Obviously, I haven't been writing here for some time. It's not because I haven't had the time, or because I have been in a particularly difficult funk and unable to write about it, or because I've decided there's nothing to say. I've thought often of logging in to post, but each time, I've put my energy into something else.

As I thought about what I set out to do when I started this blog, I realize that I've moved past it now. I could redefine this space, but I think it's best to start something new, if I blog at all. I came here in a frenzy of emotion, wrecked emotionally, grasping for a place to make order of myself and my world, to find something positive to come out of the nightmare that my life as a mother of a sick baby had become. I needed to be able to say to myself, "here is the purpose of this set of experiences. Here is where the benefit will come, in the sharing of these feelings with even one person who would read it and think, oh, thank lord, there's someone else."

And that's the thing: I sought connection. I put this out there into the world hoping to connect with people, and I sent tendrils out into the collective unconscious, begging for that connection. I wanted to feel less alone, in the literal and spiritual sense, and I wanted to find a  community for myself. If it had to be online, so be it. As it turns out, though, it did not.

I'm home now. We are happy in Evanston in ways I never imagined, and from the walks to school, the biking to the community center, the local political action, the music scene, the independent businesses and the like-minded neighbors and the beaches and the general vibe of life, I found that community. I am ready now to move farther outside that tiny corner called "mother-of-sick-baby" and into the wider space occupied by myself as a  "citizen of the universe." 

If I start something new, I'll post it here. Until then, may you mothers where I was be healed as I am. You can always reach me at debi {at} jebraweb dot com. I send you love.

Hard Times Come Again No More

by Stephen Foster

As we pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
Let us all taste the hungers of the poor.
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears:
Hard times, come again no more.

It's a song and a sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.

As we seek mirth, and beauty, and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door.
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say:
Hard times, come again no more.

It's a song and a sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.

It's a song that the wind blows across the troubled wave.
It's a cry that is heard along the shore.
It's the words that are whispered beside the lowly grave
When hard times will come again no more.

It's a song and a sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.

 

My father has taken on the intensely time-consuming and often thankless task of family genealogist, and over the past dozen years or so, has compiled an astounding amount of information about his father's and mother's sides of the family tree. He's collected, among other things, hundreds and hundreds of photographs, immigration documents, stories, and even the occasional sound recording. He has kept painstaking records of all of this information and build a sizable web site for members of our now-expansive family to visit and enjoy.

I appreciate all of this in a kind of future-thinking way, realizing that while it might be interesting to me now, there will come a day in my mid-life when it will suddenly and inexplicably become absolutely fascinating. As I wait for that to happen, I have tried to show my father the appreciation he deserves for all of this work, even when I have to just pretend that I remember how that distant cousin he's telling me about is actually related. It is so desperately important to him -- and while I don't yet feel the urgency he does to create these connections, I know that someday, I surely will.

Some time ago he tried to create a page on his web site for family recipes, those important cornerstones of a holiday table or family gathering, collected from the many branches of family he's found. He was not very successful when he started; perhaps the fast-food culture in which we live now has stifled that sort of kitchen creativity that makes items like "Auntie Joan's chocolate cake" a thing of the past. However, recently one of his cousins discovered a cache of several recipes written in the handwriting of my grandmother, my dad's mother, who died when my dad was only twelve.

My grandmother!

Never having met her, she is a hazy, mythical figure for me, certainly with no ability to bequeath me anything but eye color and a light sprinkling of freckles, and perhaps a lullaby my dad still sings, even to my daughters. But recipes! In her own handwriting! This is a gift from fifty years ago, saved in a drawer and waiting for a granddaughter named for her. What was she thinking as she wrote them out for her cousin's wife, imagining her instructions followed, the pinches and tastes probably never quite as right as when she made it herself? Could she have squinted and flashed on a woman in a kitchen in the midwest, little girls running underfoot, reading the loopy handwriting and measuring the same amounts, trying to conjure the soul food and the soul together?

Here it is: my grandmother's noodle pudding, lovingly known to us as "apricot kugel." Thank you, Grandma. It was delicious.

My baby is three.

