Tree of Life

Last night my children trimmed our Christmas tree... a little fake fir tree so small that my son could reach up and put the star on the top. They loaded it with handmade ornaments, and ornaments given to us by various people throughout the years. I strung the lights and then sat back, watching them. They divided the ornaments into three piles... Kayden's, Chailyn's, and "the rest."

Chailyn picked up a cinnamon stick with red ribbon crossing it horizontally, creating a tree effect. He smiled and said,"Mom, mom, my cinnamon ornament that I made last year in Mrs. Moritz's class!" Kayden hung a gingerbread girl that she recalled making with her friends two years ago at our house... during the "kid" holiday gathering. Ornaments went up that I couldn't remember receiving, but the kids knew. Kayden "awwwwed" at the picture ornament of her, five days old, curled up and crinkly like a new petal with a pink ribbon on her bum. Chailyn played with the nutcracker that dances when you pull a string... that his grandpa brought him home from Italy a few years ago. I hung a wooden santa that my friend, an artist, made for me before Chailyn was born.

Our tree tells a story of our life. It reminds us who has come and gone, and how we have spent the moments up until now. The memory of making that marshmallow ornament with the kids at the Novi Holiday Night is what we hang on the tree... the giggles mixing gingerbread dough... the cuddle we shared at Grammies, now framed in silver and tied to the branch with a red satin bow.

As my son hangs a faded rocking horse with the words "JASON 1970" scrawled in red marker on the back, we are reminded of our own youth... that time before this family, when we were a part of another family. When we were children creating memories and hanging handmade ornaments on our first family's Christmas trees, we had no idea that we would be remembering with our own children decades later.

This morning, as I ponder the hour we spent together last night lighting up a small corner of our dining room, it reminds me that the parts of childhood we remember are not the ones we might suspect. It's not going to be the toys or the gadgets, the new fads that "must" be purchased or the kids just won't be happy. It's not going to be whether we disciplined the kids the right way (if there is such a thing), if we had gourmet dinners or fancy cars or big houses. What is going to be remembered are the moments of being together, of loving one another, of sharing our lives with people that are close to our hearts.

So, I guess you could say there is a little love in every ornament on our tiny tree. When I look at it this morning, and each time I look, I am reminded of a lifetime of love, joy, laughter, friendships, family, and everything that the spirit of this season is supposed to bring. This is a tree of our life.

I remember writing poetry as far back as elementary school, rhyming words about the things little girls go through... most of which were fully illustrated, also by me. When I got to middle school and high school I wrote when I was feeling deeply emotional. My words turned dark, sometimes angry, but mostly they were reaching for something beyond what my rational mind could grapple with. My poetry almost represented my goth and outspoken alter-ego, in direct juxtaposition with my gently glowing, kind, and caring physical self.

As I got older, had a career, children, and more real life responsibilities, I sort of let my glowing self absorb that alter-ego until it practically vanished. I haven't written a poem in probably ten years. That is, unless you count the haiku I posted as a response to my status on Facebook. Is it that I my emotional edge has dulled with use? Is my life more monotone now that I have undergone and emerged successfully from many emotional trials? Or do I just not have time?

Well, maybe it's hormones or monotones or baritones... I don't know. Maybe it's lack of motivation. But now that I have more time, I am using it to write some short fiction, play on Facebook, and go through all the old stuff I used to write when I considered myself a writer. What I did notice was that, even in high school, I was really sensetive to things like social injustice and peace. I found the trip down nastalgia lane very amusing. Here, I brought you back some souveniers!

I think I wrote this one when I was about 11 or 12 years old:

Ding-dong the church bells cried
Hate has taken a bride.
Fear in her black wedding dress
has taken considerably less
time to take a groom than Doom
who screems up in the belfry room
and scares away Sir Gloom.
Happiness has slipped away
upon this Spiteful, Rageful day.
Joy and Love have lived in dread
since Hate and Fear were wed.

Wow, this has a lot to say. I am impressed with my younger self. Good job, little girl!

Here is one that I wrote my first year in college... before I met Jay.

Modern Love Story

Crowded room.
Nervous sweat.
Strangers share cheap beer
and trivial conversation
as the pungent smell of last week's liquer
mixes with inevitable sexual tension.

Stuck somewhere between youth and wisdom.
Somewhere between innocence and knowledge.
Blindly searching for something alien and strange.
Not knowing where to begin or how to end.

