Homemade Chinese
Tag: Happy
Reading a dear friend’s memoir
A while back, she asked if I’d read the draft of her memoir. I felt honored. Besides, this is someone who had given a close critique of one of my novels-in-progress decades ago, and I had done the same for a collection of her essays that came a hairline away from book publication.
She had pointed me to a few published volumes I still find myself quoting frequently.
That was back before we could easily exchange things like manuscripts in emails. Had to make printouts and haul off to the post office or drive five hours, things like that.
This time, the copy came as a PDF. I put it aside until I could give it full attention. It was worth it.
As a fact of life, we had largely lost touch. We had never been neighbors. The closest they had lived to me was still an hour away, and then for 19 years they lived five hours off in rural Maine. When her career picked up and I became more enmeshed in my new family and other responsibilities, we had less time to visit, even before she and her husband relocated across the continent a few years ago. We wound up keeping in touch mostly through their daughter, who’s also my goddaughter.
So the memoir was a welcome opportunity to reconnect.
Let me say it’s a remarkable document, wonderfully written, and candid to the point of painfulness. This version is not for public circulation. Parts of it should be, but others are there as evidence of personal work ahead. Well, she has filled the role of a spiritual elder for me through some difficult stretches, and I’ll always be grateful.
I knew bits of the history, but the details deepened my understanding, reconstructed the chronology, and corrected some impressions I had wrong.
I certainly know her – and her husband – much better now.
Over the years, I’ve found that with some friends, when we get together after long stretches apart, we don’t need much time before we’re feeling no gap in our rapport.
This is certainly one of them.
Garden season begins
Checking out the linens
We let our bunnies run free on the first floor during the day. They love to explore, as Pepper is here, but they also love just hanging out in their favorite spots.
Gingerbread village
Sometime after the Twelve Days of Christmas end on January 6, we take our gingerbread decorations outdoors for the wild critters to discover and devour.
Here’s part of a village inserted into a pile of snow on a tabletop.
Looks like it belonged there all along. The squirrels, however, will soon be scampering off with the pieces.
Abundance versus scarcity in my life
Perhaps you’re familiar with the abundance versus scarcity question. You know, do you feel you’re blessed with enough – or do you instead feel you’re always lacking.
I’m programmed from early childhood to feel the latter. My parents were children of the Great Depression, after all, and handed the attitude down.
It tends to make me something tighter than frugal. Generosity doesn’t come easily, I don’t open up to others easily, either – not even to ask for help. It’s a long list of negatives.
As I returned to this concept recently, I’ve been feeling a lot more sense that I have more than enough in many ways, even on a very limited budget.
So much for material goods.
Curiously, it’s time where I’m feeling the scarcity kick in. There’s just never enough. Not for what I’m trying to do.
I’m realizing, often after the fact, how much that outlook crimps my relationships.
This is, ultimately, a spiritual matter. The one place I find time opening up is within the hour of mostly silent Quaker worship. Not that it’s always easy, not even after all of these years I’ve been doing it. But it is always refreshing and renewing.
To think, I started meditating to get naturally high, as in stoned. But somewhere along the way it became a practice to simply get natural – to breathe and get grounded again.
Oh, but I’m still on the internal clock, even there. How on earth am I supposed to cope with Eternity just around the corner?
Salty and Pepper
Yes, they’re sisters, and they’re our two adopted bunnies. Somehow, pets make a home more of a home.
Tell us something about yours.
My jig-sawed gift
I still don’t feel ‘retired’
Yes, it sounds whiny, even insensitive, but it’s true. Since taking the buyout nearly eight years ago and leaving the newsroom altogether a year later, I still have no idea of what kicking back full-time means. You know, like playing golf or sunbathing or heading for the mountains.
What it has allowed is more time to tackle projects I’ve felt are important – and more sustained focus. The fiction, especially, has gained depth in the process. Remember, in the past two years, I’ve thoroughly revised nearly all of my novels and pulled related volumes from public view.
Curiously, poetry has taken a backseat. I’m not attending readings or society meetings – the latter conflict with other obligations. Meanwhile, submissions to small-press journals and presses have ceased altogether, replaced by my blogging presentations, which I feel are far more effective in relation to the time involved. What I sometimes refer to as collecting rejection slips.
I hate to admit that despite early warnings, blogging takes up more time than I expected – and even then, I’m not reading as widely as I hoped. The WordPress Reader has tons of fine postings to always check out.
Related to blogging is the photography. I’ve always had a strong visual awareness, abetted by four years of strict art training in high school. When I launched the Red Barn at the end of 2011, I expected it to be fully text-driven, but you can see how far we’ve moved away from that. I’m still at a point-and-shoot rather than technically precise attitude – last thing I need is another obsession – but I am proud of much of what I’ve collected and shared.
Quaker picked up with service on the New England Yearly Meeting’s Ministry and Counsel committee and its deliberations throughout the year, but my anticipated daily early morning meditation and yoga haven’t materialized. Frankly, Quaker could become a full-time but unpaid job all its own.
Instead, the daily swimming at the indoor pool has been giving me a cardio workout and a half-hour for clearing my head, and my early-morning Spanish drills just may come in useful if I ever travel to fellow members of the Iglesia de los Amigos in Cuba. The language itself is harder than I remember it being in high school.
Well, I wasn’t planning on being a member of a solid choir, either, or of finally self-publishing as I have at Smashwords. In today’s literary scene, getting a book out is only the beginning of the labor – promotion and marketing, for all but the best-selling authors, is a task left to the creator. It’s a common lament.
Should I mention falling way behind in household chores, gardening tasks, and general maintenance?
On reflection, I still don’t know how I managed all I did while I was still duly employed.
So here we are, beginning year No. 8 at the Red Barn. Let’s see what really happens ahead.
Ten favorite gifts
Reflecting on gift-giving has me thinking of some great hits over the past few years.
Here are ten.
- The squirrel-proof bird feeder. We all enjoy watching the birds and their drama, but watching an unsuspecting squirrel be shut down is especially comical.
- Annual pass to the indoor swimming pool. It was a gentle nudge to get me exercising again and drew on one activity I had enjoyed as a child.
- Fire digital tablet. I have a lot to learn yet, but it’s been great for streaming music – radio stations whose FM signals don’t reach here, especially.
- External speaker for my computer. A big help with my daily Spanish lessons.
- Olympus digital camera. You see the improvement here at the blog.
- Wool socks and other clothing. Staying comfortably warm is a big deal where we live.
- Leather-covered journals from Venice. Souvenirs from a daughter’s two trips to Italy. I’ve saved those two volumes for special times in my own life.
- Books and recordings. Especially when they show that someone’s been listening to my rambling.
- Martini glasses from yard sales. Look, some of them are likely to get broken during the year, but they’re usually fun to use up till then – and knowing they didn’t cost an arm and a leg, I don’t feel bad in bidding that one farewell and moving on to another.
- Prime rib dinner. Homemade, with a chewy red wine. For us, it’s an annual splurge on my birthday.
What are favorites you’ve received?
Jnana's Red Barn 