Putting aside -- just for the moment -- all the accomplishments she's made in the past three years, I have felt it necessary in these past few weeks to ruminate a little bit about what it means to me to have no little babies in my house. In this past few months, I've slowly passed on all of the "gear" that I associate with real babies. I've used Freecycle to find new homes for my breast pump, fancy nursing bras, and covered diaper pail (called "the diaper champ," and boy, was it ever!). I packed up our well-loved diaper bag into a corner of our closet. The spoons and forks in the drawer used by the kids seem slowly to become bigger and pointier as we discard those made for feeding new little eaters. I stopped buying the tiny yogurts that were a staple of every grocery trip for years.

In short: the "things" associated with my parenting are changing. Some are going away forever.

With our little shmoo weaned, I no longer need to lift my shirt for her to nurse, and suddenly I find that my breasts are my own again. What to do with this rediscovered section of my body, so de-sexualized over the past six years that I had to dig in the darkest recesses of my closet to find the bag of pretty bras I'd hidden there? Oh yes, there was that brief period between Doodlebug's weaning and my pregnancy with Shmoo where they once again had made an appearance, but it seems almost like a dream. Now here they are again, colored, frilly, lacy, wrought with innuendo, and I almost want to laugh as I put them on. How did this work, again?

Who am I, again?

Shmoo wants to stop using the little potty that sits on the floor, the one that needs emptying after every use, the one I've emptied a thousand times, disinfected every few days in a stolen moment, covered with stickers for accomplishments in toilet learning for both girls. She prefers to use a stool to reach the "big potty," which certainly eliminates a dirty job from my day. I see this tiny little person sitting proudly up there, grinning ear to ear, and feel the strangest pang of melancholy for the day -- imminent -- that she will no longer need me to hold her up to wash her hands.

In my big purse -- a replacement for the diaper bag -- I carry a pair of tiny toddler-sized underpants, a weathered baggie of crackers, and sometimes, a toy or two. I am suddenly aware that someday it may hold only my own things. There have been so many moments when I have pined for a life and body all my own, and yet, as that time approaches, I feel myself standing with feet on either side of a crack, noting that as it widens, I may need to jump to one side.

It's time to redefine my place, though, and that's for certain. I'm looking for a ceremony of closure as my last baby grows past babyhood, and I am lucky enough to have friends warm, creative, and loving enough to help me with that. For today, however, I scooped a scraped-up Shmoo off the sidewalk where she fell, took her into the house for a swab at her scratched knee, and grabbed our beloved sling off the table in the foyer. Pulling her close to me, I carried her to preschool in that sling, snuggled up against me, with her head on my shoulder.

Last night True and I went to a fifteenth wedding anniversary party for our best friends. These are the people we feel closest to, the people we can go months without seeing and pick up right where we left off. These are the people who rejuvenate our love for each other, for our children, and for our life. Almost fourteen years ago, True and I sat at the dining room table of these newlyweds, amidst a lavish dinner party, and suddenly saw the rest of our lives flash before us -- and knew, in that moment, we would be together forever.

Since that moment which True and I count as among the most spiritual of our lives, our friends have bought a house, had two children, changed jobs, traveled, and, in the last few years, endured the most terrifying series of health scares I hope anyone I know ever has to go through. The husband/father, after years of constant small seizures that left him unable to work or drive, finally had surgery this year, and is now seeing life improvements they could not have imagined a year ago. This anniversary party -- held on 08/08/08, a lucky-feeling number -- was the celebration of more than just an average fifteen years of marriage. It was the celebration of life itself, of what matters, of the simple things they were not sure they'd see.

In their lives, our friends have immigrated to this country -- the wife from Russia to the US as a little girl, the husband from Russia to Israel as a teenager, then from Israel to the US in his very early 20s. They've worked to bring his parents, sister, brother-in-law, and niece and nephew to the US from Israel. They've had two beautiful children. The wife has dedicated her life to social work, helping people in the very community her family joined as immigrants decades ago. In every aspect, this family's life is an inspiration.

Last night, the party was held at an over-the-top Russian restaurant complete with live musicians, stunning centerpieces, and a room full of people dressed to the nines. His best friend came all the way from Paris to celebrate with them. In the tradition that True and I have finally come to remember after all these years, many people brought large bouquets of roses for the happy couple. Shouts of "goika, goika!," which I am told means something like "make the bitterness sweeter by kissing!" resounded all night. Our friends' children -- who we love like our own -- ran with their cousins all night, darting in and out of the dancers and laughing happily.

