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May 6, 2011

“…always an act of courage.”

maybe it happens to you, too, sometimes. you are reading along, and words reach out, like some sort of net strung between trees in a thick jungle. they entangle you, stop you in your tracks, don’t release you, really, for days and days.

so it was, as i was reading along in tina brown’s new newsweek, reading a story about barack obama’s mother, when i stumbled on the words, at the top of a paragraph, nestled inconspicuously into the rest of the black-on-white sentences.

i read: “Motherhood is always an act of courage.”

just like that, it caught me.

as always, the best writing is stitched with wisdom. it catches you unawares. elegant french knots of deep truth tucked in among the narrative.

one minute i was reading that obama’s brave single mother, ann soetoro, a cultural anthropologist by training, was as curious about men as she was perplexed by them, the next i was entangled in a thought that would carry me for days.

“motherhood is always an act of courage.”

indeed it is.

from the moment that seed of life burrows deep into the womb, makes its way to connect to the richness that is a mother’s blood. will feed, will sustain.

from conception on, there is no going back, if God is willing, if prayers are answered.

we move on, one corpuscle tied to the next. we are in this, literally, together. we are forever entwined. though birth will begin the separation, there are separations deep down inside that will never truly be cut with any knife.

from those blurry days of daydreams, before the labor comes, when in hazy fuzzy terms you try hard as you can to imagine this someone, to imagine how it will be.

it will be nothing like those dreams.

it will be nothing like anything you have ever known.

and the one sure thing, the only certainty, is you’d better tap deep into a tank of high-octane courage. no watered-down concoction can take you where you need to go. this trek has no roadmap, and too often, no shortcuts.

it’s courage that will carry you round the skinny mountain passes, where the edge is steep, is precipitous. it’s courage that will carry you through unrelenting passages, when you’d rather turn in swift retreat.

after all, they send you home with this squirming, hungry bundle–and no instructions attached. you shake as you sit in the back seat, the baby’s father driving so cautiously you fear you might be rear-ended, the car behind you not understanding just how deep a journey home this is, this long trip, the maiden voyage.

then, the first morning you are left home alone with this babe, you break out in sweat. or tears. more often, both. the baby squawks, you try to figure out how in the world you will do this. how will you spoon the cereal into your own mouth, so you, in turn, can feed your screaming infant?

courage? oh, mother courage, you came to me, you filled me. shaking, quaking deep inside. uncertain, scared, somehow we carried on.

all along the way, it’s darkness up ahead. we never know what might be around the bend. we simply keep putting one foot out, before the other.

how in the world can you take on the task of mothering if you are not filled up with courage? if you do not gulp it for breakfast, inhale it like undiluted oxygen?

i consider, in a slide show that makes me weep, the moments of courage of mothers i have known:

the mother, just this week, who watched her little girl’s legs be strapped into braces, braces for a year.

the mother who sat outside the OR while oncologists poured hot chemo in her daughter’s belly, a last-ditch hope to stop the unretrenching cancer.

the mother, so many mothers, who bravely steps into the school conference room, where so many minds–and unknown faces–are gathered to map a plan to help the struggling child, the child for whom learning doesn’t come in straight lines, or quickly.

or what of the mother who took the call, from a stranger, who listened to the voice telling her that her bike-riding son had fallen, been found unconscious, limp and bloodied. that mother who drove, trembling, who carried her son to the ER. who listened as the doctor said his vertebrae, high up in his neck, were fractured, one for certain, another most likely. an airlift would be arranged.

and what about the less dramatic, but no less daunting frame: the mother who drops her child off at the classroom door, who hears the cries from in the room, as she cowers in the hallway, barely breathing, wondering, how in the world will he make it–will she, the mother, make it–through the next endless hour?

i think of the mothers i admire most, the ones whose unbroken, unwobbling faith makes me stand straight, breathe deep, reach down and get a grip. i think of those mothers and realize every single one is a profile in pure courage.

you take on life when you bear a child, when you become a mother through birth or love or law.

and when you cradle that child in your arms, rock him or her through the night, on the nights when fevers soar, and cries grow shrill. and you are terrified inside, but you whisper to yourself, “this child needs me, stay strong. don’t waver.”

i’ve been the mother who talked to my knees, instructed, “don’t buckle,” when i thought they would, when i thought my firstborn might be with severed spinal cord. when i needed to wheel his cart down a long lonely hallway, when i could not look into his eyes, for fear of breaking down and falling into pieces. when i saw his life, and mine, pass before my eyes.

