i woke up thinking i could have done a better speech. one does not run for the governor-of-georgia without a good speech. but the constituents at the rally seemed to appreciate it anyway, so i shrugged and promised myself to write a better narrative the next time. “they need to know the intentions i have for the office,” i told d, after sipping a few sips of coffee. he stared at me, likely envisioning what a move to the georgian governor’s mansion might look like, or, maybe what it would be like to be first-husband-of-the-gov.
alas, though it sure looked real for a while, things were not as they seemed and the details all started fading away the more coffee i sipped.
we are eating many plant-based foods these days. admittedly, not every day, but often. we looked back a few weeks and there were only three or four evenings our dinner was not plant-based. as we take this path, we’ll see if it’s entirely to the vegetarian-way-of-life. in the meanwhile, we are on a big learning curve. we have punctuated our veggie soup and plant-based sausage veggie hash and impossible burgers and red pesto pasta with a chicken soup here, one ribeye-split there. it is truly amazing what you can purchase now’days when you are trying to eat significantly less meat. you CAN buy anything that looks like something.
we bought the impossible burgers with some doubt. we’ve eaten black bean burgers for years – which taste like black beans and spices – so we figured that these burgers would also taste like something else other than a burger-burger. i wondered how plants-as-a-burger would taste grilled and salt-and-peppered. i had some trepidation. plus, the whole30 had encouraged us away from processed foods.
we were astounded upon first bite. we know these are not whole foods. there is a list of ingredients, some of which are those things difficult to pronounce, but all the ingredients are “derived from plants”. the beyond-meat sweet italian sausage in our veggie hash was pretty amazing, with seemingly a few less hard-to-pronounce ingredients.
i don’t know where this is all headed. we are experimenting with our diet and recipes and we are trying to be environmentally and animal conscious. we do know we love vegetables and fruits and can figure out ways to be more responsible to our world and all its inhabitants. more conscious consumerism.
if you have any recipes to share – or gubernatorial speech thoughts – please don’t hesitate to jot them to us. we’d love to hear from you.
to the casual observer, i’m sure it looked clandestine: gas station parking lot. man pulls up in newer vehicle. woman pulls up in older-model vehicle to newer vehicle’s driver’s side. woman stays in vehicle and opens passenger window. man gets out and goes to passenger window with envelope. man extends envelope into vehicle. woman extends package toward man. yikes!
the woman in the very-nice-car next to me was watching. i could feel her eyes on the back of my head. i turned toward her and she raised her eyebrows and frowned at me. i made sure to hold the binax-now-covid-self-rapid-test box up high so that she could see it. from the look on her face, i’m guessing she thought that i had disguised the real stuff with this box. 20 and i exchanged envelope and box and, although the envelope had nothing to do with the box at all, and this was just me bringing 20 a rapid test since he couldn’t find any, it appeared – to this woman drawing conclusions – that we had done a deal. ewww.
the last time i felt that way i was in the kansas city airport. i flew in and, with a sizeable bank check in hand, met a complete stranger in the baggage claim area. i was purchasing littlebabyscion and driving it home that same day, but it sure looked kind of suspect.
back-in-the-day, decades ago now, when i worked for the state attorney’s office in florida, my husband was a detective with the sheriff’s department. there are many stories of stings and deals and situations to which i have been privy. some stories are funnier than others. like the time he landed the department helicopter in the field having watched a guy pull marijuana out of a neighboring field and run into the nearby house. from my recollection, when he went to the door a small child answered. he asked if he could speak to his daddy and the innocent little boy said, “right now he’s in the bathroom flushing plants down the toilet.” yes. a different situation.
these are indeed strange times. and we are all trying to do the best we can. we keep track of where we’ve been, who we’ve seen. we are cautious to be vaccinated and boosted and wear masks and sanitize and avoid crowds and obvious circumstances that might be more dangerous from a contagion point of view. we sacrifice some now in order to have a better (and sooner) future without covid. we make soup for others, call on people to check in, deliver groceries, share masks and rapid tests and information.
saturday night we watched a documentary: the first wave. our daughter sent us the link; one of her friends with nat-geo was involved in its production.
if you have forgotten why you are being vigilant, why you are vaccinated, why you are boosted, wearing a mask, isolating, keeping distance, not gathering, not eating in crowded restaurants or going to crowded indoor events, you should watch this movie.
