Sunday, March 21, 2010

 

EQUINOX

Wow. It's been 9 months since my last post. What has been birthed during that time? First and foremost, as I rocket toward 40 - I begin my 5th decade six months from today - I am starting to accept the reality of my life for what it is - good and bad - and acknowledge that efforts to change that reality may be less valuable than efforts to enjoy and appreciate it.

I am also trying to accept that I actually cannot do everything that I want to do all at once. As I sink more deeply into this new realm of academia and struggle to ride the work/family balance wave, I find myself realizing everyday that I need to let go of more than I pick up. I can't say I'm happy about this realization. I was raised to think I could do anything I wanted to do. And the feminism I encountered in college iced the female empowerment cake my parents so carefully baked. But now, as a full-time working mother of two small children, I am starting to see myself really fray around the edges. Recovery takes longer than it used to. I get depressed more easily and stay that way longer. I already realized around 30 that I had gotten too old to pull all-nighters. But now, nearing 40, I'm starting to feel my age in a more metaphysical sense. This constant drive to produce, to make, to organize, to gather, to connect, to improve - this drive is part of what make me human and part of what keeps me and my small tribe alive. But it is also killing me - day by sleepless day, month by grueling month.

And so, on this day of Spring Equinox, this day when the earth is equally poised between dark and light, I am saying a prayer for myself and for all the other super-charged women I know that we can balance not just work and family, but joy and despair. There is much that is overwhelming, distracting, disturbing, and downright depressing about the lives we are living. And there is much that is joyful, beautiful, sweet, hopeful, and hysterically funny. We are the generation who is here to do the manual work of building the dream-house from the blueprints our mothers forged with their brave firsts - the first woman who voted in a national election (1920), the first woman to make partner in a law firm (1973), the first woman to be promoted to Dean at the University of California at Berkeley (2000). A house where we can be women, mothers, workers, lovers, artists, activists and anything we choose to be. Maybe just not all at once.

Much love to all of you as we enter the season of light.

Be well.



Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 10:06 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

 

SMALL KINDNESSES

1. Sausages

Last night I was hungry.  I'm on this high-protein/low-carb diet, so basically my options are meat or cheese.  While cooking up a pan of breakfast sausages, I had this memory from my childhood of my mother doing the same thing.  My father loved sausages - any kind, but especially pork breakfast sausages.  My mother spent a lot of time feeding my father, despite everything.  And I had this image of her standing patiently by the stove, turning over the links little by little so that they would brown evenly on all sides.  Given that sausages are round, and that they wiggle and jump in the pan, this endeavor takes constant attention for a good 20 minutes.  And as I turned my own sausages last night, I imagined my mother, spatula in hand, hovering over the pan, gently coaxing each pork finger toward a perfect state of brownness, so that my father could relish every bite.  


2. Gladys

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our return to San Francisco after our London sojourn.  I marked the occasion by making a phonecall I've been avoiding for months.  I called the once familiar world of 020 and spoke to Pat, the daughter of Gladys, the 85-year old woman who lived in the flat below our in Flanders Mansions.  Visiting Gladys and playing with trucks in her peeling yellow kitchen is one of the few memories my son still has of his London home.  Gladys was always happy to see us, always happy for small kindnesses like a 1/2 pint of strawberries we couldn't use, or the offer to pick up a few things from the shops when her supplies were low.  Gladys lived on the same road for 65 years, in the same town all her life.  She knew much about the details of the place - how the Tube workers used to plant wild-flowers on the berm below the tracks, the ages of the postman's children, how hot the summers used to be.  When we knew her, she had not left her house in over 2 years.  And so her world was 6 rooms - 4 of them shut in winter - and the views out the front and back windows.  Everyday she would walk down the passage to see what was happening on the road - who was going to school, who was late for work, what cars were parked where.  Gladys was important to me, and yet I visited her less often that I meant to.  In the first 6 months after we returned to SF, I only wrote her once - a Christmas card with a pack of chocolates and a GG Bridge magnet to join the collection of birds on her fridge.  She passed in February - thankfully in the hospital and not alone in her flat as she feared she would.  I know her life was better for knowing us, and ours for knowing her.  And yet, I still feel the weight of all the moments I could have spent with her balled up like a knot in my chest.


3. Monster

My son has been walking around terrified for the last week.  He keeps remembering this dream he had.  In it, he sees a monster, and while he watches, the monster's body breaks apart and his head begins to bounce toward my son.  It never reaches him, because he always wakes up.  But the terror of the nights has now invaded the daytimes to the point where Gman won't even go down the hall to his room to get dressed at 8am.  He's been saying 50 times a day "I'm scared.  I'm so scared of my dream."  We've talked about the difference between real and pretend.  We've discussed strategies for distracting himself, for redirecting his imagination.  But the fear remains.  And it is really getting in the way of our daily operations - he is literally hanging onto my leg, following me from room to room.  And after days of this, I find myself deeply impatient with him.  "Come on!" I think, "Snap out of it!"  Even though I remember how frightened I was of pictures in my head when I was a child.  Even though I recognize that the monster must represent some deeper and more inexpressible fear about a part of his life he is afraid might break or dissolve before his eyes.  It seems that he needs constant little doses of love and kindness to get through the day now.  And honestly, who doesn't.

Be well.