I watched as my friend came suddenly into the room around 10pm to the strains of "Here Comes the Bride," clad in the wedding dress she'd worn fifteen years before. Her husband took one look at her and visibly swooned, then gathered her into his arms and buried his face in her neck. They held each other as half the room fought tears.

How fortunate True and I are to have a couple like this in our lives as our friends -- two people who absolutely adore each other and their children, who know what joy is and how to find it, and who open their arms to the people around them in a gesture that seems to say "come, be happy with us!"

I identify myself as a bleeding left-wing near-commie hippie liberal, and that's probably being conservative, no pun intended. I don't talk politics too often because I am only too aware that my opinions could be backed up with a lot more research, but I don't read nearly enough -- so my reactions to the world are largely emotional and instinctual. Sometimes I change my mind after doing some reading -- cloth diapers being one example of something I thought I'd do, until I read more about it -- but the writing has to be good, and the research traceable. I think it's really hard to change people's minds (mine included) once they have an opinion, so I don't often try.

That said, I am beyond impressed when someone does so elegantly. My friend Karen linked to this story on her blog Free Range Librarian, and I was so moved by it that I am forwarding it willy-nilly to all my fellow BL-WN-CHL's (see above self-definition). It is a blog entry by a librarian who received an email challenging the placement of a children's book in his library, a book called Uncle Bobby's Wedding, that tells the story of a little girl guinea pig whose favorite uncle is getting married. Oh yes, and he's marrying another male guinea pig. The librarian wrote a beautiful, elegant response, well-thought-out and well-written, researched, backed by facts and documented. Had I received the email to which he is responding, I would have been hard pressed to do more than spew out a bunch of four-letter words. Maybe he did that too, privately, but his public response is inspirational.

Books like this get challenged all the time. The absolutely adorable book And Tango Makes Three is one of my daughters' favorites, and tells the true story of two loving male penguins raising a baby penguin together at the Central Park Zoo. It received no end of controversy. My reaction to the controversy was to rave about going to the library and challenging all the evangellically religious books, the books about putting your babies on a feeding schedule from birth, the books about cooking foie gras and veal, and on and on, all the things with which I disagree. After all, isn't that the best use of my public librarians' time? (If you could see me typing this right now, here in the coffee shop where I work, you'd laugh as I huff and puff over my computer and kick the wall behind the table.)

So, here's that link again, to librarian Jamie LaRue's response to the challenge of what sounds like a very nice book. Please read it, and even if you're not a BL-WN-CHL like me, forward it on to everyone you know.

My mother-in-law once told me that children always grow like crazy in summer -- that I wouldn't necessarily notice it while it was happening, but fall would come and we'd try on the last spring's jeans only to find that they would be several inches too short. It could be all the fresh air, the fresh fruit, the sunshine, or the mellow vibe -- but she's right. The kids -- and our lives -- are growing fast.

My Doodlebug, once an exclusively-dress-wearing-princess, has discovered the monkey bars and shorts this summer. She wears skirts and dresses less and less often, preferring to have the ease of movement that comes from unencumbered legs. I am relieved about the dresses, which I always found impractical, and very proud about the monkey bars. When she began camp this summer, she could not swing across even one rung of the monkey bars. Now she can make her way across all five of them on the little jungle gym at her camp -- both using her arms in the traditional way, and by hanging upside down with her legs and crawling across like an odd little upside-down-crab. She proudly shows everyone her "monkey bar callouses." She collects bugs with her friends, gets filthy every day, and ALSO comes home to play dress-up. It's a great balance. Despite my sunscreening her every day (ok, ALMOST every day), she is brown as an almond, and every little dirty smudge makes her more beautiful.



Little Shmoo is eating her way through the summer, and I just never get tired of hearing "Mama, can we make dinner?," even if it is ten in the morning. Her appetite is nothing short of miraculous, and it blows my mind to think of the difference between now and just 18 months ago, when we feverishly catalogued every bite of cracker. Every part of her is growing, from her beautiful kissable belly to her increasingly luscious golden-blond hair. There's even enough to make into a ponytail now.