if you have been wondering why you are emotionally and physically exhausted, why you are sometimes edgy, why you have been pining for normal, you should watch this movie.
if you have somehow lost the vision in your mind’s eye of the absolute terror and fear in people’s eyes who have been stricken with covid, you should watch this movie.
if you have forgotten about courage and science and the miracle of others sustaining each other, you should watch this movie.
if you have lost perspective and are just d-o-n-e with it all, you should watch this movie.
our daughter wrote that she had never seen anything like people on respirators, ventilators or in the devastating state this pandemic slammed upon them. i wrote back, still crying from watching, even a half hour after this movie, that neither had i. and the thing i had to keep reminding myself during the movie? that it was real. that it was true. that it still is.
we all know we’d do just about anything for the people we love. it is important – in these times – for us all to be honest and forthcoming. to let each other know if we are at risk, if we might be putting the other at risk, if we are ailing, if we think we are ‘positive’, if we need help or, simply, if we need the emotional support of the people who love us back – standing with us in the middle of it all, even if that is virtual.
our hearts are all connected together. and i would, once again, risk the unfair judgement of a bystander to stay that way.
it all looked pristine for a while, after it snowed. a fresh blanket of white covering our yard and its blemishes. for the time before the wind started blowing and the snow started shifting, you couldn’t tell that the front yard was all torn up, that there is a large grassless mound – like a dune on the long island coastline – that stretches from our house all the way to the street.
the backyard also. pristine. a white canvas, dotted with tall old evergreen trees, ornamental grasses gone to brown, feathery plumes waving, the pond frozen and still.
there are folks whose yards will continue to look that way – pristine. the snow will remain untouched, smooth, perfectly showcasing shadows as the sun peers through tree limbs and plants in fallow.
the moment we open the back door and dogdog runs out, the illusion of perfection ceases. pawprints obscure the shadow art as he tears into the blanket of snow, nose down, gleefully devouring it as he goes. he is a winter dog. there is no doubt about it. he comes in reluctantly – laden with snow – after laying on the deck on top of snow, surrounded by snow, under new snowfall. it is his time.
sometimes i wonder if we can just save the front yard, just not walk in it, just not let it be disturbed. we can look out the window and gaze at that which makes everything profoundly beautiful.
but then there are squirrels dancing about in the snow and the tiny footprints of birds. there are prints of a stray cat and maybe a raccoon or two. the grasses dip under the weight and the gusts, brushing aside snow like small brooms. there are bootprints of the guys who installed our temporary sidewalk and shoeprints of our postal, ups, fedex, amazon delivery people bringing us mail, cards from people we care about, packages of things we need. the wind has blown off the straw-covered mound, exposing the filled-in trench of a new water service line, a tiny winter miracle in itself.
and i realize that as stunning as pristine is, it is perhaps illusory and most definitely ephemeral.
instead, we celebrate the messy, the prints in the snow, the elated dog, the windblown fresh snowfall, creatures seeking food and shelter, the interrupted shadows.
while she explained to me the presence of the cross on the back of the donkey, he explained to david how he installed the sun-seeking solar panel in the barnyard. both exist here. the old world donkey and the twenty-first century solar panel. together.
he told us that they were about our age when they started to make plans for next steps. they sorted and listed and researched and made decisions for their next phase, moving to acreage further south – in a bit more temperate clime – closer to some family, out in the woods with ridges and ravines, living their dreams for the next of life. “you should start thinking about that now,” he encouraged us. he’s right. we think about it all the time.
“the world never comes at you all at once,” john o’donohue wrote. “you are not simply here. neither are you definitively and forever ‘you’.” … “no person is a finished thing.”
things you can count on. change and change and change.
we know change is imminent. and change has already arrived. and we have exited change, taken the doorway that reads “next”. and we can see more doors and more doors. they are a little further away, like trail markers, choices to be mapped, routes to follow, narratives with gaps to fill in.
maybe a coupla donkeys, a coupla horses, dogdog, mountains, cherry tomato plants, and trees. our lives will evolve.