Labels: , ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 12:35 PM 1 comments

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

 

RESURRECTION


It has been 7 weeks since I last posted - a spiritual number - the length of time it has taken for me to fully absorb that I am where I am - San Francisco. I have loved and been loved by this City, but it's different this time. I feel like the woman in the made-for-tv movie who gets one last chance to live as she always knew she should. Note: this is different than the way I want to live. I want to stroll through my own mental corridors, thinking, reading and day-dreaming without interruption. I want to spend all day poking around on the internet, following interesting trails and satiating my curiosity about unnecessary topics. I want to exercise everyday, shower everyday, take my vitamins everyday, drink plenty of water everyday, and keep my house clean. None of these desires feature regularly in my new life. But still, gratitude persists. Despite six-and-a-quarter hours of sleep every night. Despite the constant presence of sand on the hard-wood floor. Despite the rush-hour bus commute home. Despite poorly styled hair and unkempt toe-nails. Despite the 137 unanswered messages in my email in-box. Gratitude is my bread and butter these days. Because look around you? Nearly everyone is suffering in some small or large way. How have I missed this for so long? Everyone has: a mother undergoing hernia surgery, an aunt who narrowly escaped a ruptured brain aneurism, a son who punched a girl at school, a husband with suspicious lumps in his side, a colleague who’s afraid she's made an irretrievable mistake, a friend who thinks he might not love his partner anymore. There’s no if, only when. When will the strange angels knock on your door? And how will you receive them. Admit them. Admit them. They may bring sorrowful tidings, but they also bring the light.

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 10:11 AM 2 comments

Friday, July 11, 2008

 

SHATTERED

We've done it. We've schlepped ourselves and our kids (no sign yet of the 51 boxes) back across the world to where we started - San Francisco - our beloved City by the Bay. We've been here 10 days already, and have experienced very little jet-lag and no culture shock at all. As I suspected, it feels almost as though we never left. The shops and house colors in our neighborhood are the same. Our friends seem unchanged (except for the addition of several small humans to the tribe.) The discourse in our news rags and between people on the street seems eerily familiar. The only big difference is that our flat was pretty crapped up by the tenants - picture us from now through at least next spring hunkered over buckets of solvent while we attempt to remove paint from every light fixture, doorhinge, doorknob, and nail in the joint. Nonetheless, our belongings (which were stored off-site) are pretty much intact, and Lord Limescale (still looking for the right West Coast handle) is an extraordinarily handy fellow, so he has the know-how and chutzpah to repair, replace and repaint our flat to its former glory.

And yet, to borrow a florid phrase from the English, I feel a bit shattered. There is the obvious fact that both our space and our daily routine are fairly chaotic at the moment. But on a deeper level, I feel like I have literally left behind a piece of myself, a shed skin. Like a cartoon shadow, there is something two-dimension and unstable about this new life. For now, it lacks the will or infastructure to stand up on its own.

As we were leaving England, many people wished us "safe travels." This is a common courtesy in America too, but something about the phrasing and consistency of the British wish stuck with me. Traveling is dangerous. When you are out of your home space, the odds are much higher that you will encounter something unexpected, something you aren't prepared to deal with. Every new city, every new form of transportation poses hidden obstacles and threats which must be learned and overcome. Maybe that's why the Odyssey remains Western culture's favorite narrative. Lately, my son has demanded daily that we serve up different versions of this quintessential travel story (mostly with a Giraffe or a Zebra in the lead role). Perhaps his hunger for epic tales reflects his own sense of dislocation, and a need to glorify our travels before he can put them to rest.

More soon. Be well.

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 6:38 AM 0 comments

Friday, June 20, 2008

 



CHEERIO!


Elvis has left the building! (with his wife, his two kids, and 51 boxes.)


Next post comes to you live from SAN FRANCISCO!


Be well.

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 2:15 PM 0 comments

Monday, June 09, 2008

 


THREE CLICKS

  1. Two women I know are dying – one fast, the other faster. I smoked cigarettes with one while debating art and culture during 5-minute breaks in grad school. I drink instant coffee with the other while perching on a rickety chair in her peeling yellow kitchen, a carbon copy of my own kitchen minus 50 years of improvements. One woman is around 40. The other is nearly 85. Both are alone in the world and have the kind of tough devil-may-care attitude that stems from this fact. There is very little I can give either of them now, except my prayers and good wishes. I would like to sit by the bedside of the younger one, hold her hand, stroke her head, and make sure she has a window to look out of with a tree outside it. I would like to paint and plaster and fit and fix for the older one, so that her world of two rooms breathes her life back into her. I will do none of these things. But I will continue to think of these women. Often. And imagine myself sitting next to them. Hearing them breathe in. And out. For awhile.

  1. Some days you are screwed from the start. Like yesterday. When Gman came into our bedroom at 7:45am, I was nursing his sister. So he reflexively turned to his Dad for water/milk/banana/cornflakes/tv/buttwipe/blanket/story/hug/nosewipe/dream-telling. When I finally rose from my cozy baby-mama cocoon 30 minutes later, it was too late. His face was set, his eyes were steely. Later, after an unreasonable request that I reasonably diverted, he chucked his water cup at my knee – hard! And for the second time, I slapped him. It was just the faintest slap, a brief contact between my hand and his cheek. Didn’t hurt him a bit. But of course it sent him round the bend completely. And nothing – nothing – I did for the rest of the day could make it right again. Of course by the end of the day, I was tired of atoning and getting nowhere. Tired of being completely ignored. Thus, I was rough and impatient with him at bed-time. When we woke this morning, I could see that he is still mad at me. So, I am mooching around the house today feeling like the world’s crappiest parent. What is this anger in me that rises so quickly? What is this instinct for lashing out at my own child? How is it that Gman and I are so different that there are times when nothing I do can affect him except in the negative? In his estimable book The Secrets of Happy Children, Stephen Biddulph notes that when kids act out, it is because they aren’t getting something they need. Of course Gman is behaving rudely, aggressively, crazily, spacily because he needs something he’s not getting – my absolutely undivided attention. But he’s never going to have that again. What is the statute of limitations on adjusting to a new sibling? Probably a kid should get an extension if you throw another twister into the mix like moving to another country. God, what are we masochists? And yet, this is how everybody does it. Having Kid #1 starts you down a path toward Greater Adulthood with its sensible jobs and housing in good school districts. Then comes along Kid #2 (when your transformation into Responsible Parent Person is still only half-complete), and you wind up doing crazy shit like moving house when you are 8 months pregnant, or traveling around the world when your kid is 2-1/2 (not recommended), or adding a new member to the family and then relocating everyone 6 months later. All of a sudden, I really understand what they mean when they say kids like stability. I’m starting to be a fan of it too, because without it, my lovely, intelligent, lively son, is on a constant mission to kick my ass.

