Distracted

I began by day last Wednesday with my leggings on backwards.

I moved through most of my morning routine registering something was amiss but not able to pinpoint exactly what until one last pitstop in the bathroom before heading to work sorted it out. I was only mildly concerned about the morning commute. Even so, I double-checked side and rearview mirrors, backed down the driveway a bit more carefully than usual and eighteen miles later, pulled into the parking lot intact and smiling wryly. Humans. Aren’t we funny? No raccoon ever put its bandit mask on upside down before tackling its furry to-do list for the day.

Looking back on that morning moment, I wondered what else had captured my attention so fully that my own physical architecture didn’t cry out for a serious recalibration of the clothes it was wearing. I’m not the flighty type; there are certain steps to my morning agenda that happen in precise order (out of necessity) and keep me moving forward. By contrast, Patrick’s “out the door” practice is a masterful and thoroughly entertaining example of organized chaos held together by a consistent element of surprise. He’s Dagwood Bumpstead and a German train schedule combined. I leave him to it, standing at a safe distance, leaning in only for the farewell morning kiss before he takes all that energy and puts it behind the wheel. Add kittens begging for breakfast to the mix, turn up the sound and enjoy (and you wonder why I enjoy the solitude of my morning walks so much…).

The human brain is a marvelous tool and wonder. Though researchers differ on the precise amount, they say we are on the receiving end of more than 34 gigabytes of information each day, give or take a few bytes. This nonstop train of data barrels at us continuously until we get some sleep and then it slows a bit, but don’t we have weird dreams some nights? Leftovers, no doubt, from the info buffet where we pulled up a chair and parked for a good seven to twelve hours that bubble up into some sort of surreal cranial soup involving the face of the person we saw in line at the bank singing the wrong lyrics to “Purple Haze”, kittens mewling at his feed for food (wait—that last part might be real). There’s not enough space nor time here to do this subject justice so I shall encourage you to check out the research on your own. And until a team of scientists takes a much deeper look into my own cerebral functionality, I’m pretty much on my own to figure it out. All I know is that I face each day with endless choices and the wistful regret that I can’t select them all. Is that an aging thing, where I watch the pile of birthdays behind me grow larger and the potential ones on the horizon thin out like the last hairs on a balding head? Perhaps, and most days I can accept that. But I’m also driven by an insatiable curiosity that wants to know, to learn, to experience what crosses my life’s path. It’s as exhilarating as it is disappointing, and walking that line with grace requires effort.

Speaking of walking, I took this data overload research out to the fields this morning and wondered what would happen to my brain’s processing if I closed my eyes for a short section of the path that leads to the northern mouth of the meadow, cutting off the pipeline of visual information that surrounds me with its heartbreaking beauty every time I immerse myself in it. The ground was rock-hard, knotted with molehills and dotted with those ankle-turning black walnuts from a generous stand of trees nearby; I knew what the risks were as I tightened my grip on the two walking sticks I use. From the main diagonal path that connects the fields to that northern opening to the meadow, I slowed my steps and with eyes closed, imagined the place where I make that gentle right turn, remembering the three smaller walnut saplings that frame the entrance. I cleared them with a few inches to spare, not having to use my sticks as extended arms to feel my way through to the place where the path straightened and then hugs the curve of creek too closely for closed-eye walking experiments (I’m curious but not foolish).

I doubt my other senses stepped up to the plate with gusto during those ninety seconds, but it was an eye-opening realization that I can slow down the steady flow of information and focus a bit more closely on what’s in front of me. Sure, the stuff that hollers the loudest with its vivid colors and urgency will always get my attention in a head-snap sort of way, but don’t I control my scrolling time? Aren’t I in charge of what I read, what I listen to, what I watch on Netflix? Life is the Grand Distraction to end all and I’m in it for the long haul (I hope, and so far, so good). Whatever I miss, someone else will pick up and play with, I’m sure.

As long as my pants are on the right way ‘round, I’ll be fine.

Soup is Life

Patrick roasted a 24-pound turkey last Sunday (a Kroger substitution for the 11lb one we originally ordered) and…I think you know where this is going.

While we ate the inaugural dinner of tender breast slices and meaty legs accompanied by mashed potatoes and salad, the bones and roasting pan vegetables were bubbling into broth on the stove (he managed to put up six quarts, now bagged and resting in flat stacks in the freezer). We chatted casually about what else we might do with the remaining 23 pounds. The gravy he made was sublime and plentiful, so that became the base for a turkey and vegetable melange poured over baked potatoes Monday night, and pasta Tuesday night (ask me what I had for lunch at work Monday and Tuesday).