The girls and I got really lucky just before summer began, and ended up with a bike trailer. They ride in back every day on the way to camp, to the beach, to the park, to the library, to do errands, almost everywhere. Days go by where we don't use the car, which is just what I had hoped for us. We can fit the kids, a beach blanket, a towel, water bottles, and two buckets & shovels into that thing, and we can be at the beach in 15 minutes!

The farm boxes that come on Wednesdays have introduced us all to the many things to be done with greens (including pulverizing and freezing them for winter, which is what one must do when one receives this volume of greens!). Last night's dinner was a stir fry of eggplant, zucchini, peppers, summer squash, carrots, cabbage, and onions, all from our farm box, with brown rice, oil, soy sauce, spices and pistachios being the only store bought portions of the meal. We've given away several heads of lettuce, but thrown away very little unused & rotten produce. We're only 6 weeks into our 20 week share, so hopefully we can keep this up.

Finally, tomorrow we are going camping with two other families. There will be eight kids and six adults, with the kids ranging from six years old down to seven months old. The fiddle is coming, hoping to make nice friends with a guitar scheduled to join us. Wish us luck!

It's summer, and we are just where we wanted to be. By fall, I know we'll barely fit into the selves we were last spring.

This year I went again to the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering for more uninterrupted music (and more torrential rain!). It was another great weekend, despite rain and fire ants, with opportunities for all the things I need to recharge. I discovered several great new tunes, including most of the tunes on the album "Idle Talk and Wicked Deeds" by Portland musicians The Flat Mountain Girls.

I may write more about the festival and the musicians I met, but for now, I just want to include the lyrics to the current favorite song in our house (and car). It's called Closer to the Mill, and I know the Flat Mountain Girls didn't write it, but I don't have the CD case handy to tell you who did. I find this profound in a very deceptively simple way. You want something? GO GET IT.  I aspire to get closer all the time!

Closer to the Mill
----------------------

If you want some heat, gotta draw a little flame
If you want something sweet,  you gotta squeeze a little cane
If you want a little wheat, raise a little grain
And get a little closer to the mill

Well it might sound funny, but as sure as I sing
If you want some money, gotta sell something
If you want a little honey, take a little sting
And get a little closer to the mill

Yodelayeeeeeee
Here's a little secret in the words that I sing:
When it comes to lovin', gotta take what you bring
Gotta get a little closer to the mill

Well if you wanna be a buyer, gotta have the price
If you wanna roll high, well you gotta throw the dice
If you wanna take a try, cut you off a slice
And get a little closer to the mill

Well it ain't no crime and it ain't no shame
If the gold is fine, well you oughta stake a claim
If you wanna be mine, you better do the same
Better get a little closer to the mill

Yodelayeeeeeee
Here's a little secret in the words that I sing:
When it comes to lovin', gotta take what you bring
Gotta get a little closer to the mill

It's been a very busy few weeks here, mostly due to two items that are more similar than I would have thought they'd be before I compared them closely. The fiddle contest, which long-time readers (all, what, three of you???) will remember I've entered for three years now, was this past Thursday, falling at the end of a week-long visit from my parents. You could have used the pressure in my life last week to cook several large pots of whatever it is people cook in pressure cookers. I'm too razzled to think of what that might be, but trust me, it's well-cooked now.

This year, for the contest, I enlisted the help of a very talented fiddler I met in fiddle classes a couple of years ago. The contest is a team competition, so I needed another melody instrument. I love the sound of two fiddles playing together, and with my piano-playing compatriot (and Twin Sister) Deborah accompanying us, I somehow thought we had a good chance to place this year. Well, that, and the fact that the contest organizer had pulled one of the best competitors into a new division of the contest (fiddle bands!), opening up a space in the usual top finishers.

We played French-Canadian tunes, two beautiful pieces that we worked to death in several intensive practice sessions, and which I privately practiced until I could finger them in my sleep, backwards, standing on my head -- and with my parents in the audience for the contest, I actually felt like I WAS playing them that way. I worked on that crazy quebecois foot tapping until I could barely lift my right leg (which does the faster work). You can hear it on the recording linked above -- the clunk you hear on the beat is one of three clunks that come around it, but the recording didn't pick up the other ones. I didn't talk much about it with my playing partners, but I worked harder this year than any other. I honestly thought we had a chance.