“…always an act of courage.”

is it not an act of courage, on any old school morning, when we wave our child down the sidewalk, watch them bravely board the school bus, when we know that there are kids on that school bus who taunt our child, who call him names, who make his schoolday an exercise in humiliation?

and what of the times we pick up the phone, tell the principal in no uncertain terms that we will not let this go on?

when we walk up to the baseball coach, when we tell him what just happened was truly painful, and he had better make it right, for this is no way to model grace under pressure?

even though, deep inside, we are shaking, quaking all the while. not so practiced at this standing up, and being counted. except for when we look around, realize we’re the one who’s being depended on. we’ve become, after all, the grownup. the one who will not let our children out in the rain, to fend for themselves, to march unshielded. we lift our voices, if need be. make decisions. stand taller than we’ve ever stood. because it is our children for whom we are called to be more than we have ever been before.

i think back to my own mother who, at 50, found herself a widow, with five children. who huddled us by the door as we were about to step outside to the long black car sent by the funeral home, who looked each one of us in the eye, who told us, “make him proud,” the father we were burying that morning.

it is courage—the hot wind of heaven that fuels our trembling wings.

it is courage—that makes us reach down deep inside and pull out muscle where we never knew we had it. it’s where the backbone is. it’s where, when we need to, we find the voice that speaks up, that won’t relent, that settles only in solid resolution.

we are charged with much in this lifelong journey called mothering.

the one piece of armament sure to go the distance, is the unfettered, unadorned, magnificent holy breath called mother courage.

how do you spell out mother courage? what profiles fill your bookshelves?

the picture above, curiously, captures my first act of mother courage, and not at the front of the frame, not merely cradling a newborn baby minutes after birth. it’s the nutrition book on the shelf behind; i was so afraid somehow that i would screw up the feeding of my unborn child, i followed along, unwilling to falter one iota. when i laid eyes on his chubby thighs, his thighs with gorgeous folds of fat, i heaved a sigh. i knew my deepest prayers had been answered. which is why i have never thrown out that old nutrition tome. it carried me across a bridge that demanded pure courage.

and, of course, happy blessed mothers day to the mothers among us, in whatever form we find ourselves mothering on this earth….

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April 29, 2011

of fairy tales, alone in the dark

it came rushing in, that great rare blast of happily-ever-after, so especially delicious in these long days of murky darkness that swirl and swirl around, almost without pause.

the world, downright hungry for a delicious morsel, after all the bitter banquets–wars, tsunamis, mile-wide twisters.

i had a hunch i’d not pass up the chance to swoon, to tear up, alone in the dark, connected by a lit-up box, to a place, a spectacle, so very far away.

and so, when the cat obligingly meowed at 3-something, i ripped back the covers, and tiptoed right behind. i saw the moonlight draped across my garden; i noticed out the window, candles twinkling from the wall of windows in the house next door.

i was alone, but not alone at all.

i clicked on the telly, wrapped a wide wool blanket ’round my chilly legs. i settled in, knowing just next door the house was filled with silver-haired ladies, anglophiles all, gathered in their wedding finery, sipping fizzly drinks, sinking teeth in strawberries. at 3:20 in the morning.

i waited while i watched the royal cars queue toward the abbey. i remembered back to the last time i was awake to watch westminster, the sad dark day in 1997 when they buried another princess, the mother of this handsome groom, this boy we’ve watched grow up.

oh, i know it’s all quiet sappy but isn’t it the prescription that we need to fill our lungs, trigger just a bit the heartbeat, stoke again our dreams of love and solid footing, and waltzing toward the sunset?

i’ll take it, drink it, press it up against my pajama-clad flat chest.

oh, i admit, i’ve been one for fairy tales my whole life long. always root for endings that make me misty-eyed and get my heart pumping surely, strongly, the steady percussion of promise just around the bend.

i love to watch a great romance, stoked in youth on those rare nights when i was invited in by my mostly-stoic mama to stay up late, and watch till the very end, some gauzy-filtered hollywood version of happy-ever-after.

i’d glance over, on those sweet nights, catch my mama brush away a tear as i brushed away my own. a sweet shared lump in the pit of our incurably romantic throats. it made me understand that my mama was so much more than just the one who scolded me for hiding all my peas beneath the rim of the dinner plate, or not picking up my clothes. it was the rare glimpse beyond all that, and perhaps in large measure that’s why i hold those happy-ever-endings so deeply dear.

i’ve always been insatiable in the S.A.P. department.

back when i was little, and full of dreams, i’d read myself to sleep many a night, turning pages in my fairy-tale picture books, absorbed into the pictures, writing my way into the script. imagining. imagining.

the birthing, really, of a life spent peering through a rosy lens. of keeping watch for the ruby slippers that might slide on the smudged-up cinderella, who so deserves the pumpkin carriage.

and isn’t it now a much-needed dose of cast-aside-your-cares? the cares upon us all these days are thick and deep. the worries bend our brow, stoop our shoulders, make our ankles wobble.

we have worries aplenty. nights we lay awake, playing and replaying the script of a story we wish would go away.

so what’s the harm in tiptoeing down the stairs in striped pajamas, and red-plaid robe, as the clock chimes half past three? and we are whisked away, by airwaves, to a city built by kings and queens, to gush and sigh as a fairy tale unfolds, and, because we love to unspool the storyline, stitch together broken parts, we imagine, we hope, that at last some part of the empty place inside a prince’s heart is filled, not by the ghost of his long-gone mama, but by the blushing beauty of his bride?

it was a good stiff drink of jubilation that came rushing in before the dawn. and all the more delicious because it’s one so rarely poured.

and i, among the many commoners, sipped lustily this morn. and pray for peace among us all, as we, scattered here and there and everywhere, join hearts in wishing for a passage of most contented joy.

and happy-ever-after.

did you take in the wedding? of what did it make you dream?? and did you not just love the dress, the lacy sleeves and most especially that demure-yet-sculpted V-neck???

