pull up a chair

we are inept most of the time.

unable, really, to leapfrog into the lives of the ones we love, make things right, stop that boy in the next desk from kicking under the table. stop the teachers from piling on 200 pages of reading. per class. on a wednesday night, due thursday.

and so, we–the ones left behind when the school bus rumbles away, when the car door slams and the tall man-boy lopes down the sidewalk, back into the gaping mouth of the high school, where we sometimes fear it could swallow him whole–we take in deep breaths, and we get to work where we can.

in the kitchen, often as not.

heck, it’s the one room in the house where when you mix and you pour, and you blend and you play like a chemist, it’s the one laboratory where maybe, as you yank open the hot metal door, step clear of the 400-fahrenheit cloud, pull out a pan or a tin, you’ve something to show for all of your worry and stirring.

so it was, as this school year, this ominous school year in our house where the tall one is buried under the weight of AP this and AP that, and the prospect of college is not too far away, so it was that i got down to the science of shaving off seconds from the pre-dawn rush out the door, while calculating maximum protein-load per bite.

this year, i sighed, the soggy bowl of cornflakes will not suffice.

i imagined those brain cells, the ones that once upon a time i’d studied so breathlessly just after an ultrasound when all i saw was cavernous black in the space where i thought a brain ought to be, and thus by the end of the weekend i’d convinced myself that maybe the brain–or surely a lobe of it–had somehow gone missing.

yes, i imagined those brain cells, all right. thought hard about all the late nights they’d be putting in, the teeny-tiny letters on the thousands and thousands of pages they’d have to make sense of, the never-ending calculus equations that just might drive those brain cells to send up red flags, call for the coast guard.

i imagined those cells and i got to cookin’.

which at my house begins on the bookshelf. and often gets stuck there for long days on end.

i had decided, in that way that mothers and other crazed caretakers do, that if i could come up with a particular formula, i could bulk up those brain cells, make ‘em smoke all through the morning, and late, late into the night.

why, i imagined my quixotic muffins might hold the holy grail of what every hard-driving junior in high school longs for, minus the steroids.

i invested prestidigitous powers in whatever i’d sift, blend and stir into that cheery red mixing bowl. i pictured popeye, ‘cept i’d swapped out the spinach for super-pro muffins.

i tell you if i could have poured whole cans of straight-up protein and brain-stoking elixirs into that batter, i woulda done so.

in a jiffy.

as it was, i stumbled over page after washed-out page of what amounted to little more than starter muffins. brain food for dummies, heaped deeply in sugar. not nearly what was needed to get a 6-foot-2 bleary-eyed boy up and out the door, 50-pound book sack in tow.

so i futzed and i figured. subbed out a half cup of this, for a big scoop of that. in the end, we believe–my subject and i–we’ve arrived upon something quite fine, a muffin worth sharing with you.

along with the muffins, which i’ve vowed to bake every sunday, to store in the fridge, for two or three at a 6:50 gulp, smeared deeply in almond butter, i hard-boiled eggs.

learned a trick there, too, from my old friend mark bittman, he who teaches me “how to cook everything.” (psst, that’s the name of his bible, all 944 pages, many of which are splatted and smeared at my house.)

take a pin, sterilize (which means light a match to the pin and let burn till the tip turns red). poke into the rounded, not the pointy, end of the egg. slowly–lowered down on a spoon, as if a queen going for a swan ride, with that much dignity, please–immerse into a pot of gently boiling water. all this poking and tenderness results in an egg that boils perfectly (10 to 15 minutes’ll do it) and sheds its shell with nary a tussle (dunk in a cold bath for a minute or two, just after lifting from the boiling swirls).

so there you have it: brain-stoking muffins, hard-boiled eggs, a banana if needed. washed down with a big swig of milk. all you need do is open your mouth, dash out the door, and mama’s hard labor takes care of the rest.

here’s the recipe, should you too have a brain that needs building.

brain-building muffins
adapted from quite a few places
yield: 12 muffins
5.4 grams protein per muffin, only 92 calories apiece
ingredients:
• 1 1/2 cups oat bran (swap out 1/3 cup whey powder–meaning subtract 1/3 cup of the oat bran and replace with equal amount whey powder–if you are inclined to super-bulk the protein)
• 1 cup egg whites (from container) or 6 egg whites
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup applesauce w/ cinnamon
• 2 Tbs. almond or peanut butter (all-natural is best)
• extra dash of cinnamon & nutmeg
• 3 tablespoons (or 2 long squeezes) of honey
• 1 banana, mashed
• 1 cup frozen blueberries
• extra almond or peanut butter (to spread on top before eating)
1. preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. mix all ingredients together until well blended. add the blueberries at the very end so they don’t get too mashed up.
3. bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.
4. let muffins cool on rack. slather with nut butter, if so inclined, before eating. store in fridge.

run out the door, brain cells hummin’ along.

so there’s my breakfast homework for the week. what’s your secret-formula high-potency mind-builder? what are the ways you boost the ones you love?

see you below.

the rat-a-tat of the rain stopped. and that of the week as well.

at long last, i listened. heard little but the last of the waterlogged drops, rolling down from the leaves and the stems and the petals.

plopping.

the world out my window is soggy. so am i, from the back-to-school week.

but these are the sacred hours. i’m alone in the house. the boys, at long last, are tucked into desks. the clock ticks. the coffeepot occasionally gurgles.

i have nowhere to be, and nothing to do. except to be here. where, like an old scarecrow who’s lost all his straw, i tuck myself back together again.

which is why i went out to the garden.

i’d looked, as i puttered and put things away, at the old cracked milk pitcher, the one that sits squat on the old maple table.

