Magic on Memorial Day

     My Personal Chef is an Air Force brat. So, our FabFam is especially mindful to remember the soldiers who selflessly sacrificed their own lives in the defense of our nation's freedoms on Memorial Day. This year, we had the honor of hanging the flag that belonged to a former Army Ranger, and our Evil Genius marched in two local parades.
 

    Memorial Day weekend is also the unofficial start of the summer season.  Here in New England, where the winters are long and the springs are rainy and cool, this long, holiday weekend is highly anticipated as the harbinger of beach weather and summer fun to come.

     Around the country, but definitely for my extended family, the "Memorial Day Barbecue" is a tradition. Some years, it's just a few relatives grilling burgers and hot dogs in the yard.  Other years, we throw down with a gourmet menu and red,white, and blue-themed decor.  Regardless, whether it is a simple gathering or an extravagant event, our Memorial Day Barbecue requires planning and preparation to be successful.

    We began discussing plans for a gathering of friends several weeks ago.  We suggested to our friends that they watch the Evil Genius in a parade then come to our place for a barbecue.  For one reason and another, it was decided that the get-together would be at another friend's home instead.

     So imagine my surprise when at 11:55 AM yesterday, while at the hardware store picking up garden fencing and petunias,  I received the following text:  "What can we bring?" Yep.  Apparently, we were to be hosting a Memorial Day Barbecue for approximately 20 people.  In an hour.  We were NOT prepared for a shindig.  Our living room was filled with unfolded laundry and papers.  My Personal Chef was in the yard up to his eyeballs in chicken wire.  The bathrooms were a mess.  And there was nothing in our house to eat.

     What happened next is the stuff that legends are made out of.  

Please note, we are highly trained catering professionals. It is not advisable to try this at home. 

     We had until the 1:00 PM parade step-off to pull a rabbit out of our hats.   Laughing all the way, my Personal Chef went to the grocery store.  I white tornadoed the old homestead.  In 50 minutes, two bathrooms were cleaned to Nana Franna White Glove Standards.  Two loads of laundry were folded and put away.  The coffee table was unburied from the piles of papers, mail, and magazines.  The dining room was set up as a red, white, & blue buffet. The screen porch was readied to receive guests.  Burgers, dogs, and a caesar salad were set to go.   Chicken and pork was getting all happy in the smoker.  Veggies were prepped for grilling.  A case of beer was iced down. And a pitcher of "Adult Limeade" was mixed up.  

     And so it was that we enjoyed a parade, were touched by a moving ceremony that honored our community's fallen soldiers and surviving veterans, and hosted a kick-ass barbecue feast with folks we love.

    

Becoming

     Nearly twenty-three years ago on a sunny day in October, my mama sat next to me in a hospital, holding her first grandchild.  Clearly smitten, my mother pronounced, "She's perfect.  At this moment she's just perfect.  She's all possibility."

     In that instant, I believed that there was nothing that this little girl couldn't do; there was no limit to who she could become. Over the next two decades, I continued to believe that and worked really hard to make sure my daughter believed it, too.

Today our family gets to stop at one of the more notable mile markers along the the trip to Becoming. 

Today my daughter graduates from college.

     At five years old, my daughter was interviewed by a classmate of mine from grad. school for a course about teaching young children mathematics.  My classmate was invovlved in what was then emerging research about "math anxiety,"  a diagnosable learning disability where the fear of doing math actually makes it more difficult, in some cases impossible, to learn mathematical skills.  The research was indicating that females were far more likely to have math anxiety than males.   My little girl apparently had not read that paper. Completely without any coaching by me and without any leading questions by my classmate, my daughter announced that, "when I grow up I'm going to be a doctor.  Not a medical one, though.  I'm going to be one of those doctors who work in a college.  I'm going to be a Math Doctor."   No math anxiety for Thing 1.  Not then. Not when she was taking AP Calculus in high school. Not ever.

     Born with an innate sense of structure and a need for order, my daughter was (okay, is) often frustrated with her aging, hippie mother who goes through many of her days by just winging it.  I like to think that God gave us to each other on purpose.  She has taught me the value in a workable routine. I have been rounding off some of her sharper edges.  We meet in the middle with our shared wicked sense of humor.