in our mind’s eye, we paint ourselves older – hopefully wiser, but i know there’s no guarantee of that. we paint the hue of early morning sunrises over peaks near and far. we paint old porches and adirondack chairs. less stuff and more time. old world and new world. much like now, we paint in mugs of coffee and glasses of wine bookending the day. we paint in people we love. we paint in hiking and writing and new recipes and doing the art we do. it’s unfinished, this canvas.
life is not a paint-by-number. and solar panels and donkeys co-exist in barnyards. and we are not definitively any particular colors in any particular place doing any particular thing. we are made of dreams and change.
each of us can rack up the could-haves, like in a pool triangle, all stuffed in next to each other and ready to break with a cue. fragile, though. we can look back and think “why didn’t i…?” time and again. we can regret.
i suppose the gift of a new year – and those dang resolutions – is to sort and reevaluate the things that you consider important, the things worth continuing, the things worth letting go, the things worth learning. new practices of things-to-do and new practices of things-not-to-do. the lists permeate our brains and hearts, nagging, nagging.
there is a meme, well, many memes, circulating about betty white. it states something like “you have lived a really good life if, at 99, people say you have died too soon.” i realize that betty was inordinately popular, successful, always at the top of her game. but she was a real person, too. and she had to decide how to live. her positivity and laughter gifted each of us who have watched her or listened to her. in a recent interview she recommended, “taste every moment”. mmm. not at all corny, just a simplicity, a reminder.
we carry this pop-up-dinner table and stools around with us, switching from big red to littlebabyscion and back, depending on which vehicle we are driving. when big red refused to start for our road trip over christmas, we transferred the pop-up stuff into littlebabyscion and packed up to go.
we know we could have eaten at the sweet dining room table in our airbnb in the little mountain town. we ate there several times. but that last evening…we needed just a bit more time on the front porch, a bit more time outside, a bit more time admiring buffalo-plaid-man’s holiday decorations across the street, a bit more time in that town. we set up the pop-up table and stools, put up the luminaria again, lit a candle, brought out hors d’oeuvres for happy hour and, later, dinner. a little more effort, but not really much. everything tasted better out there. each moment.
before we even left home and while we were hiking in those north carolina mountains i thought about the new year approaching. i thought long about grasping onto the opportunity to just go, roadtrip to a new place, changing pattern. i thought about chances to amend, to let go, to reach out, to break the racked-up could-haves. big ways and little ways. i tasted a few resolution-ish moments, trying on for size – acting on – some of those thoughts-i-had.
and even in my first meager efforts – nothing earthshattering, nothing that will likely change the whole wide world – i must say, betty’s right.
he’s a convert. we weren’t out of this sweet holiday town a half hour when i asked him to take out the baggie of cold french fries.
my sweet momma is the one who taught me how to eat these. step one: you fry them up. (or bake them) step two: you eat them. step three: you put the leftover in some kind of container. step four: you take them out of the fridge the next day and eat them. cold. preferably with momma’s iced tea, but straight up if there is none of that around.
and so, we turned around littlebabyscion in the back part of the driveway, drove out onto the road, waved to buffalo-plaid-man across the street, drove up the hill to downtown and down the hill out of town toward the mountain range in the distance. stopped and got gas, cleaned our sunglasses and i asked about the french fries.
granted, it was early, but breakfast was way earlier and all that packing and loading and saying goodbye used up a lot of energy. it was time.
and so now, when it used to be that the baggie would solely be for me, we shared the remainder of the french fries that we made with baked clams last night for our pop-up dinner on the porch, our last night in this perfect little town. they tasted like crisp outdoors late at night and my sweet momma’s homemade-just-for-me all rolled into one.
we passed a tiny stand on the side of the road. “boiled peanuts” the sign read.
“yuck,” i said, curling my lip. he agreed, laughing.
but i’m pretty sure i could hear the guy in the sun next to the table he had set up as he turned to his companion: “have you EVER heard of ANYONE eating cold french fries?!”