i looked at its blooms–spent, stooped, so very tired. the hydrangea, and a limp stalk of phlox, both looked as if someone had let out their air. wholly deflated. and the black-eyed susans, they’d lost their wink. mostly were crinkled.

so i reached under the sink, pulled out my pruners, and set out to where the breathing begins again: out in my waterlogged garden.

i shook a few daisies dry. tried to help a sodden anemone stand. i tiptoed back to where the black-eyed susans were tangled and wet, bent down in yoga repose.

then i started to snip. took some weight off their limbs. snipped and watched them spring back to upright. became like a game. making the blooms boing back to life, instead of the way that they were, fallen and flimsy.

i snipped and they boinged. and that’s when i realized i was holding the prize: i’d gathered a fistful. a fat fistful, too.
now, let me just mention this one little thought: there is hardly a balm–at least not at my house–so soothing, so calming, as the pure joy of gathering blooms for the kitchen.

a good quarter hour outside, time enough for my toes to get muddy again, and my cuffs to get soggy, i turned back to the house, my boinging all done.

i gathered a whole host of pitchers and jugs and wee little vases. stood by the sink, stripping off leaves from the ends, the parts that would drink in the water.

and then i tucked in stem after stem. composed whole bouquets. a shooting-out yellow thing here, a floppy purple thing there. rounded out with daisies, and mint that grows wild.

felt something like embroidery, only with stems instead of fine threads. anemones instead of french knots.

when i was finished, when each of my pitchers and wee little vases were filled, i took a deep breath and realized that i too, after all this snipping and tucking, had taken some weight off my tired old limbs.

oh, i’d still not gotten nearly enough sleep. remembered reading the clock at 2 and at 4. thought back to the long week of lists. the getting up early. going to bed late.

i thought about all of the worries, the ones that come at the start of the school year. the ones when you pray your children are whole, and ready to take what’s ahead. when you pray that they’ll bob on the in-and-out tides. and the waves, too, that crash to the shore.

and then i just stood there. took in the tick of the clock. the rustle of breeze through the cranberry bush, just out the door.

i delivered my pitchers and vases back to the places they perch, the table, the sill, and right by the door.

then i sighed. and whispered the launch of a prayer.

if only a stroll through a water-soaked garden could fix all the bent-over limbs in our lives.

if only the lull in the rain brought peace to all the places too sodden to stand and soak up the rays of the sun, the sun that’s sure to break through the clouds. one of these most blessed hours.

it hit me like a bulls-eye this week: the job i love most in my life is the one where i make this house a sacred place, a tranquil place, and where it’s my job to be the emotional rescue for the ones who dwell here. oh, sure, i love my story-gathering gig, but the job that fills me up the more i pour out, it’s my mama job.
gathering blooms after the rain is but one manifestation of that holy endeavor, soothes me, maybe even soothes the ones who will bound in here at the end of the day.
what are the holy tasks you stitch into your life to smooth out the wrinkles all around you?

i call her ellabellabeautiful. the man with whom i share deepest darkest secrets–and grocery lists, besides–he took one look at her one moonlit evening back on old cape cod and dubbed her, “delicious cupcake.”

it’s a name that sticks.

it’s a name with superb, as they say, gifting opportunities.

why, if i lived next door, which is what i wish right now, i’d bake for her, wee little morsels, all swirled in pink and polka dots. i’d pull them from the oven, mound them deep in frosting, sprinkles, the whole caboodle. then i’d run, barefoot, right next door. to where the screen door slaps. from where her squeals and gurgles come.

i’d bring, oh, yes, itsy-bitsy cupcakes to my itsy-bitsy most delicious cupcake.

if i told you she was perfect, you’d nod and say, oh, yes. all aunties claim perfection. and then you’d maybe roll your eyes. think i wasn’t looking.

ah, but i’d protest. stomp my feets perhaps. i’d insist.

she really is, you see.

there are babies far and wide, i know. but those babies are wont to cry. and pout. and fuss through dinner time.

not delicious cupcake.

oh, no.

she just coos and watches. takes in the world around. folds her hands just so. spends whole long minutes–which in baby time is forever plus two days–weaving one finger in between two others. it’s quite a trick. delicious cupcake.

the most astounding cupcake trick, i’d say, is this one: for three days and three nights i barely left her side, so it’s not like she snuck off to the bathroom, slammed the door and had a real good cry. not like she crawled under the covers and whimpered till the sheets were soggy.

i tell you, that baby did not cry.

now crying, for most little humans, is just a part of what they do. a big part. a straight-through-dinner-and-on-into-nighttime part. they cry and cry and cry. till your arms shake. till your wits are at the very end. till you consider looking for the warranty, seeing if perhaps there’s a clause for refunds and returns.

but not cupcake.

cupcake, in a house full of big people who would have noticed just a peep, well she is altogether something more (yes, i said it: more. it’s auntie’s privilege to claim superlatives and not call it boasting).

she is that rare mellow baby girl who doesn’t raise her voice in protest. ever.

she seems to understand she won the baby lottery. she’s got a mama and a papa who would make you, too, a cooing, charming wonder.

they play the flute to her. they sing to her. they rock her in their arms. she drinks her mama’s milk. lets it dribble down her chin.

they hold her up to see the stars. take her strolling in the garden. already, she knows a black-eyed susan. and a sweetpea. and she’s just barely four months old.

i cried and kissed her goodbye after three fine summer days. but, oh, for the height of my summer’s ecstasy, she’s what i did–wholly, and deliciously–on my summer’s vacation.

this is but a travel postcard. i could write volumes on the subject of her holiness, her deliciousness. i could write of how i ache to be so far, far away from her. to know, every single day, that i am missing the miracle of her unfolding. but i am merely leaving a morsel in our trail. she is a love, plain and simple. and perfectly. delicious cupcake, yes.

