Mothers need mothers

I have gotten a later start than some on mothering, but my hope and plans are to keep myself clear-minded, able-bodied, and strong enough to love well for a long, long time to come. If Moxie has a child herself one day, there will be times when she cries for her own mother's comfort and wishes for familiar relief and support, and maybe perspective. I want to be able to give her that relationship, in the flesh. I want to remember what the good times and the hard times feel like, so she'll have an empathetic friend in me. Even if she doesn't have a child—of course! But right now I'm having specially keen grandmotherly visions because I miss my own mama so much. I wish she would come walking through my front door. Mothering is kicking my butt. Yes, I love it. It shreds me some days. 

If you chance to meet a frown(ing salad)

No one likes a frowny face.

Change it for a smile.

Make the world a better place

by smiling all the while.

One of the benefits of self-employment: Rob and I get to eat together—not every meal of every day, mind you, but we share a fine majority of our repasts. Family meals, being with people at table—so healthy. I'm convinced, and there are studies that back me up on this, that breaking bread together heightens the nourishing impact of food, especially when the folks gathered 'round the board allow themselves to relax and invest in good conversation. Do you believe in shared meals? The simplicity or complexity of the spread make less difference to the experience than the seasonings of love and friendship and goodwill. Certainly it's great to aim for food that's interesting and flavorful, but I for one will take a communal PB&J over lonely gourmet just about any day of the week, any meal. It's the company that makes the meal truly delicious.

Rob and I aren't very good at routine—often our meals take place at odd hours—but we do follow a few constants. One of them is our breakfast pattern. When we sit down together for this meal, we pray and ask for a blessing on our food, and another on our shared study time. We eat and visit, and then when the food's gone and we're sipping our Pero or smoothies or chamomile tea or what-have-you, one of us will bring up some point or principle or story from the scriptures and we'll have a small discussion about it. We pull from our personal studies to prepare for this morning time. Then we wash up dishes together (sometime this step gets neglected, ahem), and start the day in earnest with a kneeling prayer. It's a really grounding habit that has helped us come to know ourselves and each other better, and learn about the nature of life and happiness and truth. We are stronger, closer as a couple, and closer to God because we observe this practice. We're not perfect in our process—sometimes one or both of us are stressed or fatigued, or anxious about the day, but even when we carve out the merest moment to slow down and focus on something made of light, we are blessed.

I highly recommend that you give ideas like these a try with your own family. If you live alone, or have other circumstances which require adaptation, then you have a perfect opportunity to exercise your creativity. A shared meal can be so good for the soul. And adding the element of spiritual feasting makes mealtime exponentially more sustaining.

Bon appétit.

So May I Introduce to You the Act I've Known for All These Years

Sgt. Robert's lovely free verse poems.

I'm very proud of my dearest friend. I couldn't be prouder of him if he was reading tonight on that prestigious stage in NYC, and enjoying the trip that almost was. His sensitivity and talent shine and I applaud him as adoringly as any slick city audience could, and more. I just hope he isn't quietly disappointed somewhere down deep inside by this crowd of only one, and that one not too smartly dressed for the occasion.

Congratulations, Rob, on making a beautiful contribution to what I hope was a perfect evening for our friends, the Lunatics.

Buns in the Oven

Stayed awake half the night thinking about these:

This is my eleven-day-old cousin. Well, eleven yesterday.

She's the procreatee of two wonderful people:

Can you tell which is my blood relation?

Because I was up so far into the night (morning), thinking about my own long and winding path to parenthood, I woke up with a sick, underslept headache. It turned migrainous later in the day. I was good for much of nothing from that point on. No cooking. No thinking. No talking. Nothing but down comforter and hot water bottle (thanks again, Mirjam) and drugs and shades drawn.

I emerged from my underground cave hours later, and was met by these beauties cooling on the kitchen table:

The Baker Man had been hard at work. He had also filled my giant red Knit Night pot with chicken soup, but I didn't get a picture of that. Nice late supper. Nice Rob. 

Talk about comfort food. I'm going back to bed now to dream of lovin' from the oven. 

Silent triad, speak!

This is really something. Please visit the link. Please listen. Please read. Tell me what you think. I can't get enough. Nowhere near enough. 

I've been thinking for a while about recording adoption stories, starting my own collection. My Rob has been thinking about it too. We attend the monthly adoption workshops required by both state law and the agency we're working with, and in those we frequently get to hear adoptive families speak about their experiences. Last week we attended the October class and the entire time was devoted to a birth mother panel. Three brave, generous, beautiful women came and spoke about their journeys as they chose to place their babies for adoption. I don't know how to quantify how much love I felt for those women. No pity, no judgment, just deep admiration and awe. It was a sacred night, I felt. I was overwhelmed by love.

I think that November is going to be my month to make a start on this pet recording project. I'm already going to be conducting and/or facilitating three different interviews next month (non-adoption-related), so the ol' mic and recorder will already be fired up and ready to roll. If you think you would enjoy talking out your adoption story, please let me know, and maybe we can figure out when to chat in the coming months. I don't know that our discussion will ever end up on Transom.org or anywhere else important, but even if just you and I are the audience that's enough to make it worthwhile. If you can't or don't want to talk face-to-face, I can always record you over the phone or probably Skype (just give me minute to figure it out). Whatever part you've played in the "silent triad"—birth parent, adoptee, or adoptive parent—or as a different kind of participant, I am all ears. 

If you want to email me and discuss this more, my address is pogofig at gmail dot com.

I'd love to.