p.s. and as i sat here typing, i caught the lovely couple driving away (the duke of cambridge at the wheel, for heaven’s sake) from the castle in a royal blue aston-martin, with a shiny cloud of mylar red and white and silver balloons bobbing in their trail. breathtaking, really, to see such abundance of joy and shaking off the stiff tradition that puts such distance between the royals and the masses. happy-ever-after already…

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April 22, 2011

seeds cast to the winds…

our house this week has been aswirl with all that comes in that holiest of weeks, the week at our house when, so often, passover and easter glide in and intermingle.

i’ve been in the kitchen, digging out the pint-sized processor my beloved jewish grandma (the one i’d felt was mine, from heart, if not from birth) shipped to us back when our firstborn was just born, and she decided, upon his birth, that it was the one thing i needed, so she boxed it up in florida to send our way, lest i choose to someday whir the baby’s veggies to a pea-green paste.

i made charoset for the first time in years, the apple-wine-and-walnut mortar, the one set upon the seder table, a table we’ve not set here in years and years, but did this year because the rabbi who usually leads us all in chants and jewish mysticism, he’s had a bumpy year and couldn’t manage yet another room of crowded tables.

i pulled the “silver palate” cookbook off the shelf, decided after much debating with myself, that the only feast that symbolizes passover for me is the chicken marbella, page 86, the one we’ve feasted on for 20-some years at a dear friend’s second-night seder. and so it is; it’s now our first-night feast, now that i too know how to grind the head of garlic, stir with spanish olives, prunes and capers, an aromatic cloud that filled the fridge for one whole night and next day long.

i roasted egg and shank bone. i boiled up matzah ball soup. ordered gefilte fish from the fishman. watched my boys sink in their forks, and smile from deep-down places.

and now, with the pantry stocked and freezer too, with foods that have no leavened grain, no grain at all, save for ground-up matzah, we carry on the catholic end of the week, the holy week, the days of awe for me.

and while i sometimes find myself in lonely place, alone at church on palm sunday, for instance, i have found in this end of the week, quiet joy, unexpected joy.

last night my little one sat beside me at holy thursday mass, the mass that remembers the last supper–a seder, after all. he curled into my side, entwined his slender getting-longer fingers in mine. he asked me questions throughout, and i whispered answers, so quietly moved that for once i was not alone at church.

and today, good friday, a day i’ve long marked in silence from noon to 3, in remembrance of jesus on the cross, jesus suffering, my 6-foot-3 rower told me he was skipping practice. why, i asked? because it’s slotted for noon to 2, he said, matter-of-factly, and it’s good friday.

i quietly felt a glow.

i have not been one to try to wedge my boys into the practice of my religion. i’ve not tried to wedge anything at all. i have offered up all i have. i have made the seders, left out holy books, asked plenty of questions, tried to answer questions without easy answers.

we have, every night since each boy was born, whispered a litany of prayers, a head-to-toe veneration and then some, before sweet child slipped into slumber.

i have put out shabbat candles every friday. made fish for most shabbats, a subtle catholic-jewish intertwining.

i have walked to the lakefront with my boys, tossed bread upon the waves, cast sins at the jewish new year. savored the ritual, felt deep-down blessing at the many roads to the holiest of holies.

i have honored the sacred in all its forms. but i have not demanded, not sulked. oh, i’ve shed tears, though, but not when anyone was watching. i’ve felt the price of living in a home where two religions were offered. i’ve felt the sting of their pointed questions, of not knowing if they believed at all.

it’s a far lonelier road than most anyone will tell. i have tried hard to make peace with carrying on my quiet flame, believing all alone, of being without my boys on holy thursday night when the time came to take off my shoes and have my naked feet washed by strangers, and to return the blessing all alone.

and this year, i am quietly and deeply moved that i was not alone last night, and will not be alone this afternoon in my silent vigil.

it is dicey business, this growing up with deep cords of faith, in a world where the secular is drowning out the sacred. it is double hard to try to teach two religions, when there seems barely room for one.

it is not wise, i figured out, to demand belief. there is no such demanding.

in the end, we can only light the candles, set the seder table, cook fish for each shabbat, revel in the glories of the good times, and pray to God that in the darkest hours, our children will find the seeds that we once planted. and those seeds somehow will swell and burst with the tender beginnings of a vine that someday will carry them to the heaven that surrounds us.

that’s my prayer this holiest of fridays.

and how do you pass the seeds of faith to your children, or to the ones you so love?

4 Comments

April 15, 2011

catch joy…

it is the antidote to madness. it is portable. and i do believe it shall become a lifelong practice.

i started this week. gave it a name. exercised it as often as i could.

i call it catching joy. it is living on two planes at once. making sure one side of your brain stays on patrol, and at watch, while the other side goes about its nutty, hair-frazzling business.

it is more conscious than the otherwise ho-hum knack for catching yourself sighing, saying, “oh my, this is a wonderful moment.”

catching joy practically involves a butterfly net.

it is an active pursuit of paying attention. of cloaking yourself in joy when you stumble upon it. of taking that scant slice of soulful delight, piercing it with a fork and sucking the juice right out of it. or, perhaps, slathering it on, whatever the joy is, like a sour-cream-thick slather of makes-me-feel-velvet-all-over.