Uncomfortable silence,
as potential lovers search within their souls
and within the strained eyes
of each familiar stranger.
Search, passionately,
for something that seems
so empty of reverence.

I wrote this at party, on a bet that I couldn't write a poem about the party in under three minutes. I did it, and here it is recorded exactly as it poured forth from my pen... only in cyberspace instead of on the napkin!

Well, I have embarked on an interesting journey. We shall see where it takes me...

Peace in Apples

Yesterday was the International Day of Peace. It was not celebrated in our schools, I didn't hear any special music on the radio or see cards at the Hallmark store. My family, nor my community, has any tradition that marks the passing of this important day, when countries of the United Nations agree to cease fire for one day of the year, a brief but important repose in the tumult around us. When I searched on the internet, I did find some drum circles, concerts and get-togethers at your typical off-beat spiritual book store or artsy marginal coffee shop. But for the average, middle class American mother wishing to focus more on acts of peace than on symbols of those acts, I found very little by way of gathering or instruction.

Are we immersed in a society that only celebrates a holiday if there is a profit to be made from it? If this were a holiday that included the purchasing of gifts and cards, would it be more prevalent in our communities, schools, and media? Probably. And it's not as if I would be excited to see this holiday commercialized. Just as some people now "spread the Christmas spirit" by purchasing garlands and lights, sweatshirts with reindeer, and Dolly Parton's Country Christmas carols on compact disc, I would not want people to feel they could spread peace by purchasing T-shirts, buttons, and decorations sporting shiny peace symbols. These might be great ways to advertise our viewpoint, but it's not how we spread peace, not how we nurture the seeds and help them grow. The way is much simpler than this.

On Saturday my family went to a tiny orchard in Saline to pick apples. Lutz orchard was old, started by the old farmer's father in the 1930's. His sister lived in the house across from the barn, his nephew behind her in front of the corn field. His own home was a big white colonial with pillars anchoring the front porch to the shabby lawn, it's white paint peeling to reveal generations of graying wood. He had no use for television, he read mostly and milked his cows and took care of the trees. The little airport around the corner had no use for folks going anywhere. It was fine just as it rested. The air was clear, blue, and crisp and smelled of apples and Autumn. My family was alone with the farmer, picking fruit from trees over sixty years old. Conversation was slow and warm. My children were smiling. This is where I found a moment of peace. In this place that the times forgot.

I read an article in a popular magazine about simplifying your life. It gave very explicit directions about how to cleanse and organize so that you feel less stress... the whole "less is more" mantra, which is touted in so many of the magazines that clutter our coffee tables. We live in a world cluttered with consumer goods that are supposed to make our tasks quicker, easier, and more efficient. In the process we have forgotten how to do a task with intentionality, how to be in that moment and appreciate the peace that can be found in washing a dish or picking an apple. We have also lost the feeling of integrity gained by doing life-sustaining work with our own hands. We have traded sweat for convenience, peace for efficiency. In the process we have bound ourselves to a lifestyle that is often the fountainhead of our frustration.

It is my prognosis that simplicty is the key to planting seeds of peace. So, yesterday I did my best to commit simple acts of kindness. On my long walk, I looked passing strangers in the eyes and said "hello" as if they were friends. They smiled back and greeted me, and we parted ways carrying that feeling with us. I read my children the story of how the International Day of Peace was created, but they weren't so interested in it. I'm sure they were more effected by my soft tone of voice, my intentional patience and attentiveness, the love that I shared with them that day, the time we spent cuddling together and laughing together... and living together.

I'm not sure if Chailyn felt the peace when he washed the dinner dishes, as he has every day for two weeks now. But I'm sure he feels like an important cog in the clockworks of our family... and that will go much further in propogating peace than a symbol on a t-shirt ever will.

Salsa

Today I feel content. As I stood at my kitchen counter, the sun shining and a soft breeze drifting through the window, I felt content. I was chopping tomatoes and peppers that I picked moments earlier from the little garden at the side of my house. To those I added cilantro and onion, garlic and lemon juice... just a hint of ground cumin and a dash of salt. The bright red tomatoes were so plump and juicy, they claimed their right to be a fruit.

