Category Archives: Writing from the heart

I admit it. I shamelessly admit that I’m a person for whom being in my kitchen is an anchor to the heart. I don’t care how scrappy a kitchen it might be, how modest; if I can cook for myself, I am in paradise.

Today, I went to the Farmer’s Market. I bought perfectly green zucchinis, shitake mushrooms, and leeks. Then I went to the natural foods store and bought sweet potatoes, garlic and ginger. I bought cucumbers and peaches. The cucumbers were local and not smeared with wax or petroleum or whatever they put on the big agriculture produce. Ahhh. What am I going to do with all these the peaches? What with work and rehearsal and acupuncture and physical therapy and…I don’t have time for a pie.

I’m thinking…maybe a cucumber and peach salad. What spices?  Maybe a pinch of salt and black pepper. Cumin?  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

It’s 92 degrees and humid, but I turned on the air conditioner and the oven anyway. I chopped the sweet potatoes, tossed them in spices and olive oil, and baked them. I turned on the television for my favorite cooking shows (hint: do NOT come between me and my cooking shows). I pitted cherries, sliced a lemon and put them aside. Raw cherries make my throat itch, so I put them on the stove to cook and added sugar and a little water. When they were soft, I tossed the cherries with the sliced lemon. When they were cool, I covered them with vanilla ice cream.

Dear Lord (I always seem to be saying this), I have been too busy. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be still and give thanks for the skill of cooking. I’ve let too many moments go by without offering a prayer for the food I eat. I have forgotten how easy it is to forget — to make time to be close to home.

I sliced zucchini and shiitake mushrooms; I minced ginger and garlic. I added chopped leeks and leftover greens. Throwin’ a little water into the pot, I let the vegetables steam. And while they are steaming, I remember “saying grace.”

“God is great and God is good; and we thank God for our food. By His hands we all are fed; give us Lord our daily bread.”

That was the prayer we said as children until we were old enough to sit quietly through the grown-up prayers. That’s how we began our meals, every meal, everyday, 365 days a year, every year of my life that I lived in my parents’ home.

The stillness in that moment before meals is a potent memory.

As a child, I didn’t particularly like using the time to say grace. Depending on the person praying, it could be three to ten minutes before the food hit our tongues. I’d watch as the steam floating up from the stewed tomatoes became lighter. But the invisible Grace did not care about the tomatoes.

Despite my childish anxiety about food, the act of saying grace had great power.  Power was in the humility dripping from the voices of those giving thanks. Power was in the protection released into the air; a grace.

It has been said that taking the time to pray, to express gratitude, acknowledge each other, or just to sit in silence before eating helps the digestion. I didn’t know that as a child. My thoughts were on the seductive smell of sausages and pancakes. Or the golden river of butter running through the crevices and valleys of fluffy mashed potatoes and homemade buttermilk biscuits.

But I also knew, even as my mind willed the prayers to cease, that there was magic in the air. Those times round the table are the times I remember as the best part of being home; times that I will always hold close to the heart.

My potatoes are done, the shitake-zuchinni vegetables are steamed.  I’ve poured olive oil and Bragg’s aminos over them. I plate it all up with some “vegan” chicken salad and, sigh, I shamelessly indulge in the pleasure of cooking and saying grace.

To use an old colloquialism, “I come by it honest.”  Tenacity, that is. Much to my own amazement, I never give up. This has advantages and definite disadvantages.

I could never have guessed how physically challenging blogging would be. It’s a test of will and, literally, physical strength. Too many things pull at my time: work, a band, family affairs, and a book (look, it sounds good to say it, all right?).

Sometimes, I have these doubts. But words and stories are like the vitamins and herbs that I take every day. It’s part of the fabric of who I am. I am tenacious, and those who’ve known me for years know I will not give up either herbs or words.

The past six weeks have been particularly exhausting. I met a new acquaintance. Her name is Carpal Tunnel, and I don’t like her very much. I’d rather fight with a boyfriend, have a stove that over bakes my bread, or a puppy that doesn’t make it outside on time. Physical discomfort is not something that I handle very well. But I am tenacious. I continue to work and I continue to sing. I continue to have faith.

An amazing, saving grace, like acupuncture or physical therapy, is voice activated software. This fantastic invention is my latest enjoyment. I get to tell my computer what to do and, pretty much, it does it. Oh, if only people were so accommodating…

About this carpal tunnel… I always imagine that doctors, after my visits, tell their staff “Do not accept any new patients who use complementary medicine.”