it is setting the little alarm in your head to clang when all of a sudden you realize, “oh my, this is good. very good. this smells/sounds/looks/feels magnificent. just shy of heavenly.”

heck, there are days, i am certain, when the bar needn’t be set quite so high. when, “gosh, this is purdy fine here,” is more than good enough.

the point, though, is that even amid the mad-dashing, huffing and puffing, there come–unannounced, but regally draped–moments that will, if we let them, feed the pits of our souls, restore the marrow before it runs out.

and what we must do, if we intend to understand their essentialness, their necessity, as if pure oxygen inhaled through a tube, is we must not let the lovelinesses waft by without duly noting every last ounce of it.

if we can pause, hit the soak-it-in button, well, then i’m certain we can double the bang for our buck.

say, for instance, we are dashing across a grocery store parking lot. and there, fluttering by, flutters a butterfly. the first of the season. if we pause mid-lope, if we allow the watchguard side of our brain to shout out in glee, “oh, golly, there’s something wonderful. there’s something to notice,” we might find a new spring in our step, a true gratitude that we happened to be in that place [cracked-asphalt, traffic-jammed grocery store parking lot] at that time [just before anyone at home noticed we were flat out of milk and bananas].

here’s how it went for me this week, once i started to play my new game, the one we’ll call joy catching, or catch joy for short.

(i know how it went, by the way, because i added paper and pencil to the version i played along at home. soon as i caught any version of joy, i scribbled it down, finding, as i have over the years, that no. 2 lead pencils, and/or blue ink delivered by ball point, help me commit things to memory.)

my catch-joy list for the week:

i found myself stopped at a stop light with two lanes of traffic steering south. suddenly, from behind, i heard a siren shrieking my way. instinctively, as i’ve done since i was a wee little girl, as my boys have seen me and mimicked a million times over the years, i made the sign of the cross, whispering prayers that whoever was hurt would be delivered to safety and wholeness.

at the exact same time, in the exact same tempo, a woman at the wheel of the car next to mine, made the same sign of the cross. ditto. in duplicate. it made me smile through two more stop lights that there would be two of us, side by side, both playing out the catholic school girl’s act of veneration and hope, instilled and still knee-jerk after all of these decades.

that same day, i do believe, one when my morning demanded i drive like a race car driver, and ferry my firstborn from orchestra hall to a river 10 miles away, i found my car taking a right, when it was supposed to be taking a left (after said child was safely delivered, of course).

why, that ol’ station wagon steered itself straight to the seasonal garden store, the one with the cyclone fence and all the red radio flyer wagons. refusing to brake, that ol’ car pulled right into a parking space and suddenly the driver-side door flung wide open.

i made that out to mean that i was supposed to get out of the car, walk through the row upon row of pansies, and gosh, bring home some babies for planting. (i did as instructed.)

the joys that i caught in that particular outing were the two pots of forget-me-nots, each a cloud of droplets of blue, blue the color of sky on a june afternoon. forget-me-nots, with their delicate emphatic charm, have always been near the top of my spring favorites list, right up there with nodding lily-of-the-valley, and getting-ready-to-burst viburnum, the intoxicant of april and may that soon will explode right outside my kitchen window.

there was more joy caught in my net as i knelt in my garden, my knees sinking into the lush, sun-warmed loam, and my fingers brushing back a clump of old leaves to discover the earliest green nubs of the jack frost brunnera i dug up and carried here when we up and moved from my much-loved first garden.

again i caught joy when i traipsed into a quirky-but-charming downtown flower shop that’s packed to the rafters with blooms, and walked out with a clutch of hyacinths, muscari and apricot-throated narcissus, now perched in a cobalt blue vase and broadcasting its vernal perfume all through my kitchen.

you get the exercise.

and let me emphasize the power behind it. we have a choice, it seems. we can barrel through our days as if an obstacle course that threatens to swallow us whole, should we make a mis-step. we can be left at the end of the day splayed and gasping for air, numb at the thought of another tomorrow.

or, we can punctuate the hours. inject serendipitous whimsy. gather up joy the color of sunshine. we can collect pearls of delight, as if the beads on a rosary. we can hold onto these marvels, turn them over and over–in our hearts and our minds. we can lift each one to the light, and commit their truth to our souls: even on the darkest of days, a scant ray of light escapes from the sun.

if we’re blessed, if we’re wise, we understand and we do as inspired: we catch joy, we store it in jars, lined up on the windowsill.

all we need do is glance at the sill, to see just how blessed any old day might become.

if we commit to the practice, the sacred art of searching and seizing random shards of joy, wherever they come.

if we make it the sport of our life. and have oodles of joy jars to show for it.

what joys did you catch this week?

and before i go, a most blessed birthday to my dear vpk, mother of the one i married, but more than that a bright light and beacon to me and my boys.
and to my ella bella cupcake who turned 2 yesterday, you my sweet, are joy caught and held close to my heart, forever and ever.
p.s. the beauties up above are from the flower wonderland i wandered into for work this week. oh, what a job. what a joy. caught just for you….