I chunked up a hefty portion of white meat and made turkey salad (let me just say, when you add some mayonnaise, a dollop or two of plain Greek yogurt, thinly sliced red onions, a spoonful of horseradish and a few shots of cayenne sauce, that’s pretty darn good sammich filling) and eyed a full container of dark meat sitting on the bottom shelf in the fridge with a measure of poultry fatigue. Wednesday’s meals were a blur of turkey swimming in something poured over something else, with a salad’s bright greens doing their best to liven up the monotony. I got good news on Thursday and decided to celebrate with a cauliflower pizza. Patrick good-naturedly muscled through the last of the turkey vegetable potpie.

Just curious—how much tryptophan is too much tryptophan? I’ve felt uncharacteristically mellow and relaxed all week.

When I got up yesterday, I made good on plans to try a new cranberry orange pecan granola (turned out a winner and will join the sellable lineup at the farmer’s market when we resume in February) and found a recipe for vegan lemony red lentil soup while scrolling through my morning breakfast. We had most of the ingredients on hand, so I dove in as the granola was cooling. If you’ve ever made soup, you know about the importance of layering the flavors. It’s not simply a “dump it all in the pot and hope for the best” proposition (just last Friday, someone gifted me with the wisdom, “hope is not a plan”, and I’m sharing that with everyone I know. You’re welcome). Onions and celery, maybe some diced carrots, sauteed in oil until transparent and slightly soft, fill the house with a lovely aroma and promise until it’s time to put the other elements in with the right amount of stock. I was obedient to the recipe until it came to the broth and that’s where it went off the rails. Not in a bad way, mind you, but more in a creative and unfolding sort of way. You know, like life.

While the red lentils and diced potatoes were coming to a gentle simmer (I even peeled the potatoes), I zested and juiced three plump lemons and cut up the last of the turkey, crouching down and reaching all the way into the back of the bottom shelf in case any of it had tried to hide. The crowning glory would be a heaping bowlful of rough-chopped kale to add just before taking it off the heat and pouring in the lemon juice, giving it a stir and serving. An hour later, I had four quarts cooling in mason jars on the counter, lids resting like derby hats while the soup’s escaping steam rose lazily into the warm kitchen air. All I really wanted to make was granola and now we have soup for the week. I expect some will find its way to the freezer and we’ll be glad of it when neither of us really wants to cook dinner on a snowy weeknight in February. When it’s just the two of you and Kroger practically gives you thirteen more pounds of turkey than you originally planned for, you do your best not to waste it. I feel like a champion at the end of a marathon, and the fridge looks lighter than it did a week ago.

I understand the importance of disaster preparedness (we have “go-kits” in our cars and know two ways out of most rooms in our house should the need arise), but I’m not sure we’re as equipped to cope with abundance when it presents itself. Creativity is the common thread in both situations, but I think we lean toward expecting the worst instead of the best. When a good amount of good stuff does come around, it’s like quenching our thirst by drinking from a firehose. That’ll take your lips clean off if you’re not careful. After a week of nonstop turkey transformations, I’m more inclined to rethink my preparedness mindset toward the positive. Am I ready for when we’ve got this pandemic under control? What would I really do if we won the lottery? Suppose we receive enough viable volunteer applications to meet and exceed our hospice patients’ needs? Remember, hope is not a plan.

I’m gonna give this some serious thought…over a bowl of lemony turkey kale red lentil soup.

Mending

I’ve had the little glazed ceramic trinket box for years. I bought it from the Hartville Hardware store as Jackie and I browsed the home decor aisles while our husbands wandered through the actual hardware section of the six-acre store. The box caught my eye with its sweet little bird perched atop the oval lid, its flat tail upright and perky. I was sure I’d have a few trinkets back home still homeless, in need of a decorative hiding place like this. Sometime last year, the finial bird’s tail broke (cats: why we can’t have nice things). I tucked the piece inside the box with a vow to glue it back on Later.

Last year also saw the shattering demise of two vintage 7-Up water glasses, one of our unbreakable Corelle cereal bowls, a rust-glazed vase made by Patrick’s aunt Ann, the lid to our Q-tips holder in the medicine cabinet, a brandy snifter we kept on top of the fridge with an unmatched collection of shot glasses, a ceramic ice cream bowl with a fish painted on the inside (the fish had legs, which was the feature that caught our eye, Patrick’s nickname being Running Fish. Long story. Will tell it Later) and a large hand painted planter from Italy that I plucked from a pile of discarded belongings left behind by a migrant family in Fostoria, Ohio back in the late ‘60’s (knocked over by two of the cats during a pre-dinner hangry chase through the living room).