  1. When I ask my friends what they most want/need/crave, they all say more time. I guess this is probably universal – part of the human condition – to feel like we can’t cram all the living we want to do into the day/week/month/lifetime. I am a chronic sufferer of the same predicament, which is why afternoons spent picnicing in the park in the summer sun are as precious to me as any fistful of coinage. We had such a picnic yesterday, with our closest London friends – another family of four. The picnic was by no means sylvan – there was relocation due to dogshit, kids pelting each other with balls, spills, thorns embedded in barefeet, toddlers running away every 5 seconds, babies crying from being squashed, a general refusal on the part of the smaller picnicers to eat any non-sugar based foods. But despite the sheer bedlam, there was still enough of the feeling of time stopping, enough sunlight filtering through the leafy tree above us, to make me feel that this time right here right now was, for once, enough.

Be well.



Photo by ToniVC

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 3:49 AM 1 comments

Thursday, June 05, 2008

 

TRIPPING

I’ve been back from Ireland for a week, but I’m still tripping. Somehow, I lost my mental and emotional mooring during transit. Maybe it’s that we had always envisioned the trip as the boundary between normal London life and the end time. We knew that when we returned from our holiday, we would start packing in earnest and shutting everything down. And so we have. We leave our flat 2 weeks from today, and fly back to America for good 3 weeks from Sunday. Everywhere I go, I think “Is this the last time I’ll be here?” Every time I see someone I know, I wonder if I should say a proper goodbye or leave it to chance that we’ll be together again. I was in the playpark yesterday with a lovely French woman, whose family we’ve been friendly with. It was a rare sunny day, and the kids were climbing and playing and scrapping around. We sat at a picnic table and chatted, until finally, we just ran out of things to talk about. It isn’t that we’re not interested in each other – if we were staying here, I think she would become one of my close friends. But we know we probably won’t see one another again, and I could feel both of us realizing this. We’ve already covered all the superficial topics, so there’s nothing else to talk about unless we go deeper, and there isn’t time to do that. Almost as one mind, and even though there was plenty of daylight left, we got up, collected the children, said our goodbyes and with relief in our hearts, headed back to our homes.

I’ve never gotten over the strangeness of leaving people behind. When I was a kid, I used to get really mooky during the last few days of summer camp, because I knew that the girl I ate grape popsicles with everyday was going to go back to her home two towns over and that we would probably never see each other again. My last hours with every work colleague, student, actor, and friend have always been flavored with piquant nostalgia and the queasy recognition of life’s impermanence. How is it that can we know each other so deeply and specifically in this moment, and yet know that we will be complete strangers in the future? I don’t think I’ll ever get over this. Another reason why I’m glad to be heading back to San Francisco and staying put for awhile. I want accumulate a wealth of friends, colleagues and acquaintances, so that I have a nice fat human cushion to land on the next time I have to say goodbye to someone.

In other news of the day, here’s an ironic tidbit:

I just repaired my journal (using Gman’s glue and sticky tape), which he roughed up earlier this year in a fit of pique. He actually tore out the first page and then tore that page up into smaller pieces. I found them scattered around the house like confetti one day after I had been nursing the baby when he wanted to play with me. He also removed a postcard that I had affixed to the inside cover of the journal – a card created by a young San Francisco theatre maker advertising a show, which had caught my fancy and seemed to sum up my experience of 2006 (the year I started the journal). The card has the single word Zen printed on it, but the surface of the card is very rough – essentially the same texture as sandpaper. I loved this visual/visceral metaphor of the fact that a state of being present isn’t always full of touchy feely flowery goodness. Sometimes being present really rubs you raw. Having Gman literally rip the Zen out of my inner life seems like another cosmic joke – haha on me if I think any amount of thinking and scribbling is going to stand up to the deep, dense, and passionately complicated experience of being a mama. G-d have mercy on me, and please keep my cupboards full of sticky tape.

Be well.

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 4:15 AM 0 comments

Thursday, March 06, 2008

 

GIGGLE

It’s 9:17am, and my ears are still ringing with the sound of my son’s laughter. As my husband and I rushed to get him shod, coated, back-packed and out the door for school, we were taking turns coming up with the world’s shortest story:

“Once upon a time, a boy named Gman ate oatmeal. The end.”

“Once upon a time, a boy named Gman said ‘No!’ The end.”

“Once upon a time, a boy named Gman got tickled. The end.”

We were all finding this hysterical. Especially Gman, who was giggling so hard he could barely breathe – a sound as pure as water bubbling in a mountain stream at dawn.

This giggle-fest was the climax of a long and funny morning, one which began inauspiciously at 6:30am, when Gman dragged me from my bed with the command “Let’s play!” During the winter months, he took his cue from the sun and stayed in bed until 7:30 or even the occasional blissful 8:00. But now, as the days grow longer, Gman seems to wake a few minutes earlier each day, and I usually find myself grumblingly roused before the sun is fully up.

I’m not very friendly when I’m awakened too early. I find it hard to muster enthusiasm, energy, and patience when I’m bone tired. But somehow today, despite my lethargy and the early hour, Gman and I fell down a rabbit-hole into a land of story-telling and make-believe that made our morning time magical and fun.

It started with wooden spoons. I was standing at the stove blearily stirring oatmeal, when Gabriel demanded to have my wooden spoon.

