Letting go while holding on tight

I found this in my Facebook memories this morning, as one of those back-to-school musings from years ago. They struck me again as words to remember, and rather than reshare there, I thought I'd memorialize it over here on the blog, with a note about how poignant these words are to me, still.

"Life seems to flood by, taking our loves quickly in its flow. In the growth of children, in the aging of beloved parents, time’s chart is magnified, shown in its particularity, focused, so that with each celebration of maturity there is also a pang of loss.

This is our human problem, one common to parents, sons and daughters, too--how to let go while holding tight, how to simultaneously cherish the closeness and intricacy of the bond while at the same time letting out the raveling string, the red yarn that ties our hearts."
-Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance

Small stone: Jan. 4

Thirty-odd years since these hands held a flute. Certain aspects of playing return without thought, but others are gone, completely. What else is back there in the dark corners of my memory, not used? I'm curious, but also not sure I want to know...

#smallstone

Thirty days of gratitude: Day 8

The word for today is memory.

Memories. When I thought of what to share as a grateful memory, it was hard to narrow down and choose; I have many happy memories with loved ones, in beautiful places. And then I remembered--looking through photos helped--an idyllic week with dear husband a few years back, with sunshine and tropic fruit and plumeria. What a happy memory. As the dark and cold descends (winter, my least favorite season), I will cling to that lovely time together and dream of the possibility of a return trip, some day...

Sept. 27: Life-changing moment of gratitude

Today's blogging challenge: Describe a distinct moment when your life took a turn.

There are quite a few of these I could write about, but when I sat down and and thought about it, picking THE ONE to share is pretty easy. (Take a look at Jen's. Mine is similar, minus the screaming and slamming of phones.)

Approaching the holidays, 2003... It had been a rough year. If you know me at all, you know why. I was catering up a storm with holiday parties and personal cheffing, and really, finally, starting to hit my stride with being a single parent and running a business. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the catering kitchen, was looking forward to a little chill time at the holidays--with Seth on Christmas Eve, and then spending the following day with friends.

It was Dec. 18--the day my niece Lucy was born--and I remember the day quite vividly. I had a lunch to cater at my previous place of employment. They were a good client and I often cooked for their management group, in addition to the lunches and personal chef dinners I dropped off.

I went in and was setting up and one of the managers came and was chatting with me. Then husband (obviously not husband then!) came in and we started talking too. This is someone I had worked with for 11 years and knew fairly well. But something that day was different. I don't know what or why, but it was very palpable. To me, at least. I left thinking, "Huh. Well. Huh," and pondered it for some time, into the middle of the night.

Fast forward to the next week, and Christmas Eve. I was running around the kitchen like a crazy lady, putting together lunches and dinners for final deliveries before the holiday. I looked up, and there he was, at the door. He brought back a ramekin I'd left at the building from lunch the week previous. I walked outside with him and we chatted for a couple of minutes. He said he'd heard I didn't have Seth for Christmas and he wanted to make sure I was okay. My heart melted. Seriously. Even writing it now, my heart swells up with how kind and considerate he was and is. I assured him that I had Seth that night for our Christmas, and would be okay. And then we hugged goodbye. What? Huh? I know, right?! It just happened. A first for us, definitely.

I went back into the kitchen and the girl who was working for me at the time said, "You know, he likes you." (It felt very high school.) I said, "You think? I don't know." But I knew. :)

And from there it began. Ever so slowly. So very slowly. As only a bachelor and a recently-divorced girl can progress. And here we are, almost 10 years later, with our own happy ending.

When I think back on that week, I am so grateful for a moment when I noticed something was different. I'm grateful that what I felt in that room was obviously felt by him too, and that he took the risk to come find me.

What's your distinct moment, when your life took a turn?

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.

Sept. 11: Remembrance

Blogging challenge for today: what do you remember about this day in 2001?

Funny that I just blogged about Corinne, as she figures heavily into my 9/11 memories, as well. I guess this is just her week for being featured prominently on the blog! (You can thank me later, C.)

I was in San Diego on business, a conference that is heavily attended by my work and many others in the health care marketing arena every year. There were many of us from work there--maybe almost 20.

On the morning of Sept. 11, I woke up around 6 a.m. PT, and went down to the hotel gym. I got on a treadmill and started walking, and then looked up at the TV. I think the first tower had already been hit, and I stood there and watched the TV for a while before just picking up my stuff and walking back to my room, and turning on CNN there. I sat, glued to the screen, for some time.

I called home, talked to my then-husband, and Seth--who was coming up on 5--and then somehow (how? we didn't have cell phones?) learned from Corinne, who was on her way to see me from the Central California Coast, that she was stuck in some pretty extreme traffic on the way to San Diego.