what did you do–who did you meet–on your summer’s vacation?

she appeared out of nowhere that long ago night. why, we hadn’t an inkling, not even the slightest, that somehow she’d slipped in the room, surely was inches away–perhaps deep in the toy chest–that fine summer’s night as the soon-to-be-birthday boy was tucked into bed.

he was just a little thing back then, dimples still on his knees. about to turn two, if i recall.

and just as soon as he’d drifted off, into that land where little ones dream, the someone who’d wafted in unannounced, well, she must have scurried to work.

had at that room in ways, thinking back, that had to have made quite a ruckus.

there was, for starters, crepe paper everywhere. she hung that room, and the four-poster bed, with a bi-colored web that would not end. downright festooned the place. made for a trap you couldn’t escape.

every knob was wrapped. every protrusion, a certifiable anchor for stream after stream of that long crinkly paper.

balloons bobbed from the headboard and footboard, and bookcases too. the room, with its bumper crop of inflatable bright spots, looked as if it had a case of the chicken pox.

i mean no offense when i say that whoever she was, she’d gone, frankly, a tad overboard.

and speaking of boards, there were posterboards in plenitude. hung high and low and in between, besides. scribbled and scrawled, in words and in pictures, each board with a ditty heralding the wonders of two. (and then three, and then four; as the years kept on climbing, the ditties climbed too, with year-appropriate themes, rolling from number to number, not unlike my creaky odometer.)

it was, i tell you, quite something to awake to.

and right from the start, from the first fluttering open of that little one’s eyelids, back at the dawn of that long-ago summer’s birthday, the attraction was instant.

the birthday fairy was here to stay.

a flat-out part of the family, she was, crepe paper and all. might as well set her a place at the table. or offer a cot for a middle-night nap, after she slips o’er the sill, and shakes out her satchel of tricks.

she’s been a rite, ever since. essential to each and every little one’s birthday. around this house you don’t turn from one year to the next, without the fairy fluttering in through the window, leaving behind her own brand of magic and mystery.

in fact, when boy no. 2 came along, all those many years later, so came a fairy, one who stepped right up and leapt straight into action.

year after year, it’s always the same.

and, somehow, no matter how tired i am on the eve of those birthdays, i always manage to stay awake late. always make sure i’m the last one stirring here in this house.

after all, i’m the one who needs to be at the ready, make sure that ol’ fairy doesn’t get tangled up in the curtains. sometimes i even get asked to hold the tape, while she has at the stretchable streamers. more often than not, she puts me in charge of seeing to it that the presents are set just so at the foot of the bed.

it’s always unfolded with nary a bump.
until this year, when just the other day, as i was out watering the garden, the little one–who turns eight on the eighth, that’s tomorrow–came up beside me and asked what the box of frosted flakes was doing in my office (the fairy always leaves a smattering of favorite groceries, a trademark move).

i fumbled there with the hose, tried to change the subject to something along the lines of why i’d seen fit to water his toes. he was barely deterred.

and just the day before that, driving to somewhere, there came this unsettling question from the seat right behind me: “mommy, tell me the truth, do you buy the presents or is it the birthday fairy?”

um.
hmm.

“of course, there’s a birthday fairy,” said i, dodging the heart of the question.

after all these two dozen flights of the fairy, it seems the little one, at long last, is peeking behind the birthday curtain. the magic, it seems, is being prodded with questions.

and it’s a question that leaves me deflated.

might this be the birthday fairy’s last believable flight?

might she soon retire to the sun-drenched paradise where santa, and the tooth fairy, even the easter bunny, kick back, put their feets up? sip on something tall and cool and quenching. think back on all the magic they’ve scattered over the years.

oh, don’t let it be.

although i might have guessed her time was running out.

i’ve always wondered why neither boy, up till now, mentioned how odd it was that neither their papa nor i ever wrapped a single birthday gift. left all that to the fairy who, long, long ago, discovered the unlocked window into our house.

and, ever since, has delivered a motherlode of magic deep in the star-lit birthday night, when numbers turn from one to the next.
i imagine from here on in, as his big, big brother now does, he’ll pretend to be deep asleep, while i go about my annual flight.

and when we all awake in the morn, we’ll marvel again at the magic that once upon a time arrived unannounced, and won’t be chased away by unanswered questions or birthdays that climb, year after year.

happily ever after.

i suppose i’m a big believer in magic, and a good dose of it will always belong in my house. what sort of magic lives with you? and how do you keep it alive?

i’ll be away next friday, spending the day at last with my ella bella beautiful, the baby girl now four months old. oh my. i’ll tell you all about it upon my return. so savor the week. i know i will.

egad. it happened today. the whole birthday fairy meander, version 1, went up in smoke. poof in thin air. without a whimper or a bang. just plain kerpluey. and i’ve now spent the last many hours trying to bring it back to life. it didn’t happen. and what you see up above is an attempt, in fits and starts, to resuscitate what once was a meander that i’d found quite to my liking. what’s here now is a pale, poor version of its former self. oh, well. so it goes when you write without ink and paper…..

once, a long time ago, i was in accelerated math. only i never remembered to open the text book at night. so it made it hard to keep up.

the smart boy who sat one up and over from me, bless him, he took to sliding his paper off to the edge of his desk, the side that bordered near mine. occasionally, in the middle of a test, he’d drop it. oops, slipped. so sorry, teach’.

having been raised with pleases and thank yous, white gloves, and a knee-jerk reaction to lurch for falling objects, i’d be the one who stirred from my test-taking to behold what had dropped, right there before my wondering, wandering eyes.

why, i’d scoop it right up, return those carefully calculated logarithms to their rightful owner, and along the way maybe catch a number or two.