Gman: “And I need some eyes.”

Me: “Some what?”

Gman: “Eyes. For the spoon.”

Me: “Do you want to decorate it?”

Gman: “And some crayons. For the mouth.”

Me: “But honey, if you decorate it, then I can’t use it to stir the oatmeal.”

Gman: “And feathers.”

Me: “Honey, I can’t give you this spoon right now, I’m using it.”

Gman: “Where’s the glue?”

Me: “How about if we go buy some spoons for you to decorate after school.”

Gman: “No! I want to do it now.”

Me: “Well, sweetheart, I don’t have any other spoons that I’m not using, so why don’t we…”

Gman: “NOW!”

“Oh, here we go!” I thought. It’s going to be one of those mornings, where every little thing becomes a pain in the ass. But as our spoon conversation teetered perilously close to the brink of disaster, suddenly I remembered that Gman has his own little wooden spoon – part of a toddler cooking set. I dug it out and he immediately set to work decorating it. We got star stickers for the eyes, drew on a nose and mouth with crayons and glued feathers to the top for hair. Then I wrapped two pipe-cleaners around the stem for arms and legs. Gman was ecstatic. He spent a few minutes making his spoon (called “Kara”) dance around the table, and then he enthused “I want to make another!”

Oh shit. I started gearing up for a redirection campaign, but he was already rummaging in the utensil drawer. After a moment, he produced another small wooden spoon.

Me: “Oh! I forgot we had another one of those.”

Gman: “This one can be the Mama spoon!”

So, we decorated a second spoon (in between bites of oatmeal), who we named “Mama Spumoni Spoon,” and then we told a story about how she and her assistant “Kara” became tailors for the world’s tallest giraffe and fashioned him a special pair of yellow pants to wear to Bear’s birthday party. It was great.

And I found, suddenly, that I was using the best parts of myself (funny voices, knowledge of dramatic structure) to parent him through the morning tasks of eating, dressing and washing, instead of the worst parts (mean voices, knowledge of what makes a three-year old apoplectic.) It was all easy and effortless and good good fun. I don’t think we’ve ever enjoyed tooth-brushing or sock selection so much.

How did this happen? And why can’t it happen everyday? Why is it that some days all I can manage is to speak and act like a drone, while other days I actually relish pinning Gman under my booted heel as I force him to bend to my maternal will?

Laughter is like a miracle drug. It un-cramps the heart, de-fogs the brain, and dissolves conflict on contact. It delivers more sensorial satisfaction than any other substance on the market. And it’s free.

Now I am not a naturally funny person. In fact, some people might even call me a serious person. But I think it’s time to lighten up. I think I should start watching Comedy Central and reading comic books. I should learn some jokes. Because without a hefty dose of laughter in the mix, parenting is one long sorry slog through alligator-infested swampland. It’s Sartre’s No Exit on repeat play. It’s an endless turn at the rigged carnival basketball toss, where you miss again and again and again.

So my mantra for today is “Keep laughing!”

It’s much better than crying, arguing, begging, whining, ignoring, yelling, cajoling, banishing, berating, threatening, bartering, or beating!

Be well.

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 2:15 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

 

NAG

I am a nag this morning, in every sense of the word.

It started yesterday at Mom/Baby yoga class. This class occurs in a true yoga center – the kind where people who are in great shape strut around with perfect posture while wearing high-tech exercise gear (rather than slouching around in old sweatpants.) About twenty woman and twenty babies pack a room and attempt to open their chests, stretch their limbs, and deepen their breathing amid shrieks and babbles and cries and in between bouts of breast-feeding and nappy-changing. On a good day, this room feels like the best place to be, an absolute fountain of teeming, squalling life. On a bad day, it feels like one of the deeper layers of Dante’s Inferno, an endless river of unanswerable need competing with sore muscles and aching bones.

One of the alarming discoveries I made in class yesterday is that my body feels broken, deeply broken, in about 100 different places. As I tried to manage the poses, most of which were fairly gentle, I started receiving all kinds of frantic neural messages from parts of my body that have been largely abandoned and ignored these last 11 months – my toes, the soles of my feet, my calves, the backs of my arms, the sides of my neck. It seems like every part of me is stiff, sore, and out of alignment. This is not surprising given that I created, nurtured, and carried a rather heavy life inside of me for a long time. It’s just that I hadn’t realized it was this bad.

I think I have now entered the dreaded Third Post-Partum Phase. During Phase 1 (roughly the first month after birth), you are completely focused on healing and accomplishing basic tasks - eating, sleeping, peeing, showering - with as little pain as possible. You are, of course, also pleasantly obsessed with the miracle of your baby – the fact that s/he exists and that you made her or him from scratch. Then during Phase 2, you start to feel pretty good. You've stopped bleeding. You’ve kind of figured out how the baby works and maybe even developed a little routine. You've lost a bunch of the pregnancy weight. You start to appreciate the absence of your big belly and your ability to bend over. You start thinking "Hey! I'm getting my groove back!" This phase can last quite awhile. With Gman, I think I was in good spirits and feeling like a Mama Super Star until he was about 6 months old.

But eventually, Phase 3 kicks in, usually when you finally try to resume all your regular life activities (including exercise), and you become aware of just how drained you are from nurturing and carrying your little one, inside for all those months, and now outside as they get bigger and more voracious for everything you have to offer everyday. The Chinese say it takes a woman 5 years to fully restore her chi after having a baby, and I believe them. Every muscle in my body hurts. My pelvis is out of allignment. My upper back is on fire from holding the baby and carting around the milk jugs I call breasts. My immune system is out of whack. I'm getting nosebleeds. I have very painful plantar's fascitis in my feet. And I have hemmorhoids, which aren't going away (lovely.) So there's some more healing to be done, and it's going to take awhile.