Anyway, the day was a blur of TV watching. When I went over to the conference center, the huge 20-foot screens were all filled with images of the towers, the Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania. Soon enough they were filled with Saddam Hussein, and talk of al Qaeda involvement. The conference as it had been planned simply disappeared. People from the east coast immediately started driving home. My co-workers spent time each day for the next couple of days calling Alaska Airlines asking when they would be flying again. The ticket agents would take our names and give us flight numbers and seat assignments, but when those times rolled around and there were no planes flying anywhere, we'd call again. It was a weird, futile exercise, but it somehow helped us feel like we could manage something, control something, when quite obviously we could not.

Corinne brought her daughter, Adrienne, with her--she was just a few months old at the time--so we had something cute and bouncy to pay attention to. We decided to keep our dinner reservations at a restaurant in La Jolla, and drove down and had a quick meal, but I don't remember it very well. It was a highly distractable time.

Finally on Thursday it was decided as a group we would drive home (to my memory, Corinne stayed one night and then drove home Wednesday). There were a few rental cars already rented to those in our group, and we divided up and hit the road around noon. By Friday night we were home, and very glad to be.

Last fall, when Corinne and I went to NYC for my birthday, one of our first stops was the 9/11 memorial at the former WTC location in lower Manhattan. It's a solemn place, to be sure, but very beautiful and still. It's hard to even fathom now how gutted the city looked after the events of 9/11--I've been to Ground Zero four times since then--solo, with husband, with Seth and with Corinne--and each time it is more healed, but what happened there is still very present. Never forgotten.

I have a book that was published on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, called September Morning. It is a collection of poems and readings from the memorial services over the years. There are notes to parents, to spouses, siblings; words about loss and remembering; poems from many well-known writers that fit the mood and the moment of a memorial.

One of my very favorites, "The Names," written by Billy Collins and read by him in 2002, was re-read in part by Mayor Bloomberg in 2003. The final lines:

Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son,
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

When you walk the memorial (panorama above), and see all the names cut out of metal and lit from behind (below), the loss of life is heart-stopping. You can hear the number: 2,792. But when you see 2,792 names, one after the other, it hits home, much like hearing those names read as they do each year at Ground Zero.

What do you remember about 9/11? Do you do anything special or different to commemorate the day?

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.

A-Z blogging challenge: J is for Jello

I know. You were expecting JOY. But don't you know, Joy and Jello are practically synonymous?

As a child of the '70s and '80s, jello was kind of a big deal. I can remember the first jello salad I was allowed to concot, on my own, probably around the age of 10 or 11. It was quite the responsibility. I think I went for blueberry, with blueberries IN it, and a whipped cream outline around the base. I fretted over getting the jello out of the green plastic ring. Remember these:

Yes, items from my childhood are now being sold as vintage on Etsy. Sigh.

Anyway, once I moved past that first blueberry salad-cum-dessert, I am sure I created a few dozen more during my teen years. I always focused on a good flavor-texture combo, unlike one of my grandmothers, who was notorious for her shredded carrot and orange jello salad or her lime-celery-nut jello salad. But she was aiming for a smidge of health (let's disguise the vegetables with jello)... I, on the other hand, was not.

During my college and post-college years, I sadly turned my back on jello as not chic enough to make or serve. Yes, I was one of those silly people. (And no, I didn't do jello shooters. Just wasn't my thing.)

But somewhere along the way, I let go of the "not chic enough" and went back to the "how fun!" Having a kid and watching him be just as fascinated as I was with the wiggly and wobbly pieces, maneuvering them into his mouth as a toddler surely must have influenced that. And what's not to love about the colors! I hadn't considered the whole layered thing growing up, and rarely have the patience for it now, but I still think it makes for great sport.

rainbowjello

jelloeggs

cloudjello

I sense that the jello Easter egg molds will be on my shopping list for next spring... And how fun, the sky-cloud comb!

What's your favorite jello flavor? Combination? 

What's this A-Z business about? Check out my kick-off post. And stay tuned for the random joy and nonsense I concoct during the month of April!

Poetry memories: Theodore Roethke

ack in ye olde college days, I took a couple of poetry classes. Not to sound too dramatic, but it really awoke in me a different way of appreciating the world, and how to fumble my way forward to write about it. One class was more analysis and critique, the other was actual poetry writing (which of course also had analysis and critique; it felt like dumping my soul out in front of a dozen other collegiates, horrors). In the analysis class, I was exposed to poets I hadn't previously heard of, and Theodore Roethke was one of them. I remember reading the poem below, one of his better-known poems, almost like it was yesterday.

The Waking 
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke

Our professor would bring in recordings of poets reading their own work, if possible, and I really enjoyed that part of the class. He showed an old and grainy video of Theodore Roethke, probably shot in the late '50s (the poem was published in 1953). In it, the poet leaned against a mantle, and as he recited the poem, he would sway back and forth, sort of using the mantle to hold on to. I loved his voice, which seemed a little monotone and sad (in fact, I remember learning the word dolorous in connection with Roethke, odd to remember so specifically), and I also loved how the swaying added to the overall melencholy.