     Her senior year in high school, though, her stress about getting into the right college was almost too much for me to bear. To her way of thinking, her entire Life Plan hinged on this decision. Her angst was real.  It was pretty awful. No mama likes to watch their child suffer.  Finally, I could take it no more and I brought her to my office.  At the time, I worked at a social service agency that provided a wide range of programming and was staffed by a broad array of professionals.  As I brought Thing 1 from office to office, I asked each of my coworkers to tell my daughter what their undergraduate degree was.  Not ONE person had a degree in his or her current field. It was  mind-blowing to my daughter.  Of course, because she was both very young and super-structured, she insisted that it was because I worked in the social sciences (not the REAL sciences). We were all touchy-feely, earthy-crunchy, and terrible at sticking to The Plan.

     Fortunately for her--and no surprise to anyone--she got accepted at every school she applied to.  In a nod to her mother, she chose Clark.  "It's a wicked hippie school, Mom, but it's got one of the best research centers in the country, and, well, you know, Robert Goddard built his rockets there."  That Goddard had been there mattered, because our future Math Doctor had grown up enough to realize that applied mathematics were way more fun than theoretical mathematics, and that mathematics applied to rockets were about as much fun as a geek can possibly have.  Our Math Doctor was going to work for NASA one day.

     And then life got in the way.  Clark might have been the best school, but it was also the most expensive.  The Air Force offered a path to NASA and a very, very generous scholarship--until Thing 1 had her first ever asthma attack while running a mile during her annual fitness exam.  At the very moment she was being diagnosed with asthma and losing her scholarship, her brother was being rushed to a hospital because of a suicide attempt and her grandfather was in another hospital dying of pneumonia. A lesser woman, like, say, her mother,wouldn't have come through that season with such grace.  She was rattled, but she still was that girl who believed that she could be anyone.  She moved back home.  She transferred to a state university.

She changed her mind.

     She worked through this difficult time in her life by changing her major.  Forget NASA.  Forget calculus and physics.  She would become an early childhood educator like her mother.  

"Kids are great!  My mom is great! This will be great! This is what I'll be!"

     Ah, but she already knew too much about math.  During her first (and only) student-teaching experience, she learned how much early childhood educators earn for a living. It is less than what she makes in her part-time job as a pharmacy technician. THAT math was a deal-breaker.  Besides, everyone knows she really is a scientist at heart.

      

     And so it is that today that perfect baby, who had every possibility before her will become a college graduate.  She is receiving a Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology, because that is what you get when you add math, physics, education, and lab science credits all together.  She just started a new job at a specialty pharmacy that provides medications to long-term care facilities. She has plans (with her there is ALWAYS a plan!) to begin her accelerated pharmacy doctoral program next year, after she takes a few extra lab courses to better orient her towards pharmacy school.  

I love the woman she has become.  

I am exceedingly proud of how hard she has worked to become her.  

I'm excited to see what she becomes next.

The Laundry Meditation

     Almost every faith tradition has some sort of tool to help their practitioners with the rituals of prayer.  Raised Catholic, I am most familiar with rosary beads, but Moslems, Ba'hai, and other faiths have their own version of prayer beads.  The Jews have special fringe, tzitzits on the corners of their prayer shawls.  And Hindus and Buddhists have mala beads, traditionally, these are strands of 108 beads to help the devout focus on the mantra they are chanting without being distracted by keeping track of the number of repititions.

     As a kid,  I did not care for the rote recitation of prayers that the rosary required. I thought it was dumb to just say the same thing over and over.  I much preferred having an ongoing conversation with the Almighty.  (Shocking, I know.)  Today, though, I think that maybe I'm beginning to understand the spiritual value of repetition.  There is something to a practice that can drown out the cacophony of swirling thoughts in my head and bring momentary relief from the struggles of my day.  I get it now.

     I don't have any beads or knotted threads to help me with this.  What I have is laundry.  Piles of laundry. As I fold countless towels, I find myself slowing into a peaceful rhythm.  With every pair of boxer shorts I come closer to actually being right here, right now, in this moment.  The tension in my body releases.  My mind calms.  And it is there, in that place of routine and ritual that the solutions to my problems begin to emerge and my worries begin to fade.