Well, we didn't place. Again. One judge came to us afterward and said he had tried hard to convince the other judges that we deserved to place, but he wasn't able to do so, and to make it worse, the wonderful guy who organized the contest, a good friend and the best teacher I've ever had, mistakenly announced our number as a winner and had to backtrack as I did the best about-face I could muster without crying, switching from excited celebrating to gracious clapping for the real winner.

It was a miserable moment, and capped off a week of the high emotion that always accompanies my parents' visits. This time it was pretty mellow, comparatively speaking, but I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a bad mood to hit my father or for him to pull me aside for another talk about what I am doing wrong, what is wrong with my in-laws, or how something I did is affecting the overall happiness of him or my mother. I didn't get much at all of that this time, so maybe I can relax next time. My father even defended my music after the contest, saying he felt we SHOULD have placed -- a far cry from his suggestion three years ago that my merely entering the contest made me "foolish." Thank goodness for small miracles.

For now, I am regrouping and trying to get my emotions simmered down enough to consider the three invitations I have to play square dances this fall. I loved the one dance we played two years ago, and this time, we have the chance to play with some pretty amazing musicians and callers. Collaborating with my other Twin Sister continues to be one of the great pleasures of life for me, and every chance I have to do that again feels like a gift. As for my parents, I think probably they are as relieved as I am that there were not many ugly moments this visit, and they are probably as anxious as I am to return to their normal rhythm of life. A friend just wrote to me:


I agree.

Just a reminder to everyone out there who lives ANYWHERE where there is ANY available local produce to go there, buy some, hang out, create community, and SUPPORT IT however you can. Our neighborhood market on Wednesday evenings can currently boast the following:

• Three farm stands
• Monthly (sometimes more often) live music
• An adjacent playlot for the kids
• Space for picnics
• A bimonthly knitting circle
• Weekly informal potlucks of the neighborhood elementary school's families
  

What it cannot boast so far :

• Financial success for the farmers

If we want this market to succeed, we have to keep buying things there. The same goes for your local markets!

Our garden is a jungle of greenery these days, with mild weather and tons of rain. Everything is so tall that I can't even see what could be a weed and what might flower gorgeously later in the summer. It's chaotically gorgeous, and so I think I'll just give up, happily, and marvel at it.

We have several species of wildly proliferating mint and oregano growing there, and so especially in that back part of the garden pictured in the post below, the whole place smells like spicy mint. It's invigorating and lovely, but I am intimidated by the volume. I harvested a handful of stems of oregano and mint last week, sitting amicably next to Doodlebug in the yard as we pulled leaves into piles on the picnic table, but it's all dried now and ready for winter, and there is easily twenty times that amount left in the garden. Any locals reading this can come get whatever they can use!

We also have a good crop of anise hyssop, identified after two consultations with an herb farmer from the local farmer's market and a detailed web search, and then verified by our receiving another bunch of it in our CSA box last week (I traded it in for some extra chard). This is an absolutely delicious herb, making the most fragrant and naturally sweet tea I've ever had the pleasure of creating myself. I'm drying a big bowl of it in the kitchen now, and that little corner now smells delightfully like black licorice and sunshine.

This is all coming as I read the fascinating book Animal, Vegatable, Miracle by novelist Barbara Kingsolver. It is the story of her family's journey to eating only locally grown/raised foods, most of them so locally grown that she grew them or raised them herself! It makes me want to grow more of our own food next summer, though truthfully that has been my goal for several summers. For now, we're growing the herbs mentioned above, plus dill, thyme, basil, raspberries, and two struggling little tomato plants. I meant to do more, but our spring weekends got so busy that I lost my opportunity. I've often wished I had a "Gardening for Dummies" book that would tell me, step by step, what to do and when. Maybe next summer I will. For now, we're getting almost all our produce from the CSA or from the farmer's market, and even though it's pricier, I agree with Kingsolver's questions about that: essentially, how much is it worth to you to have tastier, gentler-on-the-environment, and kinder-to-the-farmers produce?

In any case, more rain is on its way this week. Wet mint, anyone?