saved, once again, by the smart boy with dropsies.

and so it seems once again, here i am, sitting firm in my life, and once again the math of the day hardly adds up.
i can’t for the life of me, these past many weeks, get the hours and minutes to add up the way that they should, that i sure wish they would.

in one column, you see, there’s the stuff that’s gotta get done: the train ride downtown, the piles of baseball-stained clothes, the milk that’s not in the fridge, the piano books sitting mostly untouched.

in the other, it seems, there’s the short list of satisfactions i can’t seem to get to: the farmer’s market, the chair in the summer porch, the picnic packed and hauled to the beach, the bedtime stories told to a boy who’s scrubbed and pink and not smelling like too long a soak in the pool.

there’s the stoop, just off the kitchen, where, all around, my garden is laying down roots, and the birds–whole flocks of ‘em, red-headed woodpeckers, nuthatches, finches, sparrows and cardinals, even a hummingbird–flit high and low, anointing the place, trying out a leaf or a branch, nibbling a berry or blossom.

sad thing is, i’m barely home to greet them, and thank them, for blessing my labors. for bringing their wings to my garden, for bringing my garden to life.

it pains me, i tell you, a dull throbbing pain in the heart, this domestic not-adding-up.

it was one thing, long long ago, to miss out on all of that calculus–just think of the nuclear reactors i’ll never invent–but it’s a whole nother emptiness when the math that escapes you is the bare-boned essence of why you’re alive in the first place.

by now, after all these meanders we’ve meandered together, you might be onto the notion that i am nothing if not a romantic. and a dyed-in-the-wool believer in all things make-believe, to boot.

so you won’t be surprised, won’t sputter and spew, if i let you in on my latest mathematical delusion: i find myself wishing, it’s true, that mine was a life with days that stretched for 48 hours.

maybe then i could wake before firstlight, tiptoe out to the barn, scoop the eggs, milk the cow, slip-slide the breakfast cakes into the oven. then, in my lacey-hemmed nightgown, i’d stroll barefoot through my cottage garden, pluck a rose here or there, strike up a morning’s reverie with one of my birds or a butterfly.

oh, i’d have time to read the paper, rouse my boys with cinnamon-and-butter clouds wafting from the oven. we’d all sit and share thoughts at the start of the day. then i’d go off to my typing room, tap out the words to a children’s book, write a newspaper story bursting with wisdom and truth. take time to stroll through the garden, stake a drooping vine, pluck a fat ripe tomato.

in my domestic equation, there’d be time to cook a slow dinner, read a late-afternoon book, pluck roses for the wobbly old table i made from a door.

the stars would flick on in the night sky and still we’d be gathered there at the table, plates emptied by then of the feast that i’d cooked all from scratch, from my organic garden.

i’d soak in a tub, and so would my muddy-kneed boy. then off to bed we would toddle, where we’d read and we’d dream and whisper our prayers goodnight.

and then, come the dawn, i’d be the first and only one up. and i’d start all over again.

the beauty of life, after all, in the end, is each blessed day we get that breath-taking chance to begin all over again.
even when it doesn’t add up. even when, for the life of us, the answer escapes us.

we’ve the grace and the gift, hallelujah, to try once again to borrow and carry those columns of hours, those joys and delights, and even the sorrows.

it’s a math that’s essential.

and some days i swear i just might rub that eraser down to a nub, trying to figure it out.

but i’m not giving up. i’ll not be stumped on this calculus of the domestic persuasion.

how do you struggle in the math dept.? what parts of your life, your day after day, don’t seem to add up? have you found new ways to borrow, add, subtract, multiply or divide that leave you a bit more fulfilled at the end of each season? do share your math tricks. we’re eager to learn here.

that picture up above, that’s my little one, sprinkling sugar and cinnamon on just-outa-the-oven cinnamon rolls, the kind from a tube, people, don’t get excited. i had no real picture of the madness that is my too-short day, so i went instead with an image of what it might be like on a good day. a little dreamin’s always a good thing.
here’s to a day that adds up just the way you’d wish for….

out the window, the one that’s cracked open just wide enough to let in this summer’s night, i hear the hush-hush lullaby of the gentle rain. every now and then, a rumble from far enough away.

the heavens are blessing a long day’s work.

my brand new garden, a cottage garden in the making, is drinking in what the clouds have to offer. and it is succulent, the libation that comes from on high, not from hoses.

my chockablock garden plan continues.

today we tackled the weedy jungle along the side of the house. a passageway that since we moved here was a place where, to get from one end to the other, i held my breath and ran. never knew what might reach out and grab you by the leg.

and the holes beside the house, the ones that seemed to tunnel down and underneath the floor of this little room where i type, i always figured they were big enough for baby skunks. or snakes.

then when i heard the rustling down beneath the floorboards, i’d freeze, tell my fingers not to move, don’t touch the keyboard. we’re being invaded, i would think. wait for the rustling to stop. then return to typing here in the room where the critters crawl below.

scritch-scratch.

ah, but in my mind’s eye, for a gardener is nothing if not a fool who sees what is not there, i’ve always seen a swath of meadow. a plot for herbs. and rambling roses.

now mind you this is a space about the size of a narrow grocery aisle. and not much light if you add up all the hours that aren’t in shadow.

like i said: a gardener is a fool who sees what isn’t there. might never be.

but those of us who sink our hearts and souls into the earth, why we can make a whole vast woodland from just a clump or two of lilies of the valley. and one climbing rose might as well be munstead, the great walled garden of gertrude jekyll, england’s great gift to all of us who don big-brimmed hats, muddy gloves and soggy shoes to match.