7 Comments

April 8, 2011

that ol’ nemesis: datebook

it’s not the first time i’ve felt strung up by my datebook. oh no. not even close.

maybe it’s just that it’s worn me down to the rough-sawn bone.

it is a modern mother’s dilemma: you write it all down, to get it all done, but when you look at the page, you get dizzy. short of breath. queazy bellied.

you look at the calculus there on the page, and you realize it’s an equation to stump even the most enlightened.

you don’t set out to cobble together a datebook with squiggles and swirls, and multiple colors of ink. you are not trying to illustrate the madness that is your life at the moment.

you are simply recording who needs to be where, and when.

so how come it makes me so queazy?

how come these last two months of the schoolyear, of high school for one of my two, how come once again it feels like a slammer?

i find myself whispering to myself, as i drive from place one to place two, “God only gives you what you can handle. good thing, babe, you only had two.” i can’t imagine the scene if i’d had the six or four or three i’d long hoped for.

i walked into my editor’s office yesterday, to ask about one of my stories. she asked how it was going, i flipped back, “oh, it’s insane.” she, a solid swede who never gets ruffled, flipped back: “you’re always insane. just don’t let it be.”

i carried those words with me the rest of the day: just don’t let it be.

hmm. and how would i do that? what does that look like?

i have two kids. one does two sports plus fourth grade. shouldn’t be too complicated. i have another who carries a nearly impossible load, including an art class that keeps him up till 5 in the morning, what with all the drilling and glueing, the mounting of beach grass in neat little lines, on a rolled-out base of self-hardening clay. and did i mention peculiarly bent tubes of copper? it’s intricate and beautiful. but it scares me to death. say, when he leaves it to dry on the floor of the kitchen, in the space where we walk from one room to another. besides the art, there’s the fine sport of rowing. and a chamber orchestra load that, for instance, has him awake at 4 in the morning to get on a bus to roll down to orchestra hall, for a recording on stage. and i’m due to idle outside, in the no-parking lane, to rush him from end of recording, to 15 miles away, where a boat of rowers will be waiting on the banks of the river. that’s on the docket for monday. never mind tuesday or wednesday.

did you read that paragraph there? it’s what’s making me nuts.

but my editor says, soundly, “don’t let it.”

so i come to the table, to ask: how is it done? how do we take on these loads and not sink under the weight of it, the here-and-there of it?

maybe i should have been some sort of a monk. holed myself up in a cloistered existence. worried about simple things, like when the chives were about to burst into bloom. or how much my knees hurt, kneeling there on the hard stone slabs at vespers at 3 in the morning.

maybe i was cut out for another life.

maybe being a mother in the 21st century is not my natural habitat. maybe i’m driving everyone nuts with all of my worries. and all of my odd calculations, trying to figure how long i can idle in that no-parking lane before the cop blows his whistle, slaps on a ticket?

it’s that ol’ nemesis datebook, back to bite me again.

i long for the zen. for serenity. for nothing more taxing than gathering blooms from my garden. for snipping fine herbs in my stew.

i need a prescription, i fear, to get through to the end of the school year. (pssst, i don’t mean a white little pill; nor a blue one. just some method to clear all the madness.)

and the sad thing is this: these are the final weeks that my firstborn and i will ride the waves of his everyday life.
i’d better figure it out, before i let these days swirl down the drain.

anyone have an eraser?

i need your counsel and wisdom: how do we take on a jampacked calendar, and not succumb to our worst worried selves? anyone else feel stretched to the point where you hear a snap in your head? anyone know the words to the serenity prayer?

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April 1, 2011

earth movin’

it’s like that in spring. one day you wake up with an itch under your skin. you walk outside. you take a deep breath. next thing you know visions of leaf mulch swirl in your head.

you think back to that nice lady you met, back in the summer. the one who told you the one trick up her gardening sleeve was the dumptruck load of leaf mulch she had poured onto her driveway each spring. how she hauled it by wheelbarrow loads onto her beds, hauled it till her back screamed out in pain.

you start to imagine three inches of loam, the earth’s meringue if ever there was one. you imagine your little baby bulbs–the ones with knots of cobalt blue, drifts of white or buttery yellows–pushing up through the crust of the earth. you imagine their soft green skins meeting up with the blanket of loam. you imagine the tips of the leaves, the heads of the stems, all letting out a deep sigh, as they come through from under the earth, and realize the someone who tends this particular garden is a someone who’s looking out for each and every one of the babies.

so you start to measure off your gardens, one foot in front of the other, you step and you count. you multiply length times width, come up with square footage.

you call the nice lady at the leaf mulch factory. you ask a few questions. you put in your order. you check with your mate who keeps watch on the checkbook. make sure there’s room in the till for this springtime expense. he gives it a nod, bless his non-gardening heart.

and so you call back, tell the nice lady to bring on the dump truck.

on a morning filled with mist, and promising a whole day of rain, you steer the truck to the parking pad where your earth load will wait for you and the wheelbarrows.

just like the days long ago when your brothers chased after dump trucks and earth movers, any sort of construction equipment, you find yourself with a heart that’s pumping in doubletime. because all this dumping and steering is truly exciting. it’s not everyday that your garden chores involve big noisy trucks, with squeaky gears, and moving parts that could crush you.

with a nod from you, and an OK sign from the driver, up goes the dumper, and down slides the leaf mulch, all five cubic yards, or the equivalent of 45 bags from the garden store. a cumulus cloud of organic mist rose up from the billowing mulch, the clear and indisputable sign that this mulch was alive, was teeming with all that a garden needs for the whole long season ahead.