And then there’s my mood. My baby honeymoon is over a lot quicker this time, and it’s back to reality – and the realization that the kids are here to stay! Both of them! I’m crabby. I’m cranky. I’m feeling impatient. Not a great platform from which to lovingly mother a boisterous and impish 3-year old. Gman woke up at 5:45am this morning, and because we could not deal, we popped him in front of the tube for a couple of hours. Not an auspicious start for any morning. By the time I got up he was a) Bored, b) Hungry, c) Ready for Attention (either positive or negative). And I just wanted him to sit down, shut up, eat his breakfast, and get dressed and washed without a hassle. We were not on the same wave-length. And so I started in with The Nag – the “you need to…” and “if you can’t, then I’m gonna…” and “Normal children do what their parents ask of them,” blah, blah, blah. The poor kid.

When I finally shuttled Gman and his dad out the door, grabbed my much-needed coffee and sat down to my email, I was greeted with a lovely message from my mama-in-law. She’s a good mama – one of the best. And she’s been meditating for 30 years – now that’s gotta help. So, we’ll call her Mama Zen. Here’s what she told me:

"It sounds pretty dreary and difficult over there, and I've been trying
to come up with words of wisdom to offer. There's always the usual:

 It's all perfect.

 Everything's an opportunity.

The best: keep counting your blessings/gratitude.

 All are true but sometimes words are just words.

 My best words for now are "hang in there".

Did I tell you this? I was at a deli last August. It was Sunday morning and there was a long line of people waiting to order their bagels and coffee, etc. On the line was a mother with a boychild of about 8 or 9. When it was finally her turn, she ordered a hot dog for her son. It was morning and the hot dogs weren't ready yet. She got off the line to re-negotiate her son's order. He was quite difficult but she finally got back on the line and ordered a roll with butter when it was her turn. I was still on the line. A few minutes later, she returned to the counter. Apparently, her son got a seeded roll, not a plain roll - and that was not acceptable. She was beside herself. I touched her arm and said to her: "Don't worry. They grow up. My sons took me on a trip to Sedona for my 60th birthday". Before I left, she came over to me and said "thank you"."


Blessing Counting. Perhaps the most critical tool people (and especially parents) can use to get through an ordinary day without major mishap. The concept captured my attention last summer, during a conversation with Mama Zen about why she hadn’t knit something for Gman when he was a baby like she’d planned to. We recalled that she had broken her wrist that summer (hence no knitting), and as she recounted the details of the experience, she kept coming up with all the good things that had happened: "thank G-d it was my left and not my right", "I had very good doctors," etc. And I asked her how she could think of such a difficult thing in such a positive way, and she said "Well, you know I'm a blessing counter, from way-back." Just like that. And I thought, "How do I become one of those?!" I've been working on it ever since. I think it’s going to take a long-time to become a habit, so when I can, I try to make a daily practice of it. I do it while bringing Gabriel home from school (a long and laborious trip that I often find boring). “I’m grateful that it’s not raining.” “I’m grateful that I remembered to bring a snack.” “I’m grateful that we live in a neighborhood with such beautiful trees.” “I’m grateful that I have warm clothes for my kids to wear.” Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Small and obvious steps to shift oneself out of the cramped and thorny Nag zone and into the lush and open plain of Gratitude. Thanks Mama Zen. For reminding me to breathe, and count my blessings, and “hang in there.”

Be well.


Photo by jogiboarder


Labels: , ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 2:54 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

 
The name is Bub. James Bub. Master of Disguise.

BLESSINGS


Gman went back to school yesterday, after nearly a week at home due to chicken pox. Since he’s been immunized (unlike British kids), he had an extremely mild case with only a dozen spots and absolutely no other symptoms. Nonetheless, civic protocol required me to keep him home for a week, so it was 5 long days of double-mama duty, my first experience of this delight. But while I initially dreaded my plunge into the parental cold-pool, honestly, I enjoyed our week together. Like all new things, it was scary at first: “How will I keep him from jumping on Miss V and covering her with pox-infested kisses?”, “How will I keep from killing him if he spends all day throwing attitude at me like he’s been doing lately.” But despite my worries, I figured it out and managed (mostly) to keep my temper. There were massive play sessions involving all the pillows and balls in the house. Chaos was created and cleaned up hourly. There were lots of snacks and lots of tv. We did leave the house a couple of times to go to the park – outdoors being the only safe place for a kid with the pox – but even on the days we stayed inside, we somehow found a way to pass the time.


And I discovered, as I often do when I am most at odds with Gman, that the more time I spend with him, the more quickly I find solutions to mend what ails us. Enforced togetherness forces me to really listen to him and be more creative in my parenting. And having some fun together doesn’t hurt either. It’s odd, but I often find that my worst parenting days are followed by my best parenting days – like I’m attached to some kind of cosmic bungee-cord, ricocheting between the depths and the heights of the parental plane. Smack your kid on Saturday and by Tuesday you may have discovered a new and fun way to get him to eat his vegetables, while simultaneously developing his pre-literacy skills and building his self-confidence. Bizarre. So I guess the pox, like so many unexpected events, was a blessing in disguise.


And now, one blessing has yielded another. Having lost my solitude for a week, I am doubly grateful to have it again. Lord Limescale is still working part-time for the next few days and generously taking Gman to school and picking him up, which means that I have nearly SEVEN UNINTERRUPTED HOURS OF SOLITUDE each day. Those of you with children will appreciate how remarkable this gift is. It is great great great to have so much QUIET – kind of like Body Butter for the soul – it lubes up all my creative parts and creates a deep and gentle sense of satisfaction. Just being in my house, getting to putter and do all my homegirl activities, getting to stare out the window at the shadows shifting on the house opposite ours, getting to stare at my baby, getting to nap – all these simple pleasures are so much sweeter because they were denied me last week.