The Great Invisible Divide

Here's a lovely song I heard for the first time today. Very poignant to become acquainted with it on a day when I feel very keenly the force of habit of my own loner-ness (working on it, working on it), but also on the day when I learn my sweet cousin died, almost unbelievably on the anniversary of her own birth. My prayers and concern are with my grieving extendeds across the country, but my heart has drifted across the border into the Land Beyond, where my parents are, my grands and greats, and nearly everyone close to me except some cousins, a couple aunts, an uncle—many of these very distant. I've spent the afternoon and evening imagining the reunion and celebration that is surely underway There, a joyful uproar of family welcome, every last soul of them clamoring to greet and shout and kiss and talk to the beloved newcomer. I'm not in a hurry to get There myself, but sometimes I get homesick enough to think hard about visiting. Haven't found any round-trip tickets though, and a one-way fare is far too costly for me, so I think I'll just keep tending my own home fire and send a smoke signal Heavenward to let the folks know I'm dreaming of them.

Dear Cousin, I hope you're bursting with joy and laughter, now that you've been surprised with such long-missed company. If there are collards in heaven (and it wasn't Nellie Quinn who cooked them), then I know your birthday is complete.

(I don't know who these cute people are, but the Mirah song is an inspiration.)

Day Three

Twittertail

"You're always so busy! You better slow down! You do too much. [Businesslike] You got a house to keep up, you got your business, you got a husband, [chucklingly] you got them three babies to take care of, you got a garden to work in, you got them flower beds in the front, you got jobs in the church.... [heavily] You know you do too much. [prophetically] You better slow down! [hotly] I want you to slow down and get some rest, and stop doing so much. You hear?"

My rebuttal to Gram:
(1) I don't do too much. Really, it seems like I never get anything done.
(2) I don't have any babies. I have an indoor dog, an outdoor cat, and a backyard bantam. I don't recall giving birth to any of these creatures.
(3) I do have a husband, a very nice one, and he's taken over the late-summer gardening duties.
(4) I grow lavender and sedum in the front yard, or rather, they grow themselves. You couldn't hope to find two more tenacious and tolerant plants. Go ahead, try them in your own neglected spaces and you'll see what I mean.
(5) As for church, I do a little visiting and a little teaching here and there, and I try to organize a yearly history of our congregation. I wouldn't call that burdensome.
(6) Okay, maybe if I could actually do everything I would like to, I would be doing too much, but as I've already said, I feel like an underachiever.
(7) Every time I close my eyes, even just for a nap, I fall immediately into dreams—vivid, kinetic stuff. I've often been known to wake up exhausted after my forays into Slumberland. I think I might get more actual rest when I'm awake and moving.

Hey, wait. This is my blog. Shouldn't the very first words of the very first post be my own, not my grandmother's? Hmm. Well, maybe it isn't so strange to want to let her have her say to start with; I'm very aware these days that she urgently needs to have a voice. Besides, she was here on the planet before I was, and her efforts, I'm sure, have helped mold me into the loving, striving, yet richly dysfunctional adult I am today.

I'm sure I will talk more of my grandmother later. I will talk of both my grandmothers before my words run out. I've got a lot of words.

I've also got a lot of recipes. I made something tasty for dinner (or supper, in Gramspeak) this evening: a revised version of Tomatican from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. (Check out the Moosewood cookbooks if you have any tastebuds at all.)

Geo's Improvised Tomatican 

Sauté together, until onion softens:
1 gigantic onion, sliced thinly
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 healthy blat of extra-virgin olive oil 

Add and continue to sauté till beans are thawed and steaming (adding a little water, if needed):
2 teaspoons dried ground cumin
1 lb. bag frozen baby lima beans 

Add, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes (or till vegies are as tender as you wish):
several handfuls of fresh, coarsely chopped tomatoes
2 cups frozen corn
salt 

Serve this over quinoa (1 cup grain + 2 cups water brought to a boil, covered, then simmered for 15 minutes or till water is all cooked away) and top with grated cheddar cheese. If your tomatoes are yellow like mine were, this is an especially summery, cheerful dish. Yum.

On a less sunshiney note, our car died on me today. The timing was amazing, though, so I couldn't let myself complain; Gram and I had spent a long morning hunting and gathering at Wal-Mart (her choice, not mine), and it wasn't till after I'd safely deposited her home and helped her put her groceries away that the old Trooper stopped trooping. I had literally made it no farther than out of her parking lot and into the street when it went kaput. I managed to slowly coax it into the parking lot in front of Shirley's Bakery, and on an empty stomach but with a deep determination to shun sugar, I braved the allurements of bear claw and butterhorn and used Shirley's phone to call home. Rob and Bryce showed up before too long and we got the Trooper home again. I'm so grateful this didn't happen while I was out with Gram. I don't know which would have puddled first: the grandmother or her Pict-Sweet frozen corn. The other thing I'm grateful for is the use of Joh and Andy's car while they're out of the country for nine weeks (gosh, starting today, how about that?). It might send Rob and I both clear over the edge to be carless at this point. I don't know what we're going to do about our deteriorating transportation situation, but... well, I can't think about that right now.

I finally came up with a new design for our web page this evening. I've been banging my head against this project for so long, and at last a very simple inspiration has come, one that I think will evolve nicely. What a relief. I believe many things will be able to go forward again once I get us past the outdated web page obstacle.

This blog is already getting quite long, and I'm just on day one. I've done online journalling before, but this is my first time blogging. Will I be truncated if I'm too loquacious?

Oh, yes—a "twittertail" is somebody who is all-over-the-place busy. You know the kind: can't keep still, makes you tired and nervous just watching. It's generally a mixed term: 80% exasperation and 20% affection. My grandmother has called me this before, in an attempt to work some bootless discipline on me, but it's never done any good. Anyway, I'm not a twittertail. It is one of my favorite words, however.

Would you like to learn how to draw your very own twitter bird?

Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep!