A couple of weeks ago, I was at a Friday night spaghetti dinner/holiday crafts event at my church, First Parish UU in Milton, MA. We had a lovely gathering in our Parish Hall which -- because the church dates back to the 17th century -- has a fireplace in it. A working fireplace. Usually someone lights a fire for winter events but since no one had, I offered to do it. Knowing how to construct a healthy fire in a pit or stove is something I have cared about ever since I was a Girl Scout. It seemed like an important life skill that one should master, so I had.
I began by placing some tightly-wound newspaper rolls on the grate, then adding the smaller logs, then then topping it with dry twigs. It lit right up and we had a crackling fire added smell and ambiance to the night.
We ate our spaghetti and made our crafts, gluing tiny beads and glitter onto snowmen and trees, pushing whole cloves into oranges and generally making the floor of the Parish Hall much more colorful than it had been when the night began. And then, I realized that one of the bigger logs had rolled over and was smoldering -- not going out, but not burning either.
I used the iron poker to push the log back over, added fresh wood, and then I began to blow right at the base of the fire. Three strong, direct bellowing breaths and the grey smoke began to spark and then, with a quick rush of air, crackled back to life. We were in business.
One of the church members came up to me and said that she was impressed I knew how to do it. I told her it was a point of pride but that there was a key to the task. I said: It's all about the oxygen. Knowing where and how to direct air to revive a listing fire is the skill. Wood can be stacked in multiple ways. Sometimes I try different shapes to test my theory. But air....air must be present or there will be no fire.
And what I realized as I was talking that my words were a metaphor for this time of the year -- this *holiday* time. Holidays, even under ideal circumstances, are stressful. Even with a heart full of hope and loving intentions, falling down into your own personal rabbit hole of fear/worry/regret...you know the specifics.
This is also the time of year with the least amount of daylight so even if you aren't celebrating anything, the darkness can get to us.
But. But there is something. There is light.
I heard someone say recently: Light can devour the darkness but darkness cannot consume the light. Tomorrow will be the winter solstice. Occurring at 11:28 am, we enter into Yule, Midwinter, the Shortest Day of the Year and the Longest Night. From then on, the days get longer.
I can't tell you everything will be better...or even if you celebrate a holiday now that your gatherings will give you what you wish for.
What I can give you is a reminder that you can breathe. It won't always make things right but with deep cleansing breaths, you may be able to face your next task, challenge or simply, get through the day when you haven't had enough sleep.
Your encore for today is to take those breaths, those good cleansing breaths. You probably need them more than you realize.
Remember: It's all about the oxygen.
Peace
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Jam is My Jam
My last post was about raspberries, the ones I grew this season. What happens to all of them, you ask? Each year, I control my urge to eat them immediately and instead, store them until fall when I turn them into jam. Delicious jam. Raspberries and sugar, that's it. As they ripen, I freeze them in batches. Then in November after the growing season is done, I thaw them and cook. My method is to keep them in the fridge for a few days, and they condense into an intensely fragrant, ruby-colored bowl of fruit. I mash it, boil it, then cook with an almost equal amount of warmed sugar. (Yes, really. That's a thing. You warm the sugar at 200 degrees for about twenty minutes and it dissolves quicker.) I test it to be sure it will gel and then do a hot water bath and can it all in hot jars. Voila!
I perfected this method a few years ago, when I realized that I was growing enough raspberries to do something. It came as a surprise to me. I wanted to be able to do these things -- grow berries, cook jam, and put up jars -- but I was still amazed when I realized that the spot where I had planted raspberry canes -- tiny sticks with thorns on them, looking mostly like a pile of kindling -- actually *produced*. If you aren't a gardener, then you might wonder why I was doubting the process. The answer is that planting anything, whether it's seeds, seedlings, canes, bulbs or any of the ways that our flora kin reproduce isn't a guarantee. It's a gamble; it's a risk. Like life, of course.