i often think the trick to being a gardener is that we have lilliputian tendencies, can shrink down to sprite size, imagine ourselves no bigger than the lady bug i found today, crawling on an oakleaf hydrangea.

we get lost, some of us do, beneath the domed canopy of that one hydrangea leaf. we imagine setting up a hammock stretched from stem to stem of a shrub rose, a hammock that might be the size of a handkerchief tied with knots at the four corners, just big enough for our imaginary little self, the one that would get lost, if we let her, in the bleeding heart, the painted fern, the lenten rose.

i launched this day with big hopes. could barely sleep, waiting for first light to come, so i could finally toss back the covers, slip on my holey jeans, drive down to the city where my friend marguerite has her yard. that’s what she calls the quarter lot, behind the drive-thru mcdonald’s, where she stores her summer’s stash.

we meander through the packed aisles, climb over hoses, shove big pots out of the way, pick this and that, the makings of my cottage garden.

then we load up her flat bed truck, and drive north, back beyond the city limits, past the line she once said she could not cross, not without shots and passport. but now she’s made the trek twice, although she’s sworn me to secrecy on that. so do not spread the word.

we hacked and dug and cut. cleared the land, we did. heaved the old bluestone slabs, hauled out the roto-tiller, a fine machine if ever there was a lumbar-sparing invention.

wasn’t long after all the bumps and holes were straightened out, filled in, leveled, that marguerite starting plucking trees and shrubs the way a kid pulls colors from the crayola 64-pack.

wasn’t long till i had tears. and a big old lump in my throat. i saw roses right along my picket fence. and a flowering crab that will explode in deep dark pink, and fade to white, come april.

she even carved out a cove that some day will hold a bench. will be the place where i sit and dream. or whisper holy words.

there’s a lot of some day in my garden. a lot of hyphenation now. wide spaces in between.

you need faith the day you plant a garden. and the days after and after too.

you need to tamp down the urge to go out and raid a meadow. bring home the pretty things you dream of. the swaths of poetry to come.

i’ve made a pact with this plot of earth that’s mine. i will tend it, and poke at it for years and years to come. i will tiptoe through at nightfall and back again at dawn. i’ll sit on the stoop outside my kitchen door, sip minty waters, pay my garden mind.

it‘s only just begun today.

but i have seeded it with hope.

and it is listening.

i hear it now, gulping down the rain.

it’s late. i’m bone tired. time for this gardener to toddle off to bed. but a pause at the typing keys is a lovely way to end a day that started in the someday cottage garden.
what hopes have you seeded lately?

oh, not to worry. our session here today is not one in which i recline, spread out, upon a couch, regale you with a long and sorry tale of summer woes.

there shall be no tears today.

mais, non. this here’s an upright exhortation. we’re gathered near the stove, my friends. pulling up our cooking stools to peer into that deep dark pot, the one gurgling on my ancient burner, the one where the flame comes, depending on the day and temperament, in fits and starts and sputters.

the slump of which i type, the one for which my tummy frankly growls is not one of climatological dippings, nor a moody one either. not a pinch of depression to it, only baking soda, and corn starch, and cardamom just ground.
it all started in the name of my day job, you know the one where newsprint stains my cuffs, as i run and gather all the news, lay it out in tidy columns, toil in vain to keep the world supplied with fishwrap.

in one of life’s ironic wrinkles, i–me, the girl who loves her broccoli steamed sans fat in any form, who downs her popcorn by the bowl not the handful, who doesn’t know a hamhock from a rutabaga (they do look as if they might be distant cousins, do they not, what with all the lumps and bumps and discolorations?)–yes, i, am now among the scribes who write the cooking stories.

oh my.

(pause here for gulping, all of you who know me well enough to gulp in unison.)

i suppose the thinking goes that in a life’s work where you might be parachuted into, say, tehran, and expected to get to the bottom of the troubles there, well then why not point a simple kitchen waif like me in the direction of the cookstove and expect that, somehow, i will find my way back to where the sun shines.

and besides, i’ve always dreamed of being a big bosomed mama who wears her apron well.

and so it is i came to stumble on the slump.

a slump, one of my cookery books tells me, (and this is alan davidson we are quoting here, he who penned “the penguin companion to food” (the paperback edition of “the oxford companion to food”), a tome i have because a cooking friend labeled it indispensable and i’ll not dispense with the indispensable) is–are you ready?–well, then:

“a culinary term immortalized by louisa may alcott [be still our hearts here], author of little women, who gave to her home in concord, massachusetts, the name Apple Slump and recorded a recipe for the dish. this is a dish of cooked fruit with pieces of raised dough dropped on top, the whole being then further cooked. the reason for the name is thought to be that the preparation has no recognizable form and ‘slumps’ on the plate. it is served with cream. for related items, see pandowdy, cobbler.”

no recognizable form? no wonder it’s my culinary wonder.

inspired by miss louisa may, then, i set upon my slumping.

page 66 was the place to which i turned, for my assignment of the day, to test-drive a hot-off-the-presses cookbook, make sure it had no lumps, not even for a fool like me (bibliographic details down below, we’re slumping now and shan’t be stalled).