One of Gman’s favorite games lately is to make my voice “disappear.” He’ll say “Abracadabra!” and I’ll move my mouth without sound, pretending that I have no voice. Then he’ll repeat the magic words and my voice will return. He usually likes to play when he’s in need of a power boost, and I don’t mind, because he giggles a lot in a really cute way while he does it. But it reminds me that sometimes I wish I could make his voice disappear! He talks more and more each day – clearly he is carrying on the legacy of verbosity that derives from my mother and myself – each day questions, stories, ideas, narrations, and all manner of mumbling, whining and other patter erupts from him in ever growing torrents. He is, in fact, almost never silent – just like he is almost never still. I remember one of the phrases that stood out when I read The Mommy Myth a few years back was that in addition to all the good stuff, raising children also entails a lot of mundane, boring, and just plain annoying parts, one of which is the “enervating noise.” That certainly rings true for me. The best part about the solitude my special post-partum period affords me is a chance to escape that noise for a little while, so I can hear the sound of my own thoughts again, and the quiet rhythmic hum of my own trusty soul.


Be well.

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 4:15 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

 
UNTIL NOW...


I was sitting on the couch this morning, holding the warm, cuddly bundle that is Miss V, and thinking about time. Well, actually, I was spacing out, but occasionally a thought would drift through my head like the tail smoke of a jet blazing across a cloudless sky. It sounded something like this…”Breathe in. Breathe out. Warm. Steam on windows. Heater blowing. What was I doing last year at this time? Breathe in. Breathe out. Rustle. Gurgle. Burp. My foot hurts. I wonder why? Breathe in. Breathe out. A year ago, Miss V didn’t exist.”

So, I pulled out my 2006 journal and settled back on the couch for my annual ritual of re-reading last year’s inner thoughts. As is often the case, a lot has changed in a year. And also, things are exactly the same. Apparently on November 22nd of 2006 – the page to which the journal cracked open and also the last pre-London entry – I was thinking about how to lighten up and appreciate the good stuff. Work I am actively pursuing this week as well. The backstory on this entry (which I have excerpted below), is that my good friend Aphrodite - who is not only the most passionate woman I know, but also a genuine goddess in her quest for truth and wisdom, who I have known for (gasp!) nearly 20 years, and who has also given me the great gift of being my personal coach for the past few years – once shared with me a core concept from her coaching model: the phrase until now…I see this phrase as a literal get-out-jail-free card, as in “Until now…I have allowed other people’s expectations to shape my choices, but I will now trust my own desires.” Or, “Until now…I have devoured potato chips mindlessly, but I will now fill my body with better fuel.” You should try it – it’s better than dark chocolate and twice as addictive. C’mon, think of something you catch yourself doing over and over again that pains you in some way and let this magic phrase peal from your lips…

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I’ve been thinking about A’s phrase until now…and the freedom it offers of just being able to walk away from old behaviors that you don’t want to engage in anymore. I’d like to walk away from the self I’ve been for the last 4 months, maybe even for the last 2 years. The fearful, cramped, anxious-about-her-career, exhausted, beleaguered, whining, complaining Minkgirl. I’d like to give her a vacation – maybe Tahiti or the South of France. I’d like to see her come back with long hair and a tan, wearing a sari and barefoot. I’d like to see her cock her head to the side while chewing on a blade of grass and say “Man…I like that.”

While she’s gone, a new Minkgirl could move into her house and spruce up the place – roll up the window shades and open all the doors – air the place out. Put fresh bunches of wildflowers all around and silly figurines in unexpected places. Erect permanent (or rather impermanent) monuments to pleasure throughout the house – a pile of laundry to jump in like new fallen leaves, a treasure hunt of books leading from one room to the next, beautiful pictures and words cut from magazines pasted all over the walls. There will always be music playing and something sweet baking in the oven. When you ring the bell, this Minkgirl will answer the door laughing about something Gman has said, and she will invite you to come and sit on the kitchen floor with her and watch the light fade from the sky while you sing songs about love.

A nice vision – this alternative self who knows how to appreciate simple pleasures. I picked up Mommy Mantras again this weekend, a sweet and sensible little book that I was also reading around this time last year, when the nights were oh-so-long and Gman was punishing us in every conceivable way for rocking his world by moving to London. Here’s the phrase that caught my attention both then and now:

It's not about what we do wrong, but rather about what we do next.

Another way of saying until now…It’s not about falling off the horse – there is absolutely no way to avoid that, no matter how long or how skillfully we ride – it’s about how quickly you can recover and get back in the saddle. That idea does a lot to chase away negative self-esteem when I make mistakes.

The human brain is so complicated – we have to build such elaborate mental castles to trick ourselves into seeing what’s already there – how good and beautiful life is. I seem to live perpetually in need of an attitude adjustment. Maybe everyone does. A positive attitude, like any other good thing in one’s life – an intimate relationship, a vocation – requires daily recommitment. What I’m looking for is a few more tools to help me and the others in my family remember to make that commitment. We have our Friday night Shabbat ritual, and that really helps, and sometimes (if I can remember) I do yoga or a little meditation, but we need even more tools to help us remember to look on the bright side. Like a warm and totally trusting body lying in one’s arms reminding us to stop, breathe, and just be.

Be well.

Labels: , , ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 6:24 AM 2 comments

Monday, January 21, 2008

 
SLAP

One of the most common questions people have been asking us about life on Planet New Baby is “How is Gman handling having a new sister?” For the first 10 days, I had the pleasure of replying “Oh, he’s doing great! He’s so excited about Miss V, and he’s being so loving and helpful.” But sometime last week Angel Honeychild Gman was replaced by his evil twin Push Mommy’s Buttons Until She Screams Gman. I’ve been screaming a lot lately, as my son has begun refusing to do all rudimentary tasks (ie. get dressed, eat food, brush teeth) and generally responds to any request I make of him with an adolescent-style sneer and a loud and obnoxious “Mama, NO WAY!” Add to this the fact that he is systematically testing every limit we’ve ever set¸ and the fact that he’s been physically and verbally aggressive with both his father and me (thank god none of it has been directed toward Miss V…yet), and you have a sense of the seething context in which my all-time worst parenting moment occurred this past Saturday.