Some pieces were beyond repair, swept carefully into the dustbin and moved onto that place where broken things go, but I held onto the ice cream bowl, Q-tips holder lid (the entire holder a gift from our late friend, Jeannie), Aunt Ann’s vase, the planter from Italy and the bird-adorned box, promising to set aside time on a breezy summer afternoon to restore them to partially functioning glory. Summer came and went, so did fall and here we are, standing on the fresh edge of a new winter, a new calendar year, broken shards still sitting on the hutch in my studio where the glue lives. I’m not a big new year’s resolution person but in a flush of impulsive inspiration, decided to begin the next twelve months by putting the tail back on the bird. It felt portentous, prophetic and productive. Next up, the ice cream bowl. It won’t be able to hold food again, but with adhesive carefully dabbed in all the right places, I’ve just doubled my options for corralling other stray trinkets. From their place on the hutch, the remaining broken items rustled hopefully; their turn would come.

At our hospice’s annual kids’ grief camp (on pandemic hold for the past two years), we take them on a “grief hike” to explore the different emotional aspects of coping with loss: sadness, anxiety, anger and healing. When they get to “worried woods”, they sift through a large wading pool filled with sand in which we bury colorful little ceramic hearts. They get to keep the one they find, a portable symbol of their courage for the days ahead. One year, a young camper was running back to the main building after the hike and dropped her courage heart on the concrete walkway where it split in half. Tears welling up in her eyes, she approached the camp chaplain, showed him the pieces and asked (as only a child could do), “Can you fix my broken heart?” He said he’d try and took her five-year-old trust home with him, the rough-edged heart pieces in his pocket. When he found her at camp the next morning, he gave her back the heart, now repaired with a thick line of dried adhesive running along the break line. “I couldn’t fix your broken heart”, he told her, “but I mended it. What do you think?” Her smile wide and grateful, she tucked the heart in her pocket and promised to take good care of it.

The past year left a lot of us in pieces, broken bits and large chunks of our hearts and lives scattered on the shifting floor beneath our feet. We salvaged what we could and swept the rest into the day’s trash, learning the harsh lesson of letting go over and over until it was part of our skin. Whatever we decided to hold onto, whatever might be fixable, still waits patiently for the right adhesive to put it back together. My money is on love, forgiveness, grace and humor. Those are my words for the year ahead and the promises I make to my heart with its mended places still healing, still holding fast to whatever repair work I’ve done. When I struggle with anxiety about what’s to come, I lean heavily on the salvific glue of the present moment to fill in any cracks where worry might seep through. So far, it’s working.

When I woke up this morning to check on the pieces I’d repaired, the ice cream bowl was still holding together, and the bird’s tail was pointing upward again. I’ve cleared a space on the studio worktable for the vase, the planter and the Q-tip lid.

One piece at a time.

All I Really Want for Christmas

I took my head cold out for daily walks all last week, determined to help move it along and out of my sinus cavities with some good old-fashioned fresh air and wintertime humidity. I haven’t been sick in over three years (as evidenced by the blister packs of expired decongestants I jettisoned from the medicine cabinet) and forgot for a minute how to behave under such conditions. Two negative COVID tests helped ease some initial anxiety and then I just got on with it—gallons of hot water, tea, clear chicken broth and the reliable Adamshick stand-by of refusing to accept that I was sick at all. That only goes so far, I can tell you, but I took it all the way to the edge and it helped, not wallowing in too much self-pity. Litter boxes still needed to be emptied, chickens fed, dishes washed and laundry folded. I worked from home for the first time since April, which was like remembering how to ride a bike for the first few hours attempting to connect our rural WiFi to my organization’s network. A rather bumpy re-entry but our stalwart and exceedingly helpful IT guru, Chris, got it straightened out. The added bonus of being back in Extremely Casual Working Remotely dress code (I won’t go into detail here, lest I offend with way too much information) made it a more pleasant week than it could have been.