Next to me on the counter dried pinto beans were simmering in a crock pot. When they are soft I will toss them into the frying pan with a healthy cup of the chicken stock that I made last night from the remains of a roasted chicken we had for dinner. My family will enjoy a Mexican fiesta tonight! But the joy I was feeling was not in anticipation of a party... instead it was satisfaction from knowing that the work I was doing was sustaining the lives of the people I love.

Sure, I could run up to the store to buy salsa in a plastic tub for $4.29... Garden Fresh Salsa that has an expiration date and a bar code stamped on its side. My tomatoes didn't have a bar code. Instead they had the stamp of my love, the hours spent planting and watering and weeding, harvesting and chopping. My work is saving my family money on groceries, it's providing nutitious alternatives to prepackaged foods, and it's saving my mental health all in one shot!

Next year I plan to dig up more shrubs and grass so that I can plant onions and cilantro, potatoes and enough tomato plants to can for the winter. My garlic should provide healthy cloves next year, and the strawberries along the side of our patio should bear two harvests as long as the birds leave them alone. I want to plant enough fruits and vegetables to provide the bulk of our family's produce, plus some to share! I also hope to have my children more involved in the work of the garden, so that they too can feel this sense of importance, of knowing that they are needed, not just wanted.

This is my way of taking smaller steps toward a larger goal. Of course, communal living on twenty-five acres of carefully horticulturally crafted land seems a long way off. But next summer's planting is near.

Ramblings About Communal Living

Every day I wake up thinking about communal living. Ever since my husband brought home a real estate magazine, with the intention of reading through it to see how much more home we could get for our money now than when we bought five years ago, I haven't been able to shake the picture of that beautiful lodge out of my mind.

It sits on thirty acres of woods and wetland, and stretches itself out on the shores of Lake Huron. The lodge was initially built as a church, but the project was abandoned and the new owners gutted and reinforced the building to turn it into a bed and breakfast. With eight Great Rooms (each with its own fireplace and bathroom), a guest cottage, a library and a large living room, big commercial kitchen and screened-in wrap-around deck, it is my communal living opportunity come true.

I have wanted this living arrangement for a long time, as a way of not only reducing my footprint on the earth, but also of connecting myself more closely with the people that I love. I want a village to help me raise my children, I want a sanctuary from the ever-growing consumerism and materialism that I find encroaching on old fashioned values, I want to reap the fruits of a hard day's physical labor, I want my children to grow up in a family of people that love them and care enough to help me raise them, and vice versa.

I picture myself waking in the early hours of morning, in the quiet darkness, to mix yeast and water and sugar, to knead warm dough on the long butcher block countertop, dusted with flour. I would look out the window to see the light spreading itself like melted butter across the pond, raking through the needled pines and tiptoing gently over the sleeping leaves of maple and elm. The early morning solitude welcomes the soft thud and swish of dough as it rolls and presses against the wood. I will slide ten loaves into the hot oven, its mouth gaping in anticipation.

While the bread bakes I will sip tea made from the peppermint growing just outside the door, in the herb garden that spreads out in front as if to lure the culinary explorer up the path into the kitchen with their basket filled. I picture myself piling the table with fresh eggs scrambled with herbs, sweet wild strawberries and cream, home made maple walnut granola, warm bread smeared with blueberry preserves, and coffee with wild clover honey. I picture a long, rough cut table filled with my friends and all of our chattering children, sharing food and life, sharing hardships and celebrations, sharing work and play.

I picture a dozen yurts nestled in and around the woods. These would be rented to individuals or families that want to come for a week, a month, a summer, to experience communal living. They would help for a short time each day with chores around the property in exchange for meals of seasonal vegetables, fresh goat cheeses, eggs and poultry, fish and fruits, all served around a big table or around the camp fire at night. We would offer guided hikes and bike rides around the miles of groomed trails. There would be opportunities for these "campers" to learn about the native herbs and their healing properties, to learn how to cook simply from seasonal foods, to swim in the pond and in the lake, to drum and play music, to meditate and practice yoga and tai chi in the quiet of sunrise. There will be new friends to make, and old friends to cherish.

I know it sounds like utopia, and many will say that I am a dreamer. But where else do ideas begin, how else are changes made, if not by first dreaming? Why are people so afraid of chasing their dreams? I have spent much of my life getting one step behind my dream, and then turning back on the path, only to let my dream disappear over the horizon. I replace it with a new dream, and then the cycle begins again. I want to be done turning around.