“stone fruit slump,” the crisp page promised. and so–tickled mostly by the name, i tell you–i inhaled deeply and tilted toward that slump.

oh, if only i’d had an orchard.

alas, i plucked my stone fruits at the grocery store. peaches, fuzzy, garnet red, the way the produce man, from way down south, once taught me how to pick ’em.

the darker, the sweeter, he told me in his mississippi patois.

made my mind wander, that produce whisper did, consider whether the deep dark cloaking of the sweetest peaches means they’re hiding from the bees and birds, trying to make like they’re just peach-tree leaves. not bright yellow orbs, streaked with sunset orange and red, shouting, come get me, i’m yours.

oh, never mind my brain that dillies and dallies on the road to anywhere. back to slumping.

once home, once those fruits were sweet enough to smell when waltzing by, i set to slicing, and then the kitchen alchemy.

the whole experiment, i tell you, was one of mixing potions, and giving way to courage. and isn’t that, after all, the pulsing heart of all true cooking?

i was working from a book, “rustic fruit desserts,” by cory schreiber and julie richardson, two pastry chefs who know their way around the baking nook, and the farmer’s market, too.

cory, the book jacket tells me, is a james beard award winner–best chef, pacific northwest. he opened wildwood restaurant in portland, oregon, back in the late 1990s, and now teaches cooking up where it rains and rains.

julie, it seems, has a small-batch bakery up that way, too, called Baker & Spice, where the line twines out the door, rain or shine, with folks queued up for her pastries, pies, pandowdies, crisps, cobblers, crumbles. and slumps, of course.

julie’s first sentence in the book is this: “i am not a fussy baker,” and thus our undying kinship was begun, hers and mine. from there on in, whatever julie told me, i was with her, bosom to bosom.

she told me to do this with my sliced and juicy crimson peaches: “rub the sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a small bowl, then add to the fruit and gently toss to coat.”

now i’ve never done this rubbing thing, but julie said so. and so i rubbed.

the magic started shortly thereafter. instead of simply juice and peach parts, i had thick-and-syrupy juicy peaches. on its way toward stew, i tell you. but not all sloshy and misshapen. don’t picture peach mush in my pot. why, i had picture-perfect peaches bobbing in some shiny semi-liquids.

not long after (the peaches and their rub sat for 15 minutes, surrendering their succulence, then i simmered the whole lot for a mere two minutes), i began the best passage of all: i was on my way to louisa’s dumplings. soft and doughy pillows, yes, that under lidded steam just rose and rose. and rose some more.

but that’s missing a step or four, so i’ll retrace my way: i whisked my flours (ubiquitous all-purpose and refined cake); sugar; those baking twins, powder & soda; salt, cinnamon, and freshly-ground cardamom (the magic bullet, there it is). next came butter, cold and cut to pea-sized pearls. buttermilk was poured, and all of it mixed till moistened through and through.

atop the swimming peaches in their syrup pond, i plopped eight rounds blobs of future dumplings. i cranked my reluctant flames, just enough mind you, and put on the lid.

i stood in wonder, yes i did, as the kitchen elves took over and, so help me, sprinkled magic powder.

with not a whisper nor a flicker of my finger, that dough did rise, accompanied by the song of peaches simmering and swimming down below the dumplings’ bloating bellies.

given the feeble constitution of my flames, it took me nearly twice the time that julie promised. but two-thirds of an hour later, i was lifting the lid, poking in a toothpick, and declaring this a miracle of unheralded proportion.

i had slumped, by golly.

and so can you. for what finer pursuit might a slow summer’s afternoon bring upon us, than reason to slice, to simmer, and in the end, to slump.

there is, i’d say, a satisfaction deep and lasting in the art of turning store fruits into a pot that’s sweet and risen somehow.

i think i’ve grasped an inkling of why it is some folk can’t keep away from what the kitchen brings: it’s a chamber, isn’t it, for those who’ve not outgrown–never will, really–the lo-and-behold prestidigitation of that chemistry set that once astounded you.

you make solids out of liquids and liquids out of solids. you follow along, just like the teacher tells you, and in the end, you’ve something wholly charmed to carry to the hungry hearts of those you love the very most.

that’s what i discovered cooking in my summer kitchen.

i promise to put up the whole recipe, start to finish. but now i’ve got to run. today’s meander is nothing deeper than the 5-quart cookpot that beheld my slump. but that’s what summer’s for, isn’t it? some days are purely for delight. and that’s what the slump was all about. what delights have you discovered in your summer kitchen?
do tell….
oh, p.s. i had a little tale in the chicago tribune this week, one of those pull-up-a-chair sorts of pieces. only now i can’t pull meanders from here to run there, so i had to write it on a workday. it’s about a sparrow that sang outside our bedroom window. only the fellow i sleep beside didn’t think much of that ol’ morning song. if you’d like to take a peek, click here, the only way i can share those stories now.

the letters tumbled out the other day, years and years of history, pages from a childhood, not yet examined, spilling, pooling, on the kitchen counter.

they’d arrived in a fat envelope, addressed to me.

and what spilled out was from me, penned by me, over years and years. in orange pen, and loopy l’s and i’s and p’s, in hearts drawn upon page after page, on gingham-checked cards, and flower-petaled stationery, and plain old legal paper, too, yellow, lined, official.

i wrote, it seems, on whatever surface was put before me. didn’t matter much. the voice was, at its heart, the same; growing older though with every page, every “dear grandma and grandpa,” every “love, barbie.”

i grew up, it seems, writing letters, writing those letters. and because my uncle’s moving soon, he started sifting through old boxes, boxes he’d acquired when my grandma died. these had been, he tells me, among her treasures, and he thought they best belonged to me.

so he addressed and mailed them back, tucked in a few other pages besides.

and i of course immersed myself in a slow course of who i was, letter to letter, year after year.

a stash of old letters, surely, is a mirror into the soul. especially, intriguingly, when the soul we see and study is the one we call our own.

i saw my little self–my 1969 self–come tumbling from that stack. i read, between the lines, how hard i tried to be so good, so very very good. i read, too, that i’d just begun a sewing class, that my little brother had the flu, and that we’d just gotten, the day before, a new angora kitten.

i saw my 1975 self, a year that was so hard for me, a year i will spend my life trying to understand. and there, a gift from my grandmother, my long-dead grandmother, my grandmother i remember more as harsh than tender, i see she too understood that year was one i might some day choose to re-examine. so she saved for me more letters from that year than any other year.

because, of course, when you’re a writer, letters are the clearest snapshots of your soul. so i held them to the light.

i read those words and cried. i felt the tenderness of a grandma who’d saved my words. a grandma who might, too, have been worried that year. who, for some reason, held onto those letters, the letters of ’75.

but the piece of paper that caught my soul the most, that held me, drew me deep and long, was a radio script from 1952. from WCPO in cincinnati.

