks and the servers for soup kitchen; she was sobbing. in between sobs, i made out the words: “nina died this morning. she just died.”

nina was 37, tops. her little girls, the ones who couldn’t wake up without her, were 3 and 2. her husband, michael, the one who made the pre-dawn strata delivery, he was left alone in an emergency room, bundling together her things. nina had had a headache the day before, and within hours of walking into the ER, the doctors were telling her husband they were so sorry, she’d died. it was an aneurysm that couldn’t be stopped.

i decided then and there on the phone that night that every christmas eve breakfast from then on in would be in the spirit of nina, nina who could not do enough for the world.

i called starbucks, hoping for a gift card for each soup kitchen soul. i went begging at the bread store, asking if i could pick up any unsold bread or sweet rolls to take it up a notch.

i was thumbing through strata recipes, looking for one that might be like nina’s. then my friend harriett called. the strata would be taken care of, she told me. nina’s father and michael, her husband, would make it. they’d drop it off, in true nina style, the night before, but of course.

so last christmas eve, nina’s strata was, once again, the absolute hit of the soup kitchen counter.

and i, the one spooning it out onto plates, couldn’t stop thinking of the love of two men, her father, her husband, side-by-side in nina’s kitchen, carrying on, following nina’s instructions, line by line, layering their grief with the generous heart of the woman who all of us so achingly missed.

here’s a thought: what if i get michael to share nina’s recipe, and all of us whip up a batch of sweet nina’s strata? and then, in the spirit of the woman with the unstoppable heart, we give it away to someone who needs reason to glisten this holiday season.

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December 21, 2006

for the birds…

it is the day of the longest night, and so it seems fitting, it does, that this be the day we remember the birds and the little beasts that dart and that frolic out in the not-so-wild of our leafy backyards.

for years now, feeding the birds for christmas has been one of the quaintest moments on my calendar. alone in my kitchen, or with little hands weighing in from the wings, i plop out the peanut butter, smear on the cones, roll in the seed, tie with a string. sometimes i swear that patron saint of wild things, st. francis, that is, is there too, peeking over my shoulder, leading me on in this sacred creation. feeding the little winged things. making a tree for the birds just out my window.

i have searched high and low, looking and asking, isn’t there a particular one day of the year, somewhere in the world, set aside for this cutting out bread hearts, rolling peanut-butter pine cones, all in the name of returning the birds’ favor? so far, i’ve not found a day, so i am declaring it this one, the day of the long winter’s night. the day of the solstice.

so if you or your little ones might be so inspired, what you need, simply, is this: a stash of pine cones, slices of bread, a jar of good peanut butter, a tinplate of seeds. should you care to make a haute tree, ask your friend the butcher for a paper-wrapped packet of suet, a.k.a. the fat sliced off a good chunk of cow. if you go the suet route, you might want an old pot, for pity the poor soul who warms up his soup in the pot that last melted the suet.

have at it. cookie cutters make fine shapes of the bread, which then can be smeared in pb&j fashion. dunk in your seed pile, thread through a string, and, voila, my friend, you have a treat for your bird. pine cones are a variation on that same winged theme.

to make a suet cake, melt the fat, pour into muffin tins, add seed to thicken the plot, stand back and let harden. you might want to have left a once-knotted string or a raffia in the cup before hardening, or simply thread through after the fact. it’s all very simple, and that is the point.

it is the simple act of loving God’s creatures, saying thanks for the delight they bring to your heart, that makes it so magic.

that, and knowing as you settle your head for the longest night’s sleep that you warmed the belly of the great winged flock. and most likely, the heart of the one who first gave flight to those feathers.

bless you and yours this long winter’s night.

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Category: caretaking the world