Doctors, after all, do what doctors do best. They try to make things better, and in the process may prescribe and suggest things that I see as extreme —  things that involve cutting and sewing up.  Forgive my cynicism.

I’m not a knee-jerk “throw the doctor under the bus” kind of person. Allopathic physicians are useful, and in cases of extreme pain and discomfort—like when I had my first sinusitis episode and I thought my face was exploding—I’ll fall to my knees and beg for drugs — which I did. Antibiotics did the trick, and my face didn’t explode. And sad to say, in the past year, I’ve also started blood pressure medication. Sometimes, compromise of my stubborn principles is best. But generally speaking, pharmaceuticals are my last resort.  I think it’s something about the way I was raised. I know what works for me and I stick to it. I am tenacious. I come by it honest. Like a dog on a bone, I will hang on to what I want. And what I want is to heal in ways that are natural and emotionally supporting.

A few winters ago, I started getting nosebleeds. This was a new thing for me. The dry winter weather combined with the dry heat in my apartment, and it really dried the heck out of my sinuses. Then, it was endless. I got nosebleeds during the spring allergy season. Then I seemed to get nosebleeds because my nose just wanted to frickin’ bleed. I have been using herbs, natural medicines and holistic body therapies for a long, long, long time. I don’t watch infomercials about natural medicine because I think most of those people are quacks. I’ve been fortunate to have been a patient of a couple of world-renowned natural healing practitioners. And so, I have just a little bit of an idea of how to get information. I did my research and decided to use a certain supplement that has been recommended for allergies and sinuses. It worked. The nosebleeds stopped, and I continue to take at least one tablet a day, and I have not had a nosebleed for over a month (please don’t ask for advice…it’s illegal).

I don’t recommend self-medication to most people, and truthfully the use of herbs without guidance and research can be more dangerous than an over-the-counter prescription. But having researched and used herbs and natural medicines as my first response for over 30 years, I’ve learned a thing or two.

Now, I want to use herbs and complementary medicine to send this carpal tunnel packing.

When I was a child, there were many times that my mom used herbs as a first response. She was raised on a farm without all the bells and whistles of modern medicine, and her parents used herbs with regularity. Our colds were treated with lemon, sage, and honey tea. And, on occasion — I guess ‘cause we didn’t look like little alcoholics lolling about in bed craving the taste — she would add a spoonful of whiskey to the hot beverage. It was all very safe, and no one would ever overdose on lemon, sage, and honey.

Over the years my family, like many others from the country, opted for modern medicine and the old ways were, if not forgotten, left by the wayside. But we benefited from her knowledge, and I have saved myself hundreds, no, probably thousands of dollars using herbs, acupuncture, vitamin therapies, body work therapies, juicing, and so many modalities that have become a regular part of my health regime. Now, I am beginning, with my voice activated software, a new phase. But I am tenacious. Many of my friends have said so.

And with tenacity, I’ll keep you posted!

March 2009 found me fearful of the coming spring.  On March 4th, I’d had a horrific nightmare from which I woke up shivering.  The dream had a threatening quality to it — like death.  And although I kept telling myself not to worry, worry was exactly my emotional state.  I suppose I could call it a psychic experience, that presence in the air, that disquiet that says one is about to experience a major change.  I felt that the threat was real, and as it turned out, it was.

I’d been struggling with the idea of writing about food, how I learned to cook, and the place food holds in my life’s pantry of broken romances, half-finished musical pieces, and unresolved family issues. Then I received the phone call.  My youngest brother had died.  It was March 5th.

My brother’s death was a tragedy, not because he was a great writer whose dreams were not completely fulfilled, although that was a part of it.  His death was a tragedy because of the fractured way we sometimes communicate in our family, and the way we resist change.  We have never really been strong, in my view, with folks being different, with folks choosing different paths, with others being happy outside the status quo.  In other words, in my view, I am part of a people who, on several occasions, have not embraced change gracefully, and I have to admit, this was a change I was not ready to embrace — gracefully.

Change. I’ve moved from coast to coast—twice.  I’ve traveled by bus across the country.  I’ve met folks in Appalachia, Utah, the Pacific Northwest, Chicago, the Southeast, New York, California, and more.  I’ve demonstrated against the Klan, sang at the funeral of a friend’s husband, worked with a teenager who mutilated herself, and lived with a man who did not have a clue about the woman he thought he wanted to marry.  All of this change, and still, I fight Change like a boxer.  Why?

Perhaps, it’s because I’m so resistant to change that God seems to give me so much of it.  After all, the drama, trauma, and psycho – physical manipulation of living is transformative.  And as another brother likes to say “consider the alternative.”