“bob otto’s broadcast,” it says up top, on the yellowed, typed, page.

6 p.m., may 31st. that’s the day, the paper tells me, my great-grandma died.

her name was kate. i’ve always heard her referred to as “laughing kate.”

bob otto writes, on the evening of her death, in a broadcast heard all around the seven hills of cincinnati, that if he had to pick anyone who, in his “childhood, boyhood and adolescence, stood in second place” behind his own “very best of mothers,” it would be my great-grandma kate.

he goes on to recall her kitchen, most of all, and her cakes, “luscious apple, peach and cinnamon cakes.”

he writes how so many kids–little kids who grew to be teenagers–congregated, through all the years, in her kitchen.

“maybe,” he writes, “we congregated there because we grew to love her as well as her baking, though i don’t think in those years we ever dared place affection for a human above that of an aromatic cinnamon cake.”

in the last paragraph of this grown man’s tribute to a now-gone mother figure, to the great-grandma i never knew, but suddenly had such a sense of, such a pull toward, bob otto writes:

“today, one of the many boys she always attracted, realizes that essentially the hold she had on us after all might not have been her magic in the kitchen.

“we couldn’t have put it in words then,” he writes, “but i believe we can say as men that what we liked most about [her] was that she was a genuinely good mother and an all-around great lady.”

i was struck, still am, by that picture of my great-grandma kate and all those cakes and all those kids, crowded ’round her table.

struck by the notion of how she–someone else’s mother–pulled growing, searching souls ‘round her ample bosom. how she fed them, so much more than apple, peach and spice. how sweet her kitchen must have felt. how safe.

i’m struck too that upon her death she was remembered in a broadcast not for her heroics, but for her simple, profound humanity and her deep maternal streak.

i felt sad, a bit, as i always have, that i’d not known a minute of her goodness.

but over and over and over this soulful week, i’ve felt richer than before that i got a glimpse of my great-grandma kate huddled in her kitchen.

and i’ve thought long and hard about the simple gift of making cakes, and drawing hungry searching souls to your table.

not for what you slice so much as what you serve in ample helpings.

dear God, i whispered more than twice or thrice, stir in me, the very gifts you stirred in grandma kate. and bless her soul with ever-lasting peace.

beloved chair people, happy independence day. today’s my half birthday. today’s the day the sky explodes in starry lights and pyrotechnics. today is red white and blue, and very much the essence of summer. i’ve been pulled a hundred different ways here this morning, so it took a while to pound this out.
but here it is.
and here’s my question: have you stumbled, through a letter or a well-worn snapshot, onto some soul from your past, someone to whom you are tied through genes and heart, and whom you learned from long long after that someone was no longer?
do tell….
and, p.s., thank you thank you uncle david for taking the time to bundle up those letters, and the lessons they contained. i am forever grateful. love, bam

the winds thrashed that night. and the rains did too. came down hard and heavy, like nails from up above. pelting nails.

on nights like that the trees bend and toss. make you forget, nose pressed to glass, watching, staring, gasping right out loud, that trees are made of wood not paper.

makes you wonder, on nights like that one, how the wild things survive. how the dawn comes, and the dewdrops glisten. how the birds shake off their sodden feathers, fly again.

only, sometimes, they don’t.

you tiptoe out in the morning, survey the world that’s yours as the light comes up, casts its gold-drenched illumination, like a blanket rolling toward the west. your naked toes drink in the bath that is oozy lawn, two parts mud, one part grass.

you count the fallen things: the poppies pummeled, crepe-paper petals strewn, so much sad confetti; the peonies waterlogged and dripping, necks bent, noses pressed into the earth, fuchsia washrags in the end, their short, short season cut even shorter.

it is all the heartache you come to know, come to weather, when you love a garden year after year after one disaster or another.

but then, sometimes, some holy blessed heart-breaking times, you stumble on a fallen something that draws you to your knees. that draws a gasp from your heart and lungs.

it’s not something you see maybe more than once a lifetime. it’s not something you want to see. not tumbled to the ground anyway. not tousled, cracked. before your toes and eyes.

not when it’s a nest, a perfect robin’s nest, all mud-daubed, sticks and stems on the outer rim, for stability. and tucked within with grasses finer, softer, where the eggs will gently lay.

where the eggs are now, as you’ve stumbled upon it. where the eggs, two of them at least, still are perfect ovoid realms of possibility.

but the third is cracked. and you can see straight inside, to flesh and blood and little bird, formed and forming. till the winds and rain and tumbling came, that is.

and there’s no mama robin in sight. and you can’t hear her either. can’t hear her mournful cry. for she has lost her nest, and babies too.

and you can’t bear, quite, to swallow all of this. to make sense of this.

how so perfect a springtime construction can be tossed and whipped by winds and rains and trees that bent like paper.

my mama was the one who found it. of course my mama. she’s the one who knows her trees, her wild things, by heart. she lets no day dawn without her keeping close watch. she makes it her job to be the caretaker of all this wonder.

she tracks the comings and the goings of all the babies–ducks and deer, raccoon and robin. she knows generations, even.

year after year, they return to her, the wild things of the woods that surround her.

