motherhood | pull up a chair

national oatmeal season

the fine folks who tell us these things, tell us that this is national oatmeal month. they are wrong.

at our house, the oatmeal barrel gets hauled out once the leaves start crisping and swirling to the ground. doesn’t get put away ’til the easter grass is pushing through the softening earth. oatmeal is a way of life. it is, by all accounts over here, a good life.

we are fully aware that in some corners of the planet, perhaps just down the block, the word oatmeal is met with hands crossed over mouth, and heads ducking for cover. apparently, it is an old porridge. an ancient porridge. goes all the way back to the ancient chinese in 7000 b.c.e. not too long after, relatively speaking, the greeks were gobbling it for gruel. they were the first, the history books tell us, to do so.

oats came to america, the story goes, when a sea captain planted a crop on one of the islands off massachusetts, somewhere around 1602.

then, along about 1877, true modernity practically, the man we know and love, the quaker oat man, showed his shining face. that man, a pottery rendition thereof, now sits on the shelf, looking down on my stove. he is pretty much my kitchen buddha. i don’t leave him offerings, but i do bow down before him. and i always say, if we had a fire, my oat man i’d grab. see, my papa, once an ad man, gave me the oat man. and every time i’ve moved, the oat man gets layers and layers of tissue and newsprint, lest he lose a nose or a tip of his tri-cornered cap in the transfer.

but back to the bowl that will soon be set before those who i love.

if this is national oatmeal month, there is a reason beyond the pure promotionality. oatmeal in your belly fuels you right through ’til pb&j-time.

but for me, it’s all in the making. i stand there at my cookstove, pouring my oats and my milk. then i start doctoring. i would no sooner spoon up plain oats and milk than i would pour orange juice on cheerios.

no, i add things. as if i am tossing in jewels. i have a whole row of dried fruits in glass jars, fruits the color of amethyst, ruby, garnet and onyx. every day it’s a new rendition: chunks of dried apricot, a sprinkle of cranberry. if it’s not for the boy who hates nuts, almonds land in the mix. i’m not afraid of wheat germ, consider its power, so that too gets stirred in the brew.

it is as if i am arming my boys for the dragons they’ll slay. the more i toss in the mix, the more certain they’ll conquer the day.

it is a mother’s amulet, almost. oatmeal as shield for the dangers that lurk.

that is rather a lot, the power i put in the oats, steamed, rolled and cut. but as i stand there concocting i’m some sort of sorceress. me and my oats and my shriveled-up fruits.

brown sugar on top, a small moat of milk. they sink spoon into mound. once the bowl reappears, specks of oatmeal no more, they are set, they can soar.

as they bound out the door, i toss a glance to my ol’ quaker friend. he is winking, i swear. we’ve done it again.

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January 10, 2007

chop, saute, edit…

it is delicious, the way the day unfolds when i weave back and forth from cutting board to keyboard, in my slow dance toward dinner.

2 c. onion, chopped.

one story cobbled, edited.

1 sweet red pepper, seeded, chopped.

one phone call, dialed.

i am a writer who works from home. i am a mother who needs to feed children. i am also a woman who savors the adagio toward dinner.

as the january chill slipped in through the cracks and the crevices of this old house some time yesterday morn, and as i realized dinner would eventually be upon us, i walked into the pantry and starting eyeing the shelves.

black beans, i saw. grabbed for the bag. ticked through the means toward the simmering end, a bold steaming soup; beans the color of midnight, hot-sausage-studded.

and so the rhythm began: onions and garlic, chopped and sauteed. beans set to simmering. two phone calls made. story re-read, cut by 200 words.

there is something that soothes me, inhaling the onions, the garlic, the simmering beans. all the while tending to stories and editors and sources not yet discovered. knowing that dinner is coming the slow way. not something rushed in the 15 minutes before everyone crawls to the table, famished and grumpy and harried.

it is the blessing of working from home, stirring with one hand, typing with the other. it is rare, and i know it, to be home alone with the smells and the sizzles and the sentences growing.

i have given up much, not being in the newsroom. but i cannot imagine not being here where most everything matters. it’s my own cockamamie invention, the place where domesticity meets deadline. and i love every drop. (except for when i’m pulling my hair out.)

perhaps it’s the post-winterbreak quiet that, this week, is so particularly sweet, now that the big yellow bus rumbles down the lane and swallows up my littlest boy.

but what it really seems is that the broth of my life is richer, is deeper, when i’m here on the homefront doing two things at once. and doing one of them slowly.

as the sweet scent of the beans and the cumin rise from the pot and curl under my nose, i feel less like a mad scrambled mama, more like a soul who is blessedly tending my flock.

be it a soup or a stew or a fat roasting hen, there is a certain elixir in the kitchen perfume as it comes ’round the corner to me and my keyboard.

maybe it’s nothing so much as the sweet simple knowing that, while tracking down editors, i am aiming toward dinner, that most sacred time when we all come together.

more than deadlines and drafts one, two and three, it’s that time towards the end of the day that most deepens my soul. and when it unspools not in a rush, not in staccato, i am soothed, i am stoked by the slow dance to dinner.