One thing that has not changed, and never will for me, is my belief in the common heart of every human being.  With all of the political wrangling, fear mongering, and religious battering, it’s easy to become cynical and reject the sweet flavors of life.  It’s easy to become terrorized by change.  It is easy to reject the heart, the emotion, the muscle of good love, and the tenderness of life when one is resisting change.  But then comes death, and change opens the door to a floodgate of feelings, and change will, no, must be accepted.

Change nudges me to gratitude.

Change, operating in the amorphous sphere called “out of my control,” can boot me into that cesspool of “settling for.”  Don’t move.  Don’t act. Just sit and wait, and nothing will change.  But really, things don’t work that way.

To refuse change is to refuse transformation, and to refuse transformation is to not know gratitude.

My mother once called me a gypsy. The need to see more, meet more folks, taste new foods, and walk barefoot in the freezing Pacific keeps me on the move.  The need to live fully generates lots of change.  And sometimes, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing.  But the one thing I know, and I know, and I know, and I know is that without change, there is no space for gratitude.  And to experience gratitude, I will have to live with change.

More change.

I was spellbound and moved in a way that I have rarely experienced since.  I watched as an enormous black ball of hair emerged from my sister’s body. I kept asking, “Where is the baby?”  And then, there she was.  My sister’s daughter, my niece.

The ball of hair still exists, hanging to her waist, but she’s a high-powered young professional now; doing well, living well, and flourishing.  Change.

Jealousy comes from a certain kind of poverty consciousness.  A jealous person is a hoarder, more concerned with taking than with giving.  And while I’ve planted several vices and faults over a nice swatch of karmic turf, I’m grateful to say that jealousy is not a seed that I have planted.

I do not want what belongs to someone else.  I don’t want what you have.  I don’t want what God gave to you for you.  It’s all that I can do to make space for my own psychic and material stuff.  Why would I want someone else’s?

Time has a way of erasing faces and sometimes names, even if one remembers the incident.  And so, I remember a lovely Sunday morning in a quiet café with a new “friend” that I was getting to know.

“I’m jealous of you,” the woman said.

We had been talking about nice things–music, the weather, etc.  But then, she put on this frowny face.  I want to head for a bomb shelter when I see a frowny face.

“I feel jealous of you. You always seem to get what you want.”

You know how in slapstick comedy, when somebody says something really dumb, the person who’s listening gags on their drink and spits it out?  Okay, so I didn’t spit out my tea.  All I could do was stare and know that this person would not be a friend.  Looking back, I wish I’d been present enough to say, “Do you think you’re woman enough to handle it?”

Now, see (as my mother would say), this is the problem with perception.  We see what someone else has, and even though we have enough, we think that we could use more.  We forget that the person we are envious or jealous of has paid a price for what they got.  But we get mad at them because God allowed them to have it.  Jealousy is stupid–and lives in a hoarding heart.

Like everyone, I’ve had moments when I wanted an easier time of it.  I’ve desired many things:  a problem-free (new?) car, a boyfriend that does the laundry and cooks dinner, more money, a massage once a week—a best seller.  But I will tell anyone in a heartbeat, “I do not want your stuff .”  Because that would mean I want someone else’s life, and really, at this point, I’m pretty content with my own.

Jealousy is a waste of vital energy.  First of all, it’s a tremendous expression of ingratitude.  It’s like saying, “God, you made a mistake with my life.  Can I have hers?”  Ew.

Second, it’s like putting yourself down.  It’s placing someone else above yourself, making their life experience more valuable than your own.  And third, it’s like asking God to give you somebody else’s sorrows in order to experience whatever is perceived as another’s joy.  Again, ew.

When I spend time by myself–writing, for instance–I am happy.  I am quiet.  I feel at ease.   When I am healing my creative self, aware of smiles,  colors, and sounds–I am happy.  When my heart is open,  words, whether hard or soft, flow with the ease of warm honey–I am happy.  It’s taken a long time, but I finally recognize this experience as spending time with my own soul.  It’s private.  It’s soft.  It’s sacred.  It’s healing.  And I wouldn’t trade it for anyone else’s experience.

No one can take those things from me, so being jealous is a waste of vital energy.  Do I get everything I think I want?  No.  But I get what is mine and try to share the best of it.  Hoarding is not my nature.

But hey, if anyone wants what I got, she will have to pay the karmic price.   And I don’t think she’s woman enough to handle it.

On Bread, Laundry and Morning Routines has been reposted.

Grrr.