I think the most successful people in life are those that have a dream, or an idea, and they don't stop until they acheive it. If my dream is to live in a peaceful, co-operative community that teaches people how to respect and sustain one another while they give our earth that same courtesy, why shouldn't I try to achieve that dream? Some day I will have my Sanctuary. I know I will.

Grilled Peaches

Even though you are dirty and greasy, you rarely touch a vegetable and generally prefer the company of beer-drinking men with a taste for large chunks of meat on a hot summer day, I would like to introduce you to my friend: Grill, meet Peach.

Peaches, I believe, are practically perfect in every way. Soft and feminine, plump, juicy and sweet, they compliment any fruit salad, pastry, or gelato. They can be sliced into a pie or chopped into salsa. Ahhh, Peach. Who knew it would take the crude contrast of the Grill to pull you into delicious perfection?

I stumbled upon this coupling while continuing to persue my sugarless way of life. While also shunning artificial sweeteners, I began to feel an emptiness in the air space next to my after dinner coffee that left me yearning for a substitute. Not just any substitute. One that didn't mind being thought of at the last minute, thrown together without much care, or leave me craving a Saunder's Hot Fudge Cream puff at 1:00 in the morning. Peach, I knew you would not let me down.

The recipe is simple: Wash a fresh, ripe peach. Slice it through the middle, rotating around the hard pit. Twist the two halves until they pop apart. Discard pit. Brush the open fleshy sides with melted butter or canola oil. Make sure your grill is flaming hot. Place the peaches flat side down against the waiting iron. Let them stay in their place for one to two minutes until they are softenend. Slide them off with a metal spatula. Plate them in twos with a dollop of cream freshly whipped with pure vanilla extract. Dessert perfection! A dessert so pretty you'll want to kiss it... but don't! Cuz one thing will lead to another and then, well, she's gone and the next time you'll be happy takin' another one just like her!

Note: My earliest memory of peaches is that my dad loved 'em, but couldn't touch 'em. The fuzz gave him the shivers. So when they were ripe, he'd buy them by the bag full, then I'd peel them and we'd slice them over vanilla ice cream. Now my dad says he'll eat the fuzz. Probably because no-one is around to peel the peaches. Dad, if you read this, I'll peel you some peaches! But first I'll grill 'em and add whipped cream! You'll fall in love all over again!

A Lesson in Bread

Two months ago, I went to the Livonia Recycling Center and filled my car with five tubs of compost, hauled it home, went back and did it again. I dragged the tubs over the fence and pulled them to the tiny patch behind my kitchen window that we call our family garden. With dirty hands and knees, I spread the compost. I planted the seeds. I weeded. I watered. I pruned. I waited. Finally, after this last week's worth of wonderfully rainy weather, my children harvested the plump, ripe zucchinis from their tender vines.

I scrubbed, trimmed, and grated the earthy green vegetables. I mixed and poured and baked. I cleaned the kitchen and made some coffee. And finally, at long last, I enjoyed delicious zucchini bread. My children enjoyed delicious zucchini bread. My husband enjoyed bread, and some of my friends enjoyed it, too! Bread for everyone!

Do you remember the story of the little red hen? She harvested the wheat, she thrashed the wheat, she ground the flour, she baked the bread, and she didn't share the bread... (well, some versions say she shared with her chicks.) I'm not sure that I agree with the moral of that tale.

I think that working hard at something, and SHARING the outcome of that labor, is one of the greatest gifts you can give... and one of the greatest feelings you can give yourself. Giving without expectation, simply to see the smiles on the mouths of your friends, fill their bellies with warmth and their hearts with joy.

...Because breaking bread that was a labor of love is even more rewarding than simply breaking bread!

Zucchini Bread Recipe:

Grate one medium washed and trimmed zucchini into a large bowl. To the bowl add two mashed bananas, three eggs, 1/3 cup oil, one teaspoon cinnamon, one teaspoon vanilla, and one teaspoon stevia (or 1/2 cup sugar or honey). Blend well. Add one cup unsweetened shredded coconut. Mix well. Add three cups flour (I choose one cup brown rice flour, one cup oat flour, and one cup whole wheat white flour) mixed with one teaspoon baking soda and two teaspoons baking powder. Begin mixing and add 2/3-1 cup milk (soy, cow, or almond). Pour batter into four small or two large, greased baking pans. Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 25-35 minutes or until loaf springs back when touched. Enjoy warm with butter. Enjoy any way with friends!