Do I feel you leaning in?…Ready for a good glimpse of some stinky dirty laundry?...A story that will be you feel better about any sub-standard parenting you’ve done this week? On Saturday, I slapped my son across the face. In a really public place. He shrieked and cried like I’d lit him on fire and wouldn’t stop, and so, we had to carry him kicking and screaming (sans shoes, sans coat) from the building out into the cold, and find a public bench on which to collapse, recover, and lick our wounds.

Now as much as I know this will shock my readers, I cannot claim that I’ve never raised a hand to my little bundle of joy before. In fact, there was a dark time during the first few months after we moved to London when it was a good day if I only spanked him once. Although personally, I think anything that we do to our children between the ages of 2 and 3 should be automatically expunged from our permanent parenting record, because let’s face it…they probably deserved it. But I draw the line right above the bum. Hitting a kid in the face…well, that’s pretty fucking low. Talk about conditional love. Displease mom and she’ll give you a good taste of her right hook. Never mind that he hit me first, also in the face, as hard as he could. Never mind that we were completely at our wits’ end after trying for 15 minutes to get him to exit an indoor play area – the kind with a 4-story cage in which a small child could disappear and join a band of Lost Boys, because the apertures of the various slides and inner sanctums are too small for ordinary grown-ups to squeeze through and catch the little buggers. Never mind that we know Gman is experiencing deep emotions about the sea change his family has undergone and that he has no ability to express this except through tantrums and other histrionic displays. It all happened so fast – he hit me, I hit him – and then we were standing in a bog of our own making while literally hundreds of other parents and children looked on. Talk about humiliation.

It took me the rest of the night to recover. We managed to straggle home and feed ourselves. And then I called my friend Dee, who has been riding on the Double-Decker Mama bus for nearly a year now. Besides being a kick-ass parent, Dee has a Ph.D. in Education, and a great sense of humor. She assured me that my slap hadn’t left any permanent scars and that even though it will probably take us months to sort out how to negotiate Gman’s insecurities and anxieties with any grace and how to operate effectively as a family of 4, we are not going to break our children before we get there. David and I were gloating the other night how much easier it is to deal with an infant the second time – you already know how to care for them, I can breast-feed without using 6 pillows, both hands and a special footstool, we’re not so terrified every 10 minutes that we’ve inadvertently killed our baby. But I can now see that compared to people who’ve had multiples for more than 3 weeks, I am a total fucking neophyte. It’s like I’ve been cruising along for ages on level 7 of my favorite video-game, feeling all stud-like ‘cause of how well I can avoid the space invaders and beasties, and suddenly I got bumped up to level 42, where I’m getting blown up or having my spine sucked out my nostrils every few seconds.

I woke up on Sunday and thought “OK, Game on dude!” I think this parenting thing is going to get a lot harder for awhile. And so I need to work out, eat my Wheaties, take my vitamins and be prepared each day for a whole new level of mental, physical and spiritual engagement. I remember during the first year of Gman’s life, I often thought that parenting was a kind of visceral form of Buddhism, because the daily lessons of living with an infant usually encompassed that religion’s core concepts: Live in the moment, Don’t make assumptions, Practice detachment from your own ego and agenda, Everything and Everyone is interconnected. And like so much of life, I find myself back on a familiar street again – Parenting as Buddhist Practice Part 2. I think I’ve still got the course books hidden somewhere in the back of a closet. And I’m pretty sure my Humility Robe still fits. Ah universe, you are wily and cunning in your unwillingness to let us forget what we have learned. I hope I’ll remember a little longer this time.

Be well.


Photo by J Belluch.

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 7:25 AM 3 comments

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

 

HOLIDAY

It's 11am on Boxing Day, and there is nothing to be done. This is a good thing. The presents have been bought, wrapped, opened, and played with. The feast has been eaten and the kitchen is clean. We've made our family phonecalls, wined and dined our elderly neighbor, and created enough clean clothes that we can almost see the bottom of the hamper. And while no one in England can exactly tell me what Boxing Day is about (they all claim they can't remember!), my interpretation is that it is a day when you get to live "box-free" - no labels apply. You are not mommy-daddy-child-master-servant-boss-worker. You are just you. And you are free to do what you like. Nothing is open. No work can be done. You don't even have to worry about feeding yourself, because there are loads of left-overs in the fridge. All you have to do is take pleasure in the moment-to-moment experience of the day - look out the window, enjoy the crunch of pine needles underfoot, eat some Christmas pudding for breakfast, watch movies on telly, take a nap. Easy.

I used to get wiggly on days like this. I found it difficult to turn off my internal accomplishment meter and live a full day without crossing anything off my to-do list or evaluating whether I had effectively used my time. But I'm starting to understand that these rare opportunities to "unplug" are some of the greatest gifts our culture has to offer us. Of course it helps when you're living in a country where the stores are not open at 7am the day after Christmas for follow-up shopping. But even in America, where the winter holidays have evolved into a holy daze of buying and consuming, there is still the chance to come to rest, even for a moment. To embrace and embody the spirit of joyful stillness - waiting for the baby to arrive, watching a star move slowly across the sky, listening for sleigh bells on the roof, spacing out in front of the tree with your hand on the knee of someone you love.

I hope you all experience such moments of peace and stillness this week. And for those of you who are curious, see below what Wikipedia has to say about Boxing Day.

Be well.