20 knew what my response would be – ahead of time – when i opened his smartly-wrapped gift, fancy homemade ribbon coordinated with the wrappings. but the absolutely delectable time – inbetween giggling over a really wonderfully simple-yet-perfect bow while guessing what was in the box and moving aside the inner paper – was full of anticipation. conversely, i could see it in him too. it is life-enhancing. both ways. those moments you wait as someone – who you know well and for whom you have found something exquisitely perfect – begins to open your gift. it matters not how big or small, free or expensive; you just know you paid attention to little details and you cannot-wait-to-watch-them-open-it.
i pulled out the brown paper in its role as tissue wrap and there was an old-old pair of sidewalk roller skates with a set of keys. circa 1950/1960 heavy metal with rugged metal wheels. vintage.
instantly transported back-in-time to the feeling of rollerskating on abby drive, i could remember strapping on the skates up at the front stoop, following the sidewalk down as it turned and then turned again into the driveway, struggling to stay on the concrete driveway ribbon – as we had one of those driveways with a ribbon of grass inbetween the ribbons of cement and skating into that was a sure way to fall. the end of the driveway had a little bump too; you’d have to stop there (stopping was always an issue) and step over the end of the apron. and then, the street. and freedom.
at some point, my big brother took the metal wheels off of a pair of skates and made a skateboard. i can still feel that board under my feet – the rough ride of metal against cement-aggregate mixture. we sought out asphalt, though, back then, it was in shorter supply. over by the long island lighting company on the sound there was a really long curving road downhill all made of asphalt. it was a little bit terrifying. and required either driving there or toting your skateboard on your bike a few miles. so – in our everyday world – rough rides on steel skate wheels was our destiny.
my brother made the next skateboard with rubber wheels and a bigger deck and, though it was slower, you didn’t feel as imperiled on it. he mostly used that one and the blue painted one with the red hang-loose was relegated to me. there is much to learn from a rough-ridin’ skateboard, a ribbon driveway and an apron-bump.
i wish i knew where those two skateboards were.
but finding them is unlikely, as i’m sure they are long-gone. about as unlikely as 20 stumbling into a pair of old roller skates and knowing they would be perfect.
so someone went around our rickety old adirondack chairs with the signs that said “sidewalk closed” in order to walk across the newly-poured sidewalk. clearly, this person wants to be remembered. judging by the print, this person is male, relatively long-legged, dons footwear sans brand markings on the sole and leans a bit heavier on his right foot than his left. since that is not much to go on, there is not much to be remembered. just that he wanted to make some sort of statement that day and marched right around the barriers and right through our new cement.
on the trail through the woods hiking on sunday we went along a train track for a ways. a new-looking black locomotive of a long freight train blew its whistle and we peered through the trees to watch. the train was really long and every car was the same, which seemed unusual. freight trains in these parts usually have all kinds of boxcars, flatcars, hoppers, tanktainers, double-stacked container cars. the only differing aspect of these silver hoppers was the graffiti on the side of the cars. most looked newer – or newly scrubbed – but some had lots of added color…the meaning-making marks of spray paint artists who somehow are able to find ways to paint, despite whatever barriers might exist in the rail yard.
i suppose we all have an imperative to leave a mark. to say “i was here” in one way or another. we visit antique shoppes and tease that my cds and his paintings will someday be piled in tiny booths with 20%-off-sale signs and no curator or record-spinning-dj to “explain” our work. one of these days it will be difficult to find a way to actually physically play cds – so for that, i guess i’m happy a lot of it is digitalized, mp3s, like jpegs and tiffs of david’s paintings that are floating about the internet. marks.
this is our 201st consecutive week of writing these blogs for our melange. 201 weeks, five days a week (and more recently six). rapidly approaching four years of writing in this context, together. if each post is about 500 words – or so – that is over 500,000 words. each. together – in just these last 201 weeks – it’s well over a million words. lotsa marks. blogsites can be cumbersome. they can be barriers to leaving-a-mark because of the technology. but not insurmountable. social media can barrierize one’s efforts, particularly social media that indiscriminately shuts down profiles for community standards that have not actually been violated. but one walks around the old adirondack chairs and figures it out. because marks take a little effort sometimes.
i’m hoping that person-x is feeling more acknowledged by the time the utilities come back out in the spring to pour a permanent cement sidewalk out front. as someone who put tiny initials in a zoo sidewalk thirty years ago, i can’t say i don’t understand. i just hope that if we put up better barriers, the only marks in the new sidewalk will be ours.
we have been witnesses to a transformation worthy of notice. in an uncovered ziplock plastic container on our kitchen counter, no less.
we placed the cherry tomatoes in the container on october 30. just the tomatoes. not knowing what to expect, wondering if we needed to aid them along at all. we had read about ethylene and apples and bananas and paper bags. but, we thought, for a few days we would leave them alone and see what happened.