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January 8, 2007

sunday night calm, monday morning alarm

sometimes i almost hear a voice in my head, nudging me, reminding me, i am the mother, it’s my job to interlace calm into our midst.

sometimes you have to turn out the lights to do that.

last night i turned out the lights.

i hollered up the stairs. said it was mandatory. be in front of the fire. in pajamas. 9 o’clock on the dot.

then i got to work, simply. lit the fire. put out the crumbles of christmas cookies on a fine plate. piled clementines into what has become the clementine basket. grabbed a marvelous book, a book on the birth, life and death of words, “the life of language,” it’s called. and then headed up to slip on my own red-and-white stripes.

this is not, not until now, our usual sunday night rhythm. hmm, i can think of science projects rushing toward deadline. and whole volumes of books being downed at indigestible speeds. i can think sunday night and think jitters and fuming and pulling out hairs.

so i turned out the lights.

there is something powerful about coming together in a darkened room, with only the glow from the crackling logs. the same effect could be gained from coming together ’round a circle of candles.

it’s the flame, i tell you, that holds the power. the flame at the center and the dark all around. it’s beyond ancient. it’s primal.
but injected into the everyday, injected into a 100-watt world, it is wholly absorbing.

and this particular sunday, the sunday that holds back the floodtide that comes rushing in once the backpacks are out and the school days return, well, we needed flames leaping from logs. we needed to gather. one more time in a circle. to push back the oncoming crunch.

we talked about words. we broke open orange peels. we drank in the dark and the light and the quiet.

someone decided this should be every sunday. so, for now, it’s a plan. we’ll see if it sticks. like so many great good ideas, sometimes the world gets in the way.

the world, yes, the world…

so this morning, at 6, the alarm it did ring. back to the world, the real world, it shouted. i was up, i was ready. i was splashing my face. but i noticed no sounds from the room where the brand-new replacement alarm, the one set to rouse the slumbering teen, was supposed to be ringing. uh oh. strike one.

rousing him from his blankets, i leapt down the stairs. even snipped dill for the top of his lox. called up the stairs every few minutes. the carpool was coming; he needed to eat. the orange juice was waiting. the vitamins, too.

but before i saw the tops of his shoes, the headlights beamed to the curb. the carpool was here. the boy, he was not. strike two.

i dashed out to do some curb-dancing. begged for a minute. noted that they were, um, 10 minutes early.

tossed lox and black bread at boy on the run.

then, as i gently closed the front door behind him, my sweet loving husband shared one little secret: the bus pass, the one that i’d bought and tucked on his desktop, it was lost, it was missing. that’s why the boy was so slow coming down. he had left, it now seems, without a way to get home.

strike three. i am out.

so much for the calm of the logs in the fire.

would someone please turn out the lights?

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December 25, 2006

before the pit-pat of little feets

once again, it is wrapped in black. before the black turns to purply, before the streaks of light begin to steal away the blackness of the magic of christmas that i have come to love best: before the pit-pat of little feets tromp down the steps, streak across the hall, shout, it’s christmas.

don’t get me wrong, i love that chapter. it’s just that i love this one better.

it’s just me and the darkness and the twinkling of the tree, and the clock ticking, and the simmering of “smell” on the stove. smell is my old pot that sizzles all through the winter with a great heap of orange peels, and cinnamon sticks and cloves and bay leaves and water that turns syrupy brown what with all the sizzling.

sometimes i make a fire when i know the coast is clear and poor ol’ santa won’t be singeing his bottom, or the soles of his boots.

i’m usually alone with santa’s handiwork. in fact the sight of his plate (up above) tickles me to no end. we have left food for the reindeer, a big mug of milk, and the best of the sweets we have stored in our tins. this year it looks like poor santa had time for just a bite of the shortbread star and one little square of peppermint bark. seems like the reindeer didn’t get much. this might bother poor tedd, but he’ll get on with the business of the day, which in this case looks to be the very thing he wanted, a rock-n-roll guitar. santa should have remembered ear plugs for papa. oh well.

back to the part that is my christmas gift: the shhhhhsh of the morning when it’s me and the tree….

