Camp Thor IV: The Shadow Weeked

Thursday afternoon I dropped Silas off with my brother Max (Ben would meet them there) so they could drive to North Carolina for Camp Thor IV with three other fathers and sons.  As I was leaving, I heard Max tell Silas to put on his pants so they could go tend to the bees, and fifteen minutes later, I got a call saying there had been a little accident.  My first thought was Silas swarmed with bees, but no, he'd sliced his finger with his pocket knife.  Is it bad?  Well, you should probably come.  And I knew Max telling me that, meant I should pull a u-turn right there on the highway.

I walked in to find a slumped, red-cheeked boy with a frown to his knees sitting at the table, finger wrapped in gauze and duct taped held above his head.  We drove to a surgeon's office, and I sat holding Silas's cheeks, holding hand-blinders up to his eyes, and whispering to him while the doctor put several numbing shots into his finger, scrubbed it (was the knife clean, by chance? ... I mean, it was backyard stick clean; he was whittling with it yesterday), and put four stitches into the skin of his knuckle.  Just as she was finishing, I felt a wave of nausea, a little lightheaded, and in less than a minute, I'd turned green, eyes rolling, and passed out cold.  Apparently they yanked Silas off the table and hoisted me up, where I lay for longer than the whole procedure had taken, waiting to be able to sit up. Unprecedented.

Friday was easy.

Today is Saturday and while the boys are away, we girls (cousins and aunts) are making yarn wall hangings, banana bread, and having a sleepover while the rain drives against the house.  At least that is what we were peacefully doing until Eden walked in from the deck with wide-eyes: I think one of the chickens is dead.  No, it's probably just sleeping in the grass -- they do sit in the grass.  But her eyes were big and she shook her head.  We all walked outside.  It turned out not one chicken was dead, but three, sprawled on the grass and partially deafeathered.  Somehow, a fox had dug under the fencing and attacked mid-day during the rain and left the bodies.  The fourth and last chicken pecked happily around the yard, apparently oblivious to the massacre that had just happened.

We stood in the kitchen wondering what to do -- scoop up the chickens' bodies that looked plastered to the ground with trash bags and throw them out?  As Sara went out to survey the scene, I picked up the drumsticks and chicken thighs for the hot grill.  Ella, 10, at my elbow, groaned, I'm not eating THAT!!  Riiiiiiiiight. 

But I had to grill the chicken anyway or it would go bad.  As I squeezed out the door, Toulouse, the dog, shot out past my leg rampant with urgency, and within a minute, the fourth chicken was cornered and attacked.  The house spun into chaos -- I was screaming after the dog and to the heavens, Ella and Eden hysterical laughing-screaming in the kitchen, Sara down NEXT to the chicken coop shrieking at the scene, and the two little girls still in the house watching Daniel Tiger arguing with each other like cartoon babies: yes!  no! YES!  NO! YES!!!  NO!!!  YESSSSS!  NOOOOOOO!

Sara has since gathered the dead chickens, and the wounded one is still making broken warbles from under the deck -- we don't know what to do with her but shoot her, so she's still there.

The chicken legs are cooked and plated on the table where no one will touch them.  Sara is showering off the trauma.  The big girls and I are settled on the couch processing, and the little girls continue to argue. 

Go Camp Thor Shadow Weekend.

a poem

This poem from poem-a-day (poets.org) popped into my inbox the other day.
The tone hooks me -- late June extravagance.

Solstice   Tess Taylor

How again today our patron star whose ancient vista is the long view turns its wide brightness now and here: Below, we loll outdoors, sing & make fire. We build no henge but after our swim, linger by the pond. Dapples flicker pine trunks by the water. Buzz & hum & wing & song combine. Light builds a monument to its passing. Frogs content themselves in bullish chirps, hoopskirt blossoms on thimbleberries fall, peeper toads hop, lazy—              Apex. The throaty world sings ripen. Our grove slips past the sun’s long kiss. We dress. We head home in other starlight.  Our earthly time is sweetening from this.

Filled and Full

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, and it's 9:30PM.  I've been tuning out the jet lagged tumult upstairs for quite sometime in hopes that, dazed by their own fatigue, each child will finally collapse.  Two now have.  But Maeve, whose chattered and called for the last hour, just started yelling full voice.  I responded several times with go to sleep!  no more!  But she kept on.  At what point will freshly-asleep Silas and Eden wake up to this?   Maeve, it is time for sleep!  I whisper-yelled, always a sign impatience has started to crawl on my skin.    And then, WIPE MY BOTTON!! (bottom)  She'd been sitting on the toilet that whole time.  So sorry, Maeve.

This afternoon we pulled into the driveway after eleven days away: Santa Barbara to celebrate my beautiful sister, the big family all in a house, her 30th and graduation, tacos at sunset; Costa Mesa for hands in sand, more tacos, looking full-faced at women I love; the Virgina countryside for retreat with a church I love, fireflies and frog catching, such good words. 

I am brimming.  Not even brimming, sloshing with overflow.  

 

Grateful.