on november 6, only a week later, a few tiny orbs had turned orange and were suddenly red. “we have tomatoes!” i wanted to gloat…the second time in this season of boomer-container-farmer living. it was astounding. we had read that they should not touch each other and yet, these tomatoes were thriving in community with each other.
we watched the progress and photographed every few days.
on december 6, these deliciously sweet red cherry tomatoes, along with zucchini and baby bella mushrooms and onion and garlic and red peppers, were tossed with olive oil over penne and became dinner. and to think what we might have missed had we just left them on the vine when we put the plants in the informal compost pile behind the garage.
at a time when ministers of music all over are stressing about advent, i am reminded of building cantatas…much like van gogh’s words, “great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” to try and rehearse an entire cantata start-to-finish with a choir is to overwhelm them. to introduce songs, one by one, allowing singers to bond with the music, to sink into it, to want to really sing it, invest in it, is to give music the space it needs to grow. integrating all the pieces together works when each individual piece is honored within the context of the whole. a common goal. the green turns to red. the ethylene of each choir member – so to speak – transforms each other. it’s all about the spirit brought together.
the quiet of the season this year – the second year sans adventpush – is punctuated by small measures of rest, time pondering unanswered questions, moments of noticing tiny miracles. i walked to the piano the other day and played the opening strains of “what child is this” and listened as the sound faded.
i’ve gone from cantatas to cherry tomatoes, it seems. it is not without learning.
at the end of growing season, just before advent, the lessons: one tomato gone bad in the container will have a drastic effect on the others. the farmers’ almanac offers guidance: tomatoes that have spoiled or molded should be removed. the offending tomato will cast a toxic shadow over the rest and one must be cautious to discern where the toxic is actually coming from. keeping ripe tomatoes in a plastic bag will make them go bad quickly, so one must be cautious not to suffocate one’s tomatoes. not all green tomatoes off the plant will ripen well; the tomatoes at a mature green stage will. some tomatoes are just not ready to be red. and…it is much easier to ripen tomatoes together.
as the season passes and we move into the new year, i think about this transformation we have watched. we were perhaps overly giddy, a tad bit too enthusiastic, slightly too fostering of potential, a little too encouraging of our little tomato-team. but – red! we have red!
and no bananas or paper bags were harmed in this transformation.
we lit the first candle with the shamash on sunday about a half hour after sundown. and then we lit the first candle on the left. our tiny menorah has a place of distinction on the table in our sunroom. the festival of lights began surrounded by tealights and happy lights and two people wanting to bring more light into the world’s hearts as well as our own. we honored my uncle tony’s family as we lit the candles, read blessings in mispronounced hebrew and sat and gazed silently at our simple newly-purchased menorah. beautiful. a celebration of the right to exist, i read. a time to remember courage, to bring divine light into inky, murky corners. we seek connection to the spiritual universe all around us in manners familiar and unfamiliar to us. on purpose, respectfully, with intention.
joshua davidson, a rabbi in new york city, spoke about his views of “the deep meaning of this year’s hanukkah”. with so much darkness and brokenness in this country he has chosen to ascribe meaning to each of the eight candles he will illumine – “the smallest bit of light to push back the darkness”. he includes: advocates of justice and fairness, black americans, women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, immigrants around the world, the aged, planet earth and our children.
the rabbi continued, “each of us will identify our own lights — on our menorahs, in our windows, or on our trees. however we celebrate, the act of kindling light can be, if we wish it, an act of illuminating the sparks burning in every human being and all created things. when we learn to look at the world and at others — no matter their color, their ethnicity, their gender, their age, their ability, their faith, their education, their wealth, or their politics — and recognize those sparks; and when we accept our responsibility to make them glow again; then we will have taken a first step toward kindling the light and restoring the hope that will heal our dark and fractured world.”
joshua wrote, “the shamash, the helper candle, will represent me — my power to become better in the new year; and through my own moral growth, my ability to spread light in the moral darkness that surrounds us.”
no matter our choice of religious or non-religious belief system, the black and white of it is that we all have the potential of the shamash. we are all light in the middle of twilight, luminous branches in the middle of darkness, in the middle of early-morning dawn, miraculous sparks of change and growth. it is a season of light.
reverse threading 