i couldn’t get to my shovel fast enough. paid no heed to the rain clouds not far in the offing. i heaved and i wheeled. covered a good third of the gardens.

then the rains came hard and certain.

i shoveled anyway, my whole self covered in mud.

i couldn’t have hummed a merrier tune deep inside.

it’s what happens to those of us who live to give back to the earth. who find enchantment in the up-close and personal that comes when you’re down on your knees, brushing back clots of whole earth, making room for the hopes and promises, the full-on faith of those green sprouts that refuse to give up over the winter.

it’s what happens when the earth begins to stir again. when we begin to stir deep down inside. our heartbeats in sync with the pulse of mama earth who does not surrender, does not give in to the ice and the dark bitter cold. who hunkers down, who holds onto all that matters, who births year after year. who fills us with bouquets, and swirls of springtime perfume.

who paints the earth in the ripest of green.

who rewards us for our wheelbarrows of hard labor, of unflagging love. who settles deep and keeps us going forward…..

the rains have stopped now, and a good four cubic yards still wait for me and my wheelbarrow. i’ve babies to blanket before i sleep, babies to blanket, in hopes that they’ll rise from the earth, and wail hallelujah in that song that only the earth knows.

it’s spring break here and it’s been heavenly. delicious cupcake was more than delicious, and so were her mama and papa. i got to fly away for four nights and days with my firstborn, a gift if ever there was one. and now it’s home and tending to hearth and garden. i am humming indeed, and headed back out to the mud…..
happy merry april fool’s day.

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March 24, 2011

operation cupcake

i call her delicious cupcake, that girl so scrumptious, that girl so far away, along the coast of maine.

it’s been too long. so we are winging our way to delight in her extravagance for the weekend, as spring break is upon us and we are putting our world on pause, my firstborn and i.

as delicious as the cupcake promises to be–and ohhhhhhhh she needn’t promise, for me to taste already the buttercream deliciousness she holds–it is the time in flight with my firstborn that thrills me, that has held me steady through this long wobbly week of too much to do, too many bumps in the road.

my little one isn’t too very tickled that i am–for the first time–leaving his side. but he’ll be home with papa.

and a mama needs a trip through the clouds with her firstborn, when college already is whispering his name. when the next trip we take will be to deliver him to his ivy-covered dorm.

so here we go, to savor, to walk, to talk till late in the night. to sit down to deliciousness cooked up by my extraordinary brother. to awake to the sounds of cupcake herself, nearly two years old.

we will wander farmland, and atlantic coast. i will slip into their world for a few short days, and be home in time to start the week of spring break.

but mostly i will breathe beside my firstborn. i will take in all his wonders. i will freeze each and every frame. and hold him deep inside my heart.

and carry home morsels of my cupcake.

whatever you’ve got pencilled into your week ahead, i hope it brings you bliss, and dollops of buttercream. see you back at the table. love, auntie babs

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March 18, 2011

the magic of mexican fried steak

it’s not happened often, but every once in a while, a boy runs out of gas. tank drained. big empty. not one ounce left.

and so, you tuck the boy in bed. even when he’s longer than the old twin bed. even when his past-noon* feets dangle over the edge.

you tuck him in and let him sleep and sleep and sleep.

you worry about his weary self. you check on him, from time to time, just as when he was a dimpled little boy. you touch his brow. and when you’re sure he’s in a deep, deep sleep, you kiss him on the stubbled cheek.

while he dreams the morn away, you wend your way to the butcher shop. you browse the steaks, the marbled slabs of muscle. you pluck one that’s on a bone.

you decide that in the hierarchy of mother’s magic potions, you are well beyond the need for oatmeal, you’ve climbed the charts to up where red meat looms. only cure that’s surer is one involving hypodermic needles. and needles make you queazy, so you stick to steak and its soul-restoring powers.

this is wise, because when you dare to rouse the sleeping man-boy, you have arsenal in your defense. you have new york strip to dangle.

why, you’ve seen the circus trainers do the same: dangle steak in front of cats, big cats, cats with killer teeth, to turn them into docile kittens.

not that any boy i know would growl or snarl or bite my head off. but when awaking worn-out, on-empty man-boy, i find a steak is handy.

and so on the edge of bed i sat, whispered words of red meat. i saw the smile spread across his lovely face. i saw the eyelids flutter open.

“if it’s too much,” i said, “we can go with oatmeal.”

ah, no, he answered rather sprightly. “au contraire. quite the opposite.” a steak, he said, was in his dreams.

but not just any steak: a mexican fried steak, was what he had in mind. so, with the click of that magic phone that coughs up all the answers, he typed in spanish words, came up with the abuela’s path to steak perfection, or in this case milanesas empanizada. that is, mexican fried steak.

with one swift leap, he was out of bed and down the stairs. he was talking bread crumbs, garlic, egg bath. red meat. meat so red i swear it moo’d.

we put our little heads together, he and i: grabbed a loaf of challah. swiped off the shelf the dusty mini-processor, a chopping-blending whiz my adopted jewish grandma gave me once upon a time.

we splitzed in bread. we added cloves of garlic. we inhaled. we sighed aloud.

we cooked our way to cure. we shook in cumin, poured in salt, cracked pepper. for good measure we added a little packet of something called “milwaukee avenue steak seasoning,” a smoky rub named for a windy-city thoroughfare where you can’t help but stumble over steaks of every stripe and cut.

