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.

Common sense.

My grandparents were farmers who, when we visited, involved us in the process of planting and harvesting. They were practical people, with a solid understanding of nature and the folly of rigid expectations.  They planted, made sure they had done their best work, and accepted whatever results nature provided.  Their common sense fed scores of relatives for decades.

Fast forward to their granddaughter—that would be me—as I sat in my own vegetable garden in Oakland, California, dreamily pulling weeds.  With each clump of dandelion or grass, I felt like I was letting go of some unresolved issue. I like to think of it as my Zen moment of gardening.  Inhale, pull a clump, and exhale; inhale, pull a clump and exhale.  By the end of an evening of weeding, I would be—excuse the pun—grounded.  But I didn’t have my grandparents’ wisdom:  whatever grows in the garden, after I have given it my all, is perfectly what is meant to be.  When I think about it, that perspective is a metaphor for living.  But back to vegetables.

In my neighborhood, there were a lot of folks who had gardens overflowing with vegetables and fruit.  One of my best friend’s garden was a cornucopia of kale, peas, asparagus, potatoes (red, white, and blue), squash, green peppers, tomatoes, and corn.  She and her husband had spent years putting in the time and hard work to make their garden organic.  Blackberries and raspberries circled their entire yard.  And, oh yes, the apples really did hang low on the tree.

A few years before learning from my friend about gardening, I had decided to grow some vegetables.  In addition to the peas, tomatoes and lettuce, I thought I’d try some broccoli.  Broccoli, in my mind anyway, is a vegetable of perfection. It’s sweeter than leafy green vegetables and is easy to adapt for recipes.  Little bites of the crown can be dipped in a variety of sauces. The whole stalk can be creamed for broccoli and cheddar cheese soup.  Then there are the salads and–my all time favorite–tempura.

I hoed, raked, and tilled.  I mulched and fertilized.  The vegetables grew strong and basically healthy, and the broccoli was dark green with stalks an inch thick.  I purchased lots of ladybugs to eat the aphids in the garden.  I planted garlic and onions (didn’t have a clue what I was doing).  It rained, and I checked for bugs.  Obsessively.

I found holes on the leaves, signs of critters that ate their veggies.  But I had declared a no-worm manifesto, and I was determined to win.  You know where this is going, right?

One cool evening, I went to the garden and cut some stalks for dinner.  The veggies were beautiful.  Green, shiny and strong.  I checked, washed, and placed the broccoli in a steamer.   About camouflage…

When the time came to serve—I had invited friends over—I opened the pot and screamed. There, fully steamed and swollen like a green hot dog on the top of my beautiful broccoli, was a humongous green worm.  My friends laughed and encouraged me to toss the worm and eat the broccoli.  I couldn’t, but I was told by those who did, that the vegetable was perfection.

Plant, make sure I’ve done my best, and accept the results of whatever nature provides.  Common sense for a great and anxiety free life.

Happy Monday!