May

There were a few things I'd forgotten about May.  In fact, I'd forgotten entirely about May, the lost month between my birthday/Easter and the end of school/Eden's birthday.  

Well, May is wild! -- wild with growth, the month of true spring, each week a new series of blooms erupting from ground or tree; and wild with movement as school kicks up all the fun its withheld all year -- field days and field trips, popsicle parties, presentations, projects.  Suddenly there are more papers to have signed and shoved in folders, more hours to appear at school, to stand places and cheer for kids, to list words they have to spell or check stories that are to be finished and illustrated.  The pace was head-spinning and what I heard myself exhale all month as we coasted into parking places two minutes before was we made it, because by the skin of our teeth we did, over and over.  In May every entrance and exit was a feat of organization -- bags locked and loaded by the door for pool or field or class, uniforms washed or at least shin guards found, and matching socks to cover them.  And all the while, mounting anticipation of June, summer.

June.

The warblers arrived, the trees turned summer green, and June burst over the mountain.  It smelled good, tasted good, and was gentle to the eyes. 

                                -my side of the mountain

The smell of late May into early June is intoxicating, deep pockets of honeysuckle hanging low, mowed grass, rain-stirred earth.  All of May it has felt like this, like June was crouching just on the other side of the mountain waiting to burst.  

It has come! 

The heat is rising from the pavement and mugginess settling into the air. 

Thunderheads pile up in the afternoons.

We all exhale.

Tomorrow is the last day of school for the kids.  We are remembering whom we want to thank, the people who have carried them through this year, sometimes at a wrestle, sometimes with ease.  Silas will bake his pound cake-for-teachers this afternoon, the one he claimed as his own in 1st grade and  always loves to give.  And Eden will draw pictures of girls wearing necklaces winking, and use all sorts of adjectives like humorous and encouraging.  And then, just like that, another school year will end.  

Pound Cake for Teachers (Cream Cheese Pound Cake, from Orangette.blogspot.com)

      makes 2 loaves

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temp

8 oz cream cheese, at room temp

3 c sugar

6 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325.

Grease two loaf pans (can also line with parchment, easier to remove)

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt.  Set aside

In a stand mixer, combine butter and cream cheese; beat til soft and fluffy.

Add sugar and beat 2 more min.

Add eggs one at a time, beating well, and add vanilla.

Reduce to low and add flour mixture in three doses, beating just to combine. 

Bake ~55-60 min, or until golden and knife comes out clean.

Let cool in pan before removing.

Be at Peace with Spring (even though homelessness sucks)

Class at Miriam's today was not the usual reading and analyzing, jockeying for witticisms, reading our work aloud.  Today we sifted through a stack of poetry books to find poems to write on index cards and share (poem in your pocket day). There was lots of chatting and conversation, and I ended up locked in conversation with someone I've loved sitting next to for a year and a half. Today I watched him spin out -- a narrative of grief and injustice and he contorted into someone I'd never seen.

Driving home I wrestled with despair, with the deeper-than-grief I'd seen on his face and felt in my chest, with my utter helplessness, with how complicated we humans are.  We can face nothing without our interpretation -- so many realities layered like films in any given moment as we all watch from our own set of eyes.

My head spun with questions, all the same questions I'd pelted God with when I went to the park week after week and day after day -- What is the point?  I have nothing to offer!  I'm just as thirsty as everyone here!  What good is it for any of us?  What difference does it make?  What can I do to help?  I can't do ANYthing to help.  These wounds are too deep.  The system is too broken.  I don't know what to do!  What did YOU do??

And as always, almost obnoxiously, happens when I shout these questions, the answer quietly sifted in through my outrage:  I went to people, and I loved them. And though that does not resolve the heinous stories that pour out of the shelters on 2nd and D, nor fix the fact that there's no ready housing for a 75 year old homeless man who can't quite care for himself and has psychological needs, nor so many other bleeding problems, it was enough to quiet me down because it was true.

As I climbed Massachusetts Avenue, I passed a billboard that said be at peace with spring. It was a Claritin ad, but it struck like a good word.  Be at peace.  Be at peace as the huge towering trees wait, still bare to the bone.  Be at peace with buds that show no sign of petal. Be at peace with the wet slick concrete, the puddles, the dripping gutters, tiny crocuses in the old grass.  Be at peace.  

There is so much landscape-wrenching change in spring. The rain pounds.  The air is still cold, shivery and uncomfortable. The mud tracks our steps. Bulbs pierce the ground. Branches are punctuated by buds.  Buds bloom wide enough that every one of their petals fall.  Leaves push in, tiny and tender, waving and exposed. 

Spring.  It is a battle to fend off winter. It is a battle to live life on the other side of barrenness.

Be at peace with spring.
Be at peace with the battle for life, with the hope of another round.

Disappointment: the story of a run

I am signed up to run the Cherry Blossom 10 miler a week from today.

In November I ran my first 10K (6 miles), which was the farthest I'd ever run.

There are moments when we exceed what we think is our capacity, and for me that was one.

I have never been an athlete.  I am not very competitive.  I don't love hard work.  I like nice weather and really only exercising in nice weather (I should have stayed in California).  I never pursued -- or became good at -- any sports, and from an early age, the narrative I created for myself was that I just wasn't an athlete.