I had high hopes of finding that exact video clip to share, but alas, all my interwebbing has turned up naught. So, here's his voice to the poem.



It never occurred to me that someone might take these words and turn them into a song. But in my YouTube wanderings, sure enough, I found a few versions of this song, which is now on repeat in my head (well parts of it, there are other parts that are a bit too note-chasing for me...). Could be an interesting way to memorize a poem, eh?



"The Waking" was brought back to my mind by The Writer's Almanac, which highlights so many good poems to my computer every week. (I highly encourage signing up.)

Do you have a poem or poet that stays with you, years later? Tell me, please!

Mother's Day ponderings

My mother and my son

here are certain things in life that you don't understand until "later": What love really means, what core values to actually base key decisions on, how to whip up a dinner from what looks like an empty refrigerator, how many times you can squeeze the tube of toothpaste after the last remnants appear to be gone, and why a good night's sleep doesn't come in a bottle. To name a few.

When "later" arrives is different for each of us, but for me, much of my "later" understanding has been revealed through being a mother. Being a mother is a daily seat at the table of learning about myself (and others). From mundane conversation about everything from homework to friends to girls to "consequences;" discussing how different individuals and households operate and function; ever-present politics and the variety of opinions that abound; the beauty of spirituality and life choices that stem from a belief system; there is never a lack of opportunity for learning and growth, for both of us.

For me, Mother's Day is a celebration of my mother as well as a celebration of my own mothering. Which is not to say it's an ego-fest; rather, it is a truly delightful day when I am able to relish one of my very favorite roles here on earth, and that is being the mother of an amazing and loving child. My mothering, though, would be quite different (and lacking), I know, without the influence of my own mother, who has taught me many things, including (but certainly not limited to) the true meaning of kindness, forgiveness and unconditional love, as well as a hearty work ethic. She has also passed on many other qualities of worth, including an appreciation for the art of a home-cooked meal and the comfort a thoughtfully appointed home can provide at the end of a long day. The list goes on, I assure you.

In the best of senses, I'm the filling in a great Mother's Day sandwich--happily between my son and my mother. I am blessed beyond what I deserve to have my mother alive and well, and my son also thriving and flourishing. I know in this world that those two simple things are often taken for granted; today, and every day, I give thanks for the gift of motherhood.

Applesauce and memories...

This post is less a recipe and more a walk down memory lane. I made applesauce this week and it brought back a lot of fall memories from my childhood, especially of making applesauce with my mom. It was probably more like my mother making applesauce for us, as I'm pretty sure I was about as helpful as Seth currently is for me: moral support rather than actual knife work. Seth was perched up at the counter working on his homework, then over at the computer fiddling around; he came over for a few taste tests, but his interest in my "old style" way of making applesauce was minimal. Ah well. Such reminiscing is lost on the young...

My fondness for homemade applesauce is in no way related to how often I make it--I think this is the first time I've put it up in jars in probably a decade. Sad but true. But this year I knew I wanted to make some, being on the preserving path as I've been for the past month or more. So on a recent trek through the area of the valley where the apple orchards are, I stopped in and got a couple of boxes.

I told the lady at the stand that I was making applesauce and she thought my choice of a mixture of fuji and honeycrisp was a good one... I didn't explain to her, though, that I was planning on making "chunky" applesauce--what we called the kind my mom made, with the skins on, and the apples cooked through but not to complete mush. Well, the fujis went right to mush--I could tell they were going to as I was cutting them up. The honeycrisp stayed true to their name for a very long time!

Thus, I gave up on the chunky idea. I pulled out the old reamer that my Grandma Goerlitz used and got it set up, and churned away. Just using that old "machine" brought back so many memories... I was thrilled with how sweet the apples were all on their own, and barely added any sugar and just a hint of cinnamon before I packed it all in jars that pop, pop, popped throughout the evening. It was dark out by the time I finished, and chilly, too--it really felt like fall!

My chunky pot of sauce, prior to reaming.

Beautiful color, lovely applesauce! Doesn't that contraption look like something from outer space--or at the very least, the thing that launched the space capsule in Contact?

Look at this gorgeous piece of wood. It's so beautiful and sturdy--really gets the job done!

Seeing Grandma's reamer out again reminded me of a few other things I have of hers that I rarely use--like this grape trivet. The grapes are made up of bottle caps that have crocheted covers. How cool is that?

And this little covered pot is so sweet and little--about six inches long. I never use it, but I love having it around to remind me of her.

Grandma Goerlitz died in the fall of 1999, before Seth was able to remember her, but I try to tell him little stories every so often to keep her alive for us both--what she was like, things she was interested in. Like me at his age, Seth isn't so compelled by these stories, but I also know that over time he'll be more curious about these people who came before him, how they did things, what they might have in common with him.

Thinking about my grandparents who have passed brings some regret for being such a young and flighty thing that had little time for them in their old age... It's a good reminder to do that now, with those who are still with us.