pull up a chair

it is holy time again.

well, it always is. especially on these honey-dripping days, when the september sun warms us with its deepest amber drops. and the nights turn where’s-my-sweater chilly, and the morning’s dew is enough to make you curl your toes.

it is holy time in any autumn hour.

but never holier than on these the days of awe, now mine as much as my beloved’s.

i do believe, long, long ago my irish peoples were not the ones who’d once been druids, worshipped rocks and stones.

i’ve an inkling that maybe my people, once upon a time, understood the rhythms and the seasons of the hebrew moons and stars.

i believe my people might have been among the wanderers, wandered right up and settled down on that island to the north, far north. the one where craggy rocks erupt from mossy meadows. where sheep graze and clog the country roads, stop the motor cars from motoring. might as well turn off the petrol, for there is no shooshing along a sheep. not one with munching on its mind.

oh, i am catholic through and through.

(though lately i’ve been longing for a drop or two of anglican, what with all those women making noise up on the altars, and a world view that’s maybe looser with the rules, a bit more inclusive in at least a few departments. why, i muttered not too long ago, i could even be ordained. but the one i married will not have it; one thing, he laughs, to have married a catholic, whole ‘nother thing to be married to a priest.)

and, yes, too, i am defined now by the rise and fall of sun, the turning of the moon, the seasons of the planting and the harvest. i kindle lights at sundown on shabbat. i inhale the spices at its close, cling all week long to the sharp, sweet notes of clove and star of anise, allow my nose’s memory to whisper through the weekdays that holy time will come again.
the pause of shabbat is God’s command to put down toil, lift up holiness. marvel at the simple gifts of consecrated quiet. it is God’s promise, too, to fill the holy chalice that is us, leave us thirsting for not a single blessed drop.

oh, there is much poetry that pulses through my heart these days. passion, too. and much of it is stoked by the prayers i read while i sit in synagogue, turning pages, lost in my own reverie.

it is, to me, all a spiral. the geometry of climbing. the ladder of a soul that reaches toward the heavens.

it is time to turn and return. so says the prayer of each shabbat. and, the ones for rosh hashanah, too.

even the bread, the challah of these holy days, is freed from its ordinary flat-planed braid, and lifted into ever-rising spiral.

we are told, in prayer and golden-crusted foodstuff, to come back to where it all begins–to turn and return–but take it up a notch. don’t be satisfied with status quo. don’t let dull the sharp-edged hope.

the days of awe begin tonight, when the sun slips down beyond the curve of earth, and the stars turn on, lighting up the nightsky.

it is time here in this house that is ours to turn again to page 82, the lamb-spattered page, the page where cinnamon has fallen, and kosher salt has settled in the gulley of the binding. it is lamb-stew time, the one single recipe upon which this union was begun. upon which it will, God willing, always rise.

just home from honeymoon, 18 years ago, encamped in an upstairs apartment in a tiny blue-framed house, the man i’d just married opened up the book i’d given him years before, before i ever dreamed i’d be his wife, and settled on the stew that would become our touching-stone. that will be stirred upon our stove, as long as there are arms to hold the long, wooden spoon. to sprinkle leaves of thyme. to cut up apple into chunks. to dump in raisins by the cupful.

it is, as we grow year upon year, a sense of coming home. we stir and we remember. we set the plates and pomegranates on the table, and we bow our heads in prayer.

we turn and we return.

it is all about the spiral. the holy coil that lifts us on our journey. that brings us back, again and again, but never to the place we’ve been before.

there is, we realize with every passing year, unparalleled beauty in coming round again to that moment in the days, the weeks, the months–the season–when all the world echoes: we’ve been here before.

and here’s your chance to savor it again, to learn again. or maybe for the first time.

it is holy and sacred, this spiral-marking, and it comes at the moment when my heart is ripe to bursting. when every pore of me wants to slurp up the molasses light that’s pooling all around.

i am inclined in these days of awe to walk wherever i must go. i want to feel my soles slap against the earth, feel the bumpy acorns, catch the light as it pours through golden-turning leaves.

it’s almost as if i can’t get enough of the gift: the gift of the spiral, the coming back to the essence–the joy and the beauty, the pure holiness–again.

it is time, now, to close my eyes in prayer. to inhale the holy vapors from my stove, my plate, the spice box.

it is hard not to want to leap into the holy rushing waters of this sacred river passing by. it’s an upflow, i am certain. and an updraft too.

i am soaring here, on a spiral fueled with cinnamon and cloves. these are the holy blessed days, the days of awe.
and i do as i’m commanded: i stand in awe, turning and returning….

may these most holy days enwrap you as they do me. may your every pulsebeat skip to the Divine that’s draped around us–from the branches of the trees, to the ever-dwindling slant of the sun, from the mounds of apples, to the holy prayers. may awe come to you, as you turn and gift it to the world in which you dwell.
your prayer for the blessed new year?

we’d been talking for a long time about carving out a day, he and i and his pruners and loppers.

that’s garden talk for some very sharp edges.

my friend david knows what to do with a very sharp edge.

so he drove up today in his truck, dumped all his blades at the curb. gave me a hug.

can’t say i didn’t peek over his shoulder, made sure early on the blades weren’t part of the hug. that’s when i noticed the sharp edges dumped. squeezed a bit tighter there in that hug, once i knew the blades weren’t entwined with us, too.

david is one of my teachers. i tend to acquire teachers in the subjects i most love.