There are always complexities in play when we create identities for ourselves -- some protective, some defensive, some image-driven, some hopeful, some fearful -- and for me, this one was no different.  Not being an athlete meant I could never be bad, never fail, and never lose.  It meant I didn't want something I didn't have.

When I got to college, I decided to row my first semester to be like my friend Ben (whom, incidentally, I married several years later).  I'd never run more than one mile in PE class, and suddenly found myself running 5 miles a day, waking up in the dark for starry morning practices, and living the life of a college athlete, complete with a spring break training camp and rock solid biceps.

Still, it felt more like a game I was playing, driven by my friend Ali, who made anything seem possible.  And my rowing years, like all of my college years, were riddled with such a complicated body image and toxic relationship with food that the confidence I could have gained, washed right off.  After a couple of semesters, I chose other things.

Through my 20's and 30's I thought of myself vaguely as a "runner," meaning I sometimes jogged for 30 minutes and usually ran about two and a half miles.  But this fall when I trained for the 10K, something began to shift, and one night this winter when my friend Erin mentioned a 10 miler, I registered.

For the next months, I watched myself layer wicking fabrics, put on ear warmers and gloves, and run into 20 degree weather.  I watched myself climb on a treadmill, turn on a podcast, and run while the kids clamored around me with snow-day-restlessness.  I watched myself lean into hard work and train for something I'd never done.

I held my breath.
I hardly dared say out loud that I was going to do it, that I was going to run 10 miles, that I had already started to do it.

No one was watching, really.  And no one really cared.  To many, this was a small feat, not even half of a marathon.  I had no audience but myself, and something was quietly breaking open.

Yesterday as I was listening to a talk about rejection, about how the root word suggests vacancy, I realized that during those messy years, that's what I'd created in myself: a vacancy.  I'd pulled out a handful of my earthy self with its value and worth, and shoved a limited story about who I am, what I do and can do in its place.

As I ran this winter, that's what was breaking open, the vacant place I'd guarded so well.

The snow fell, and snow days persisted.  The flu rolled through my house in every form.  Sinus infections hit over and over.  My calendar where run was scribbled in pen and circled, four times a week, kept getting rearranged.  My miles were dropping.

Two weeks ago I realized that with all the sickness, I was a few weeks behind where I wished I were in my training.  I knew if I pushed hard, I could still make it, but I'd have to work, so I mapped out the next week of runs.  Then --BAM!-- another round: Silas sick, Maeve up for nights, and a sapping sinus infection again.  I lost a solid week of running again.

As this reality settled, I met it differently each day: I am just going to DO It.  The next day: I'm NOT doing it -- I'm too far behind, it doesn't make sense.  The next day: I'll just run-walk the whole thing to be a part of it.  I cycled through the voices incessantly and woke up thinking them. Finally, last week, I decided not to run.

It was a matter of fact, a logical choice -- and I held it in my head.  So it was, the reality.

Yesterday, walking with Eden, I realized she was the only one in the family who didn't yet know, so I told her I wasn't going to run.  Immediately, almost violently, she burst into tears.
I was flummoxed.
Are you crying for you or for me?
For you.  You were going to run 10 miles.  And I was excited to cheer for you.
I fumbled through my words about how there would be another time, how I'd still do it but later.

She was probably the only person I'd been honest with as I trained -- I'd come in from my runs and tell her glowingly that I'd just run four miles, or three, or five.  And she'd smile and not say much, but apparently stash away my sense of success.

When we got home from our walk, I realized she was the only one wearing my heart: I am sad, as sad as she was.

Today I went for my first run in ten days and prayed through my sadness, through the old achy vacancy, and the want for healing.  As I ran I realized that this race, the one I can't run the full distance of, the one I paid an arm and a leg to register for, the one that will take place without me next weekend, the one that would have marked my 38th birthday, may not just be proof of failure, though there are voices in my head that say so.  Instead, it may be my invitation to reach into that pulpy place and pull out the old wadded up piece of paper, the story I've stuck to for years.   It may be my invitation to empty out and heal.

I Can't Stop Eating These: Sauteed Dates

When I first saw this recipe, I didn't even click on it.  But one afternoon my mom, who had savored every word of the recipe, whipped up a few while I sat at her kitchen counter.

They are amazing.

I have eaten them hot on a plate with my fingers.  I've stabbed them with toothpicks.  I've served them over plain Greek yogurt, drizzled with the olive oil they were cooked in, naan along side.  All great.  This month I've made them for everyone I've eaten with, and I have another box of dates in my kitchen right now to make tomorrow night.

Hurry to your kitchen and make these!

Sauteed Dates
   adapted slightly from Renee Erickson's recipe on Food52
   (read all about them here with serving suggestions)

Olive oil
Dates, pitted and cut in half length-wise
Maldon (or other flaky sea salt)

Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a pan over medium/med-high heat.  Sauteed dates, turning frequently until warmed through and just beginning to caramelize (watch them!  they burn quickly!) Sprinkle generously with flaky salt while still hot and eat warm!