it starts, like it has for nearly a half century of years, with that first semi-conscious awakening, as those brain cells kick into holiday drive and send out a newsflash, it’s christmas morn. and since i’m the mom now i don’t have to hold myself in under the covers, i can unfurl, i can escape, i can dart down the stairs in my jammies, and drink in the magic of the morning.

i plug in the tree, turn up the flame under the smell, haul out the makin’s of my christmas morn cake. the one that will have the windows steaming on the inside, the one that years ago i discovered made me feel like a mama on christmas. baking in the kitchen, while little heads up above still swirled with visions of sugar plums. that’s what moms do, isn’t it?

this morning is all about christmas from the other side. this is all about making christmas my way, stitching it with the great tapestry of sight and sound and smell that stokes my heart, stokes my soul. this is christmas the way i always wanted it to be. this is christmas before the cacophony unfolds. this is christmas hushed.

curled in my red-and-white checked chair, mug in hand, staring into the flames, drinking in the magic of making christmas for others, i inhale a deep gulp. i hold it in my lungs.

this is a moment i wait for all year, and i don’t want to let it slip away soon. each christmas, how it changes; i am the mother these days not just of wee little ones. in fact, just now i hear 13-year-old feets. they make the floorboards creak. they hardly pit-a-pat.

i wonder if, 13 years from now, i will still hear those feet up above. or will he be out in the world, sending me an email some christmas morn, from far on the other side of the globe? saying, dear mama, i hope it’s quiet there. hope the smell isn’t burning. hope you could manage to get down under the tree and plug in the lights. hope you don’t mind christmas alone.

guess i need to go make christmas for the boys i love best. it won’t be christmas forever. only once a year do i get that fluttery truth in my half-asleep brain: it’s christmas, get downstairs. the dark won’t last for long.

here’s my whispering for each of you: may you find whatever you are seeking this christmas, the wisp of a dream come true, a hug from someone who really loves you, the magic of unwrapping something that tells you someone was listening, really listening. if there is good possibility a tear is spilling down your cheek, may there be someone to wipe it, someone who loves you, and maybe that someone is me. all the way from here to there. i know what it is to find a little dark corner on christmas and fill it with light, and call it your own.

quietly, softly, before the volume is cranked: merry blessed christmas. i wish you were right here beside me. we would stare into the fire. we would breathe deep. we would hold on to the miracle of the day before it unfolds.

God bless you each and every one.

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December 20, 2006

get set, ready, dash…

a page ripped from my to-do list, on this the day when a constellation of holidays converge on one little square of my calendar…

6:02 outa bed, sweetheart.

get oatmeal going, dump in dried fruit.

6:40 get 13-year-old out door to orchestra. our turn for carpool. do not forget toothpick bridge.

treadmill (how ironic).

blog.

latkes out of freezer.

teddy up, fed, dressed.

9:30 leave for hockey. don’t forget bag of chocolates for coach.

rent shin and elbow pads.

wedge feets into skates. lace up. squeeze helmet on head. let loose.

10:00 tedd on ice. re-make grocery list. refine to-dos. call editor.

10:45 strip sweaty hockey player of pads, skates, helmet.

look one more store for latke mix, darn it.

pick up gift cards for junior high teachers.

stop for two loaves holiday bread.

make fruit salad for kwanzaa at kindergarten.

make stewed apples for hanukkah.

finish setting table for hanukkah dinner tonight. don’t forget to let tedd put candles in menorah.

don’t forget to feed tedd.

12:30 drop tedd at school.

try again to file expense report. call computer help desk.

write bike accident essay.

2:30 kwanzaa at kindergarten. don’t forget yam chips, fruit salad, cups, napkins, forks, books. and notecards.

3:15 pick up tedd from school.

3:30 go to shake-shake at physical therapy.

4:10 pick up jelly donuts for hanukkah.

4:30 grate potatoes for latkes.

slice and reheat brisket.

salad ready to go.

check will & homework.

get little christmasy things off coffee table–toddler is coming.

6:30 hanukkah dinner for 12, at long last. hallelujah.

9ish clean up.

tedd to bed.

will to bed.

write teacher christmas letters. stuff gift cards inside.

line-up all gifts for delivery thurs.

make to-do list for thurs.

make fat bowl of popcorn.

do nothing.

don’t even begin to think about christmas eve, and what it’ll take to get there….

because i believe it’s therapeutic to share the madness, feel free to lay your to-do list on the table. i’ve always thought a year’s collected to-do lists, or the amalgamated lists of so many busy people, would make for one fascinating anthropological analysis…we begin here….