We’re on our own for another Christmas, Patrick and I, keeping our germs to ourselves (he’s not sick but we’re not taking any chances of some dormant viral load finding its way to a loved one’s innocent inhalation across a festive dinner table) and enjoying the enduring gift of each other’s company. In the absence of the additional stimuli that saturates the senses when gathering with family and friends, we’re making good use of the rich silence that enfolds us. We have our respective studios where art becomes life each and every time, a kitchen that will need to smell like cinnamon at some point and an expanse of wonders that perform year-round just on the other side of the window’s glass, crooking their fingers at us to come out and play. We obey and are never disappointed.

It’s still a slog, though, composing emails through a thick veil of congestion, stopping in between coats of acrylic paint to blow my nose or chug the last warm mouthfuls of sencha tea. And…we achingly miss our families, the chance to create more memories within reach of one another and some excellent food. Feeling the weight of this, I try to recall what unfettered breathing feels like and realize…somewhere in an ICU down the road or in an overwhelmed city hospital five states away, someone else wonders the same thing but with far more tragic outcomes looming in the hours and minutes ahead. I reach for another Kleenex, the fiftieth one that morning, and let my tiny cares dissolve in bowed head humility.

A dozen or so years ago, I directed a cultural competency training program for healthcare providers designed to deepen their understanding of the myriad cultural layers to their patients’ health practices and beliefs. A key link in a long chain of impact indicators, this program set its sights on reducing health disparities by equipping providers with better questions, broader perspectives and consummate respect for any and all who didn’t look, think, believe or act like they did. The class discussions were lively and memorable, to say the least, and I recalled one activity where we invited participants to share how they treated the common cold in their families. We heard everything from gargling with diluted kerosene to sipping on warmed honey spiked with bourbon and one of my personal favorites involving a dishtowel soaked in tea, then wrung out and wrapped around the afflicted one’s neck with a dry towel fitted snugly over that. For maximum effectiveness, it was to be worn for the day, changed with fresh dressings as indicated by the wearer’s emerging symptoms. The common thread in all of these (with the exception of the honey and bourbon tonic) was that the discomfort of the remedy had to be greater than the symptoms themselves. If one eats enough garlic, no one would will want to get close enough to pass any germs. That’s as far as the research and development needed to go.

In my memory of childhood ailments, illness was eyed with suspicion if it coincided with a school day but treated tenderly nonetheless, with Captain Kangaroo on the black and white Zenith and a folding tray table set up next to the couch, holding mom’s nurturing best comforts: oatmeal with cinnamon and chunks of apple, Jell-O “drink” (warm and watered down so it would never set) and a couple of chalky orange baby aspirin at regular intervals. Science would say, “doesn’t matter. Got a cold? Seven to ten days, regardless of what you throw at it.” Symptom-altering medications don’t cure anything but make us feel marginally better until the next dose. I suppose that’s true and yet, last week found me on the couch wishing mom had set up my tray table with all of her curative, folksy love. I don’t think I ever asked how her mom managed things for her and my uncles, especially without Jell-O.

Being sick for any holiday is a bummer (an outright abomination if you’re a child on summer vacation) and home remedies or not, we give them whatever attention we have left, try our best and wait it out, reassuring ourselves that we can gather and celebrate any time of year. And while the pandemic has altered that view slightly or a lot (depending on your approach), it still rings true. Love is eternally elastic and does not answer to the confines of a calendar date. Patrick set his heart to a year-round giving practice decades ago and, lucky me, I’m cooped up with him for the day. Even if I dabble in fits of wistfulness, they’ll be random and fleeting in the face of his generous spirit. Family members are cheerfully telling us to get better soon and how fun it will be when we’re all parked in front of the tv to watch that holiday classic “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” with Don Knotts.

All I really want for Christmas, then, is what I already have. Pass me another tissue; we’ll get through this.

Epilogue: Around 4:00a.m. Christmas Day, my congestion loosened up and broke free, so I took my newly-cleared head for a walk. A young buck we thought had been tagged during gun season made a mighty leap across the field path to my right, a Christmas miracle on strong and elegant hooves. The shaggy grey sky threatened rain and made good on that promise just as I stepped into the northwest corner near the woods but up until that moment, I remained dry and could only hear the drops hitting a carpet of dry sycamore leaves curled and thick on the ground. Strange and wonderful, to walk in and out of intermittent showers until the skies let loose with a steady and most refreshing downpour, soaking both sweatshirts I was wearing. I made all my usual stops to greet some of the trees I have come to know, leaning my grateful forehead against them as the rain ran down their grooved skin in rivulets.

I can breathe again. I won’t take this for granted, not for a long, long time.