     Then I come across a queen size fitted sheet and everything goes to shit.

Learning to Dance

     My dear friend Laurel made an offhand remark about doing the cha-cha--one step forward, two steps back--and it really connected with me.  For the past two weeks, I have been moving forward and back through a series of little (and a couple not so little) dramas and joys.  It's had me exhausted and almost-but-not-quite overwhelmed.  Laurel turned that all on its head for me, though.  I'm just learning to dance!  I've always wanted to be able to dance.

     Yes, I know, EVERYONE can dance, but I'm not talking about that twirling-shuffling-bobbing thing that Deadheads do.

I want to know some traditional dance steps and execute them with at least a modicum of style and grace.

    For as long as I can remember, I have been a fan of musical theater.  There's just something about a lavish song-and-dance number that makes everything better, you know? Seriously, wouldn't it be great if  we could really dance, if you could tap your troubles away ?  And my love of all things Bollywood is something that makes my Personal Chef shake his head in amusement, but I cannot get enough of the over-the-top production numbers that move the splotchy plots along.

    So, maybe today, I'll be able to stop fretting about the ordinary challenges that just keep coming.  Maybe I'll just choreograph my way through them!

Unorthodox Easter Celebrations

 For days now, I have been trying to write an Easter post.  The problem is, I've been arguing with the Almighty.  This is nothing new.  I have been wrestling with God for as long as I can remember.  I was that girl in Sunday School who asked the good-hearted, volunteer teacher the questions that made her uncomfortable:  "How could getting a new family make up for the children Job lost?"  "Why did God have to kill all of the Egyptian babies to save the Jews from slavery?"  Stuff like that.

I've been looking for something MORE, something I cannot articulate, but it is a deep, unmet need.  This morning, Easter Sunday, I woke up knowing what it is.

I need resurrection.

I have been not-quite-living in the place where death and grief and fear reside for too long.  I need a revival. I need to overcome the power of death.  Easter seems like a fitting day to begin to do that.

A devout Christian who was always too liberal for my religious friends and too religious for my liberal friends, I have spent a considerable amount of time over the past few years struggling to figure out how to authentically express my faith.  I miss belonging to a faith community, but I cannot bear the idea of an institution that is harmful to anyone perceived as OTHER.  As a little girl, I fell in love with the Jesus who befriended the broken, messy, undesirable people.  Those are my people, you know?

And while I have met many, many wonderful people in all manner of faith traditions (including non-Christian or Jewish religions) who share that basic "Love One Another" premise, I have yet to find a Church that fully embraces that.  After more than two decades actively engaged in a congregation that did so much wonderful work but expected rigid adherence to a handful of rules that I just could not accept, I finally had been chafed raw. The sore spots became too agonizing to live with anymore.  Sorrowfully, my Personal Chef and I left our church.

It took a long time, but the wounds have healed up enough that recently we have begun discussing finding a new community, a new church.  We went so far as to set today--Easter Sunday--as the day to begin.  This morning, we would wake up and go to church together as a family.  We still have no idea where we belong, but as a place to start, we know a priest whose entire life is built on that tenet, "Love One Another." He is our kind of Holy Man.  He is the head of his order, administering his duties from a beautiful retreat center, so he does not have a congregation for us to join, but he would be leading an Easter mass we could attend.

Then, I overslept.  I never over sleep.  Part of my chronic illness manifests in sleep disturbances that have me wide awake every day in the wee hours of the morning.

Sigh.

Instead of going to an Easter service, I have puttered around the house.  As I was hanging laundry to dry on the clothesline, I pondered that Easter story of resurrection.  I guess I have never understood the teachings about Jesus overcoming hell and death.  If one buys the idea that he is God come to earth in human form, then the idea of him coming back from the dead is no big deal, right?  If the big deal is that he changed the rules for Jews--that now ordinary Jews and also non-Jews can commune directly with God without going to the intermediary priests with their animal sacrifices--then why was his life sacrificed as part of a mass execution of criminals?  Why wasn't it at the temple in Jerusalem? (I know, I'm still full of questions.)