“it’ll be chicago mexican fried steak,” declared the sous chef, smiling down on me.

and so, through that alchemy that is the holy work of kitchens, with a little splitzing, the cracking of two eggs, and the bathing of that steak, first in yolky goop and then in silken challah-garlic-cumin-milwaukee crumbs (that sous chef dabbed on quite a blanket there of crumbs), we turned the noontime into one of pure true joy.

we were cooking side-by-side. we were laughing, leaping out of sizzling oil’s way. for that deeply adorned steak, what with its eggy under-garments, and its crumby top-dressing, it was dropped in pool of hot corn oil, and it was turning into resurrection breakfast, served at 12:15 on what would have been a schoolday, restoring life to the once-nearly lifeless.

i never cease to marvel at the powers that rise from stove or oven. how what goes on there truly fills our pores, our weary bones. and most of all the tickers deep inside.

by lunchtime’s end, as the man-boy rubbed the last red drop of beefy juice right off his plate, as he sipped the last of his orange juice, he was joyful once again. he was ready, one more time, to take a lap on the track called life.

i rinsed the plate. i put away the fixings.

and i whispered a thank-you prayer to the abuela who’d led us to the restoration grotto, where miracles come to those who wield the fry pan.

* “past-noon” referring to the size of a foot is a favorite family expression, coined by a state-street shoe salesman who once measured my husband’s size 13s and declared, “oh, you’re past noon,” meaning higher than 12s. we have loved that phrasing ever since. and now two of three boys around here are past noons. and one is approaching as swiftly as he can…

what foods in your arsenal hold the holy cure? for the days when those you love can barely make it from the bed? and why do you think the kitchen is one room that holds such mystic powers??

oh, because we’d never keep a cure from you, here’s abuela’s milanesas de res empanizadas, as translated from the original.

ingredients:
1 / 2 Kilo of beef for breading Steak (that’s just about a pound, people)

 2 eggs  Bread for breading (we used three-day-old challah) 

Ground Pepper  Salt  Oil
(we added a dash of cumin, two cloves garlic, and a few shakes of milwaukee avenue steak seasoning, a heavenly smoky rub from the spice house in evanston, ill.)

preparation:
for perfection, you want to toss bread, garlic, and seasonings into mini food processor. splitz, or blend, in pulses till the aroma makes your knees wobble, and you consider stuffing fistfuls straight to your mouth, skipping the steak altogether.
 Season the steak with salt and pepper.   (you’ll want two bowls: one for eggs, one for bread crumbs; this is a two-bowl process, although abuela won’t tell you so.)

The eggs are stirred well with a fork, and the steaks are passed in the egg, then go through the bread crumbs and fry very well on both sides.   Served and garnished with lettuce, tomato slices, onion slices.

you feel better already, now don’t you?

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March 11, 2011

freeze frame

i am holding onto moments, freezing frames, as if compiling a loop of kodacolor film i will hold, rub my thumbs along, raise up to the light, memorize, when he is gone.

i am stopping at the edge of his room, soaking in the tableau–the jumbled socks, the soggy towel–knowing that in half a year, there will be no messy room.

i am driving to his school, climbing stairs, entering the gallery where his art hangs on the wall. i am standing, neck tilted back, looking up, eyes wide, soaking in the art, his words, his name on the label on the wall.

i climb downstairs, take my seat in the dim-lit auditorium, look toward the stage, see the curl of his bass, the slick-down curls of his own head, still wet from the shower after rowing.

i lock my eyes on his silhouette in the darkness, as the stage lights come up from behind, as i study that head that i have held, have known, since the hour when i reached for him, newborn, and took him in my arms.

nearly 18 years i have loved him more than anything, have been a player in the story of his life. have known the scenes, most every one. and now, the ones i enter into, i hold onto in my mind, in my heart, as i commit to memory, yes, but even more to soul, the whole of this chapter of mothering. of being the moon to his orbit, his every day rotation.

i hear the drumbeat in the background. soft at first, muffled, but getting louder by the day. as if the dial’s being turned.

the last this. the senior that. final season.

two months and two weeks till graduation. all around me, high school swirls. he swirls. my firstborn, love of my life.

i pore over each and every frame. take time. stop, in mid-conversation, as he lies, stretched out at the end of a long day, reaches for my popcorn, tells me silly stories. i stop and marvel. take in each syllable, but witness too the quirks and gestures i have known for so very many years. the way he taps his thumb, crosses his leg and kicks his foot.

i marvel at the mere fact that at the end of these long days we can unspool together, i can hear in real time, without phone line or typed email. i can, for a few more short months, take in his life in 3-D, full-plane topography.

and so, as if storing for the future, for the days when he won’t be here, won’t be coming home soon. for the days when i ache to see his shining eyes, when i’ll give anything for a jumbled pair of sweaty socks to be dropped across his room…..

i am gathering the frames, the moments of his wholeness, one facet at a time. i am doing what we do when someone we love is leaving, and we are making room inside our hearts to store the memories, the sense, the wholeness.

i am holding onto time as i feel it slipping through my fingers. i am scaffolding my heart for when it’s aching, and these days are no longer……

the window up above, with the candles and the russian cross, that is one of will’s six photos in the art show. or it’s a part of a photo, taken at a louis sullivan russian orthodox church on chicago’s west side. i sat up in the choir loft as will clicked away in the jewel-box of a church, where sunlight played on golden threads and gold-painted doors.

as i try to wrap my head around this leaving, around this chapter coming to a close, i can’t help but reach for words, to try to shade in the outlines. i know there are those who’ve walked this way, did the letting go settle in slowly? did you keep watch as the time drew nearer? or did it come up from behind and catch you unawares?