the ducks–mr. and mrs. mallard, she calls them–cross at the sign she has posted on her mailbox–SLOW. DUCK CROSSING–so the cars might pause where the mallards make their passage from the creek on one side, to my mother’s cracked corn on the other.

mama deer bring their fawns. nestle down atop the ivy beds, close to the house, where they know, i suppose, that they’ll be safe, tended to, while the mamas make feast of my mother’s gardens.

more than once, a mama deer has left her spotted little one at my mama’s all day long. came back at dusk to fetch the wobbly thing. deer daycare, i suppose. smart choice, i say, commending mama deer. i, too, made the same choice, when it came to caring for my little ones.

and so, of course, it was on my mother’s early morning rounds, the morning after that nasty noisy storm, that she found the nest and eggs that tumbled down.

in my mama’s book of rules, you do not leave a sacred something lying there abandoned. as if a discard.

there are no discards when it comes to nature. only lessons to be learned. and mercy studied.

and so my mama lifted it, the nest and all its eggs. slipped it in a bag, and brought it here, to where i type.

left it lying beside my keyboard, so i too could study its perfection. its heartbreak. its potential so abruptly wrenched from the safety and sanctity of the mighty oak’s gnarled limbs.

i take these lessons from above quite to heart, of course. i am my mother’s daughter, after all. don’t take it lightly that i am blessed to peer inside a mama robin’s grassy labors.

i am again and again enchanted by the brilliant know-how of the birds, how they know to make the nest just so, sturdy on the outside, soft and soothing where the babies would have hatched.

i muse, of course, on how all of us are born knowing the fundamentals of construction–how it is, at least, we build our nests for the ones we hatch and love.

i consider, too, the emptiness of that mama robin’s belly. how she must be longing still to press against the warmth of those bright blue eggs, where perhaps she felt the stirrings of the life within.

there is much to learn contemplating how mud and sticks and grass combine to build a nest. and how the wind and rain and bending trees could toss it all away.

i consider the thud that must have been, when the nest came tumbling down, stopped hard against the ground. and how that thud echoed in the empty heart of that blessed mama robin.

once again, lessons left for me to learn. thanks be to my very own mother nature.

did you have a chance this week to stumble on a lesson left–in any form–by the hand of mother nature? or some other week, perhaps? do tell…..
as i type this my mama is flying east, into the sunrise, to behold for the first time her grand-daughter. the thought of it fills me with tenderness. my mama waited a long long time to meet that little girl. i wait still….my time will come. i pray for time for the two of them to learn together the lessons of the woods….she is some teacher, my mother nature…

some weeks all it takes is a grocery store coffeecake, under a clear plastic dome, slapped with a bright orange sticker; its price slashed in half.

some weeks when you are a mama, or any plain tired old soul, when you’ve been through the wringer, feel ready to fall, wish like anything for arms to fall into–even the arms of your favorite old chair–some weeks all it takes is a stroll past a plastic-domed cake.

to feel your heart wobble a little.

to think, that’s the thing.

i’ll carry it home.

plop it down on the table.

make like i’m paying attention. making home feel a little like home.

instead of the wasp’s nest. or the hurricane. that it’s felt like all week.

for 16 years now–come monday, that is, when my firstborn strides round that big 16 bend–i’ve made it my job, my no. 1 job, to try to make certain that here in our house there’s a wrapper of love.

i remember the moment, clear as could be, that i saw in my head the picture of this brand of love, the one i would traffic in, once my firstborn was born.

a clear-walled bubble it was, unpunctured. no beginning or end. all-encompassing. a shield that would keep out the bad, and seal in only the good.

oh, it bobbled at first, that bubble of love. took a stumble or two, back in the early few weeks.

where is the room, i kept gasping and asking myself, for breathing and eating and thinking whole thoughts, here with a babe in your arms, with a heart that is suddenly, utterly, yours to protect?

right off, my instincts went deep, didn’t swerve or look back. fact was, i’d never felt love quite like this love.

like falling it was. like i wouldn’t ever let up, let a crevice or crack of darkness seep in.

my love would be fierce, would be always. my heart and my arms would be harbor. in time, so would the walls of my home.

over the years, as i’ve said here before, i chiseled my own solid gospel of everyday grace, of the comfort and beauty that is mine to bring through the door. to set on the table. to tuck under the sheets. to stash in the drawers.

oh, but these last few weeks, i’ve felt i could hardly keep up. could barely patch together a semblance of peace, or of calm. or dinner at six.

so i, like a swimmer out there where the water’s too deep, i keep grasping. for lifelines and buoys.

and plastic-domed cakes.

i’ve run out of words, out of steam, too often of late. it’s all i can do, some sorry late nights, to chase my sweet little boy straight up the stairs, to tuck him in bed, and race through the prayers, and let out a sigh as i pull shut his door.

and feel rather sad that i’ve not done it all better, this rare grasp of life with a child of seven. and one who’s nearly 16.

so the crumb of the coffee cake, there on the grocery store shelf, at the end of a very long week, it whispered to me, offered a promise of lifting the day to a richer beginning.

it might make a friday different from thursday. offer a break from the cornflakes and milk, of monday till now.

it’s all i could do, that cake for $2.49. to tell the boys that i love that i’m not giving up. i’ll not forsake all my vows, my promise made long, long ago.

i’ll be the shield and the light. i’ll sew stitches of grace. scatter dewdrops of beauty.

i’ll leave coffeecake crumbs in my trail.

long as they lead us all home, to here where our hearts thump the most loudly.

question: what brand of love did you set out to spread in the world? do you think much about it, or just simply live it? who taught you loving, or was it born straight from your heart, or from heaven itself?
do you ever resort to shortcuts, or secret morse codes, to spell out your love, when words and hours run short?