I may never understand the Easter story.  This morning, though, I did come to understand the power that death holds over me.  So much of my behavior is dictated by my grief and my fear of suffering more grief.  I swing between paralysis and mania, either doing nothing because I'm too bereft to move or overscheduling every minute because I'm afraid I will never get the chance again.  I have spent far too long in the place where death rules.

I need resurrection.

Unexpectedly, I find that I've always had a wonderful teacher in an old friend.  Bob is an eccentric, hippie friend who was born with a heart defect that results in death for most babies.  Miraculously surviving his infancy, Bob was only expected to live until his adolescence.  As a young teen, he was sent home from another hospital visit in a wheelchair to die.  He amazed everyone when two years later, he walked across the stage at his high school graduation.  In his mid-twenties, he had to go on oxygen, because his lungs were never meant to work as hard as they do for as many years as they have. Twenty-five years later, he's been married, had a daughter, got divorced, joined a Moose Lodge, traveled around the country, helped some of the world's foremost physicians break new ground in the treatment of cardiac and pulmonary disease.   He's coming up on 52-years of living.  He has taught my family so much about life.  And this morning, I realize he's taught me a lot about the power of death.

I have always been amazed at Bob's good humor.  His joie de vivre is overwhelming in the best possible way.  And just this morning, I realized that it's the answer I've been looking for.

I have always looked at Bob from the point of view of his certain death.  Bob, on the other hand, has been operating from the position of his certain life.  Bob's secret is that he loves, loves, loves every moment he gets.  Every meal is the best one he's ever eaten.  Every visit with a friend is the best time he's had.  Every joke is the funniest he's heard.

Bob spent several days this past week in the hospital.  He was released Friday afternoon.  Friday night he called me and asked me if I'd pick him up and bring him to our home, because he didn't feel comfortable about driving himself.  See, ever since Thing 1 and Thing 2 were preschoolers, Bob has made a point of "tie dyeing" Easter eggs with my kids.  He had no intention of missing our traditional gathering this year, just because he "isn't feeling so good."

When I brought him home last night, I was sad that there might not be any more Easters together.  Death has its claws in me deep.  Death is no match for my friend and teacher, though.  I want what he has.

I need a resurrection.

The Soft Opening Before the Grand ReOpening

     If you have ever met me in person or read a few of my blogposts, then you know that I am the Luckiest Girl In The World because I married a man who can cook.  My Personal Chef is in fact a world-class professional chef who is going to cringe when he reads that I have described him that way. Too bad.  It's the truth--not doting-wife-says-so truth, but actual has-credentials-to-prove-it  truth: Gold and Silver medals from several American Culinary Federation competitions; acronyms on his business cards that denote his qualifications as a Food Management Professional, Certified Research Chef, and Certified Executive Chef; a two-page resume that highlights a fabulous career that culinary students dream about;  chef friends/colleagues whose names you'd recognize from TV.  He's the real deal.

Photo by Rose Lincoln, Harvard University Gazette, 2003

     I bring this all up not to make you feel bad about your plain, old wonderful husbands who are great at lots of things, but do not belong anywhere near your kitchen. Rather, I bring this up because after decades of  loving a chef, my vocabulary is full of foodie terms.  So, after a several month writing hiatus, this post serves as my "soft opening."  In the restaurant world, the soft opening is that period of time when a new place is opened (or a renovated place is reopened) for a period of time to work out the kinks in the new systems BEFORE the publicity for the place hits.

    Since I've last written,  I've messed around a little bit with the formatting.  I've spent a considerable time thinking about what I want to say.   Mostly, though,  I've just been doing my best to stay afloat as a mother, wife, daughter, cousin, friend, and colleague.  It was a long, hard winter for me.  It just was.  I woke up above the ground today, though, so I get another shot at getting this living business down right. So, I'm back.  I've missed you, my friends.

Don't Stop Believing

I've come to the conclusion that this blog needs some revamping and I need to get a grip.   So, it may be a little bit before I post anything of substance.  I'm coming back. I am.  And I'm going to do my damndest to make sure it was worth the wait.  Okee dokee?