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March 4, 2011

pulling rabbits out of hats

it is what mothers do. on a rare day, on a day when stars and moons and jupiter and venus all align.

it is what mothers wish they could do every breathing day–make it all all right again. pick up the pieces. clean up the mess. shake off the bits of gravel from there on the sidewalk, where the grit scraped the knee. kiss the hurt, slap on a bandaid. make it all right again.

we know, those of us with half an ounce of living, that more often than not, we can’t right what’s wrong. can’t make the mean girls go away. can’t shift the score of the ballgame. can’t even chase the mean coach into a corner, make him tremble for what he’s done to someone we love.

but, once in a while, when the pile of wrongs piles too high, we swoop into action. we make like houdini. pull rabbits from hats.

and so it was the other morning, when i got to breathe deep of that rare sense of glory, of having triumphed, mended a hole in the day of a kid i happen to love more than life.

here’s the simple story, told only to remind me and you that we really can, every once in awhile, grab onto our britches, dash out the door, and make like a hero for someone we love. and of course it’s not about being the hero, it’s about that rare chance to do as we wish others might do for us, be for us. that rare chance to live the magnificent, luminous goldenest rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

how often have we found our sorry selves at the end of our ropes, and wished upon stars that someone would leap to our rescue? and what a beautiful thing when we find that we can do just that. for no reason other than through-and-through, inside-and-out, plain pure love.

so this boy who i adore–you’ve heard me write of him over the years–he is this week about as neck-deep in plain old unfiltered stress as a senior in high school can be: he is in the thick of tryouts for crew, a sport that has kids pulling on oars till they literally see stars and crash to the floor (don’t get me started); he is also in dress rehearsals for the spring musical; and cranking out not one but six art pieces for AP photo class, with a gallery show opening next week.

and so of course this is the week his phone, a fifth limb if ever there was one, decided to sputter and gasp and utterly die.

now a boy without phone is, i quickly realized, a boy whose life is verging on crumbling.

for one, he had no way to wake up in the morn, as that phone serves to jangle him from deepest of sleep, with its haranguing alarm that wakes the whole house–except, of course, for the intended sleeper.

for two, since the world has been stripped of pay phones, he couldn’t call for a ride, or tell me what time to be where.

and the mere look on his face, the oh-my-god-if-one-more-thing-goes-i’m-going-too, it stirred me to muster some forces.

as i dashed in his room that dreary morning, just after he’d trudged off to school, and suddenly i spied the dead phone stiff on the desk, i charged into supernurse mode. i dialed the phone store (from a phone with a pulse, thank you). i made an appointment. i squeezed in a triage, smack dab in the thick of a workday. the dear man at the store, he pulled out a toothbrush, of all the high-techy tools. he oohed and ahhed at all the gunk that had nestled into the cracks of the phone. and then, in unsparing words, he looked up and declared: “this phone has come to its end.”

he rattled through options. i attached price tags to every last one. but then i thought of that kid, i thought how little he asks and how hard he tries.

i told the man i’d like a replacement, didn’t care much that it’d cost more, by a long shot, than popcorn and movies.

the nice man played a rare card: without my even asking, he rang up the bill, and as he punched in the buttons asked me something about was the battery working. i said i really didn’t know the state of the battery, but then when he showed me the final sum, he’d sliced off a whole $120, because he deemed it a “battery issue.”

then he handed me a brand new phone, and i brushed the tear from my eye, sprouted due to his kindness and the mere fact that not even dollars would keep me from fixing a hole in the skin of my kid.

i walked out of that store as if on a hovercloud, my chest nearly heaving at the rare joy of success, my mood downright giddy. what had felt like a mountain just hours ago, was now whittled down to a clearing. i couldn’t subside the pure joy of lifting the load from my boy. knew, through and through, there’d be more times than not that i’d stand on the sidelines helpless, while the stretchers were rushed on the field. but for now, there was only delight.

and that night, when that tired tall kid strode through the door, expecting to spend yet another long night without phone, he looked at his bedside table, and there, lit up and flashing the time, he spied the fruits of my motherly labors.

he practically rubbed at his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw: the one thing he wished for that day, the one thing he couldn’t possibly have carved out a minute to do, it was lying there, shiny and new, just waiting for him to pick up and text.

it’s a rare and heady day. but oh how glorious a gift to get to play like a mama magician and make one bumpy life all smooth again.

no old hare ever looked so magnificent, no matter the hat from which it was pulled.

have you yanked any rabbits out of hats lately? anyone pulled one out for you?

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