i’ve had teachers who taught me–still do–how to be a mother. and teachers who’ve taught me a thing or two about words, especially the art of cobbling them, one banged up against the next, making sharp edges with those strung-together alphabet letters, crisp corners. a snatch of poetry, too, here and there, every once in a while. or, well, trying at least.

i’ve a whole faculty when it comes to my garden, that holy sacred place that’s as close as i come to religion these days. like being in church, or a pew, or a temple on any shabbat.

dappled light in my chamber of prayer comes in, not through stained glass, but through deep-veined leaves, and the cracks in the fence.

preacher comes in the wren who warbles so clear and so true she makes my heart shiver. and my knees, too.

of all the heavens i know, the one place i most want to be on these golden-drenched days of september is out where the sun warms the earth that runs through my fingers.

it’s the one place where i hear the words of my soul rising in whole-body grace.

and, since tackling the woods and the weeds of my overgrown chapel is enough to knock me down flat, well, i reckon i could use whatever learning i’m offered.

and david, the son of a dairy farmer. david, a painter. a classical music freak. a chicago cop, for cryin’ out loud. david is a teacher i’ll take any day he’s free from the beat.

he’s one of those rare souls who, in between milking the cows and belting out arias, soaked up the latin and common names of just about every growing thing that ever there was–at least on the rolling prairies that stretch from just north of the illinois-wisconsin state line, clear down to the south side of chicago.

he knows where to plop a bush and make it look like it’s always wanted to be there. knows which way to turn a weeping, gnarled-spine hemlock, so you swoon when you come round the corner and your eyes rest upon its S-shaped parabola. knows which ferns like it dry, and which will tolerate a wee bit of wet under their toes.

so david came by today. spent the whole day, he and his loppers and pruners. i worked right beside. soaked in every bit of the lessons. and plenty of wisdom besides.

why, he started the day talking philosophy, launched right into how the underpinning of all gardens is the urge to control nature.

talked about how he particularly admires the english romantics, who understood from the start that it was all about the control thing. had no pretense whatsoever that a garden was in any way a natural endeavor.

“the post-modernists,” he continued, deadheading a daisy, “they like to think we’re returning to something, returning to nature. we’re not.”

he spewed stories everywhere we stepped in the garden. when he started in on the arbor vitae–that flat-branched evergreen that, in a semi-circle of five tall trees, like ladies lined up in big-skirted ballgowns that all these years have shielded our backyard from the brick house next door–he asked if i’d ever heard his no. 1 favorite garden tale?

i shook my head no, scrambling behind him, cutting up into sticks the long branches he was starting to pile high on the bricks.

he crunched up a fistful of the greens. told me to sniff, asked what i smelled. i started to guess, “pineapple,” not really sure why. but before i could sputter out the wrong answer, he told me the right one: “lemon,” he said.

only then, tipped off by the teacher, did i pick up on the citrus-y notes of a branch full of lemon.

he told me how back when the french explorers–jesuit priests, he made certain to note–back when they were trekking through the forests near the great lakes, and the winters were hard, and all sorts of illness was thinning their ranks, the native americans came along and taught those priests how to make a very fine tea of the evergreen branches. and how, because it turns out it’s higher in vitamin C than just about anything that grows in the woods, all the ailing explorers got better, and the jesuits, being big on latin, named the evergreen, arbor vitae, “tree of life,” because the trees and the teas had kept them alive.

it was that sort of day in the garden, where all day long i learned at the hand of david.

only the biggest lesson i learned, the hardest one too, the one that made my heart pound, and made me take a deep breath two or three times, was what he did with those very sharp edges, and the stand of arbor vitae, the ballgowns, that until today had spilled thick and deep onto the brick terrace out back.

he cut away at the branches down low. cut back the limbs only barely alive. the trees i’d thought were fat and full of crannies for all of my birds, he snipped away the skirts at the bottom. showed some leg.

the shaggy-bark trunks, strong-limbed architecture, really. he bared it. gave back a good two yards of terrace.

only i gasped at first when i saw what he’d done. nearly blinked back a tear when i noticed the pile. branches, bare, nearly bare. branches with plenty enough green to make it hard there to swallow.

but as the minutes wore on, i warmed to what i saw. discovered the beauty behind what turned out to have been false fronts; in all the nearly seven years i’ve lived here, i’d never seen that possibility before.

by day’s end, i realized just what david had done: he taught me, boldly, the essential lesson of life and pruning, cut back to bare essence. expose what’s at the heart of the matter.

only then do you discover the canvas for true beauty to bloom, to be planted.

as i drift off to sleep tonight, i’ll be deep in my woodland cathedral. imagining the dappled light. and the tender shade-loving creatures that i’ll tuck and tend there, where i never knew the space existed before.

it’s what happens when you wholly trust your teacher. when you don’t argue, don’t balk. but go with the lesson as it’s unfolding.

you discover the beautiful right before your eyes. where you never imagined it before.

the day has been long, the cutting deep. i have scratches all over, and plenty of scrapes.
i almost thought of not writing today, on this 11th day of the 9th month, the day none of us will ever forget. i walked out into the deep quiet of this morning. heard a plane overhead. couldn’t help but shudder. the man i married, when i told him i was thinking it might not be right to write today, maybe i should keep the silence, he said, ‘no, you have to keep living.’
so i cut and i learned. and now i wrote. day is done.

who are your teachers? and what are the subjects you love most? what lessons have you learned at the hand of a master?
p.s. dear david, profoundly: thank you.

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.