The year after my mother died, I took care of her garden as best I could, considering that it was in New Hampshire and I was in Massachusetts. Two of her aspirational garden projects were pumpkins and raspberries. I say aspirational because they were fruits that she wanted to conquer. She wanted to grow huge pumpkins and she loved raspberries. Some years, she'd get pumpkins that were astonishing. The raspberries, though, were another story. They never flourished and she never got more than a handful of raspberries. I understand now why they didn't, though in my thirties, before I became a home owner, I hadn't gardened enough to understand the nature of planting too close to trees.
When I put the raspberries in my yard a decade ago, I did it, honestly, because I wanted to see if I could. To see what would happen, but mostly? Because it broke my heart that in her time, my mother hadn't succeeded. That's my interpretation, of course, but when you are 39 and your mother is dying of cancer -- lungs, throat, brain and things get excruciating quickly -- these are things you fixate on.
That was the original impetus: sad, broken, feeling unfinished. An echo of things not said? Probably.
But those ugly, prickly sticks soon had tiny green flags unfurling which became leaves. They liked the spot I'd given them and stretched up and out, into the sun. I mulched them and talked to them and told them I wanted them to stick with me. By the third year, miraculous little red gems appeared. I had my raspberry patch.
But then, over time, something shifted. I realized something wonderful: I loved raspberries. On my own, I loved them. It was a realization, too, that my mother and I shared this thing. And that bit of insight was a delight.
So below are pictures of my process. I am grateful for my mother's legacy -- both the good and the bad. As I write this, it is two days before Thanksgiving, so I am particularly aware of the lineage of food and family.
Your encore for today? Find gratitude wherever you can.
That's all and that's enough. It's good for the soul.
I perfected this method a few years ago, when I realized that I was growing enough raspberries to do something. It came as a surprise to me. I wanted to be able to do these things -- grow berries, cook jam, and put up jars -- but I was still amazed when I realized that the spot where I had planted raspberry canes -- tiny sticks with thorns on them, looking mostly like a pile of kindling -- actually *produced*. If you aren't a gardener, then you might wonder why I was doubting the process. The answer is that planting anything, whether it's seeds, seedlings, canes, bulbs or any of the ways that our flora kin reproduce isn't a guarantee. It's a gamble; it's a risk. Like life, of course.
The year after my mother died, I took care of her garden as best I could, considering that it was in New Hampshire and I was in Massachusetts. Two of her aspirational garden projects were pumpkins and raspberries. I say aspirational because they were fruits that she wanted to conquer. She wanted to grow huge pumpkins and she loved raspberries. Some years, she'd get pumpkins that were astonishing. The raspberries, though, were another story. They never flourished and she never got more than a handful of raspberries. I understand now why they didn't, though in my thirties, before I became a home owner, I hadn't gardened enough to understand the nature of planting too close to trees.
When I put the raspberries in my yard a decade ago, I did it, honestly, because I wanted to see if I could. To see what would happen, but mostly? Because it broke my heart that in her time, my mother hadn't succeeded. That's my interpretation, of course, but when you are 39 and your mother is dying of cancer -- lungs, throat, brain and things get excruciating quickly -- these are things you fixate on.
That was the original impetus: sad, broken, feeling unfinished. An echo of things not said? Probably.
But those ugly, prickly sticks soon had tiny green flags unfurling which became leaves. They liked the spot I'd given them and stretched up and out, into the sun. I mulched them and talked to them and told them I wanted them to stick with me. By the third year, miraculous little red gems appeared. I had my raspberry patch.
But then, over time, something shifted. I realized something wonderful: I loved raspberries. On my own, I loved them. It was a realization, too, that my mother and I shared this thing. And that bit of insight was a delight.
So below are pictures of my process. I am grateful for my mother's legacy -- both the good and the bad. As I write this, it is two days before Thanksgiving, so I am particularly aware of the lineage of food and family.
Your encore for today? Find gratitude wherever you can.