Boxing Day is a traditional celebration, dating back to the Middle Ages, and consisted of the practice of giving out gifts to employees, the poor, or to people in a lower social class. The more common stories include:

  • It was the day when people would give a present or Christmas box to those who had worked for them throughout the year.
  • In feudal times, Christmas was a reason for a gathering of extended families. All the serfs would gather their families in the manor of their lord, which made it easier for the lord of the estate to hand out annual stipends to the serfs. After all the Christmas parties on 26 December, the lord of the estate would give practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each family would get a box full of such goods the day after Christmas. Under this explanation, there was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor was obliged to supply these goods. Because of the boxes being given out, the day was called Boxing Day.
  • In England many years ago, it was common practice for the servants to carry boxes to their employers when they arrived for their day's work on the day after Christmas. Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts. This can be compared with the modern day concept of Christmas bonuses. The servants carried boxes for the coins, hence the name Boxing Day.
  • In churches, it was traditional to open the church's donation box on Christmas Day, and the money in the donation box was to be distributed to the poorer or lower class citizens on the next day. In this case, the "box" in "Boxing Day" comes from that lockbox in which the donations were left.
  • Boxing Day was the day when the wren, the king of birds,[4] was captured and put in a box and introduced to each household in the village when he would be asked for a successful year and a good harvest.
  • Because the staff had to work on such an important day as Christmas by serving the master of the house and their family, they were given the following day off. As servants were kept away from their own families to work on a traditional religious holiday and were not able to celebrate Christmas Dinner, the customary benefit was to "box" up the leftover food from Christmas Day and send it away with the servants and their families. (Similarly, as the servants had the 26th off, the owners of the manor may have had to serve themselves pre-prepared, boxed food for that one day.) Hence the "boxing" of food became "Boxing Day".

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 3:09 AM 0 comments

Friday, November 23, 2007

 

THANKSGIVING

We celebrated thanksgiving yesterday - in true expat style - by having some Brits over for a voyeuristic feast. They were fascinated by the whole affair and had a lot of questions: "Do you give gifts?," "What are yams?," "Is this a celebration of Independence from Britain?"

Their queries made me consider the holiday in a new light, as I explained that it is actually a harvest festival celebrating the memory of the good first harvest that Native Americans helped early settlers achieve and the promise of a winter of plenty instead of starvation. That last part really caught my attention as I said it, and made me finally understand why this holiday is perhaps the most significant one in the American calendar. The Thanksgiving feast isn't just about giving thanks for what we have, it's also about demonstrating to ourselves and our families that we are going to be okay in the future - we have enough to get through the dark time of winter - we will survive. Looking at it in that light, our tradition of over-eating on this day seems less like gluttony and more like a celebration of human potential.

I remember when my sister lived in Africa, she told me how important feast days were in the local community. People who didn't quite have enough to eat on a regular basis would save up their money and spend it all on an occasional blow-out feast, rather than spending it little by little and eating more each day. She said this confused her at first, but ultimately she realized that the joy of feasting was greater than that of an extra daily helping. Feasting makes us feel full and satisfied in a special way - it is something to look forward to - to revel in. And a sense of abundance (even a short-lived one) pushes back the tendrils of mortal dread that perpetually linger in the backs of our minds, waiting for a dark day to sprout.

So while I once considered it foolish to spend 8 hours cooking for the 20-minute pleasure of eating a big meal among friends and family, I am a new convert to the symbolic value of the feast. As I peel potatoes and layer them w/ salt, pepper, nutmeg and cream (my grandmother's recipe for Potatoes Dauphinaise), I am not just making a savory side-dish, I am manifesting the love my grandmother had for her family and that I have for mine in sensory form. And the smell and taste of this dish carry with them a wave of memories, of childhood afternoons spent at other tables, with everyone wearing their best clothes, and football on in the background, and the general warmth and ease of a day when nothing was expected except that we eat and lie around and enjoy each other's company.

I hope you had a good thanksgiving, that you were with people you love (or at least like), and that you too were calmed and coddled by the familiar smells and tastes. I leave you with the beautiful words of my friend Yosha, who eloquently captures what is best about this season:

"Holidays. Little girls (and boys!). The familiar pressure of weather, blankets, families; the density that accumulates at the bottom of the year. We gather what comfort we can and keep it close, hunker down in our pocket of safety, and get slow and rich and sweet and sleepy. It's good to be alive, and to know each other."
Be well.

Photo by caldjr

Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 4:13 AM 1 comments

Monday, November 12, 2007

 

LADY O

My son's heart is broken today. I heard it split and fray like a guitar-string late last night, as he came wailing down the hall wracked with the imagined terrors of a dream. He was crying too hard to tell me what he saw, but he begged me to come back to his room with him, and it took him a long time to settle down. I spent the better part of an hour snoozing on the floor next to his bed (something my body is ill-suited for these days), with his hand resting on my belly (his fetishistic security blanket). When I finally left him, he was sleeping face down in a baby-style crouch with his butt in the air, breathing hard.

This morning on the way to school he told me that he dreamed that he and Lady O went to the zoo, and that they were sooo excited to be there. Lady O is his best friend and first crush - who moved to Boston a few days ago. The two became buddies at their preschool, and even though she is nearly a year older than he is, they really hit it off. Their match was based on the fact that she's an active tom-girl and he's a verbal and expressive boy. So it worked. She kind of bossed him around and he loved it. Their relationship gave me a pleasant preview of the kind of strong and assured women who I think will capture his heart in the future. It also showed me just how deep and fierce Gman's passions run. In a conversation a few weeks ago, when we were discussing our favorite things, I told Gman he was my favorite person. He replied with "O is my favorite person. I like her soooo much. I wish she could play at my house everyday."

And she pretty much did play with him everyday, because I picked her up from school about 3 days a week, since her mom needed coverage for some part-time work. And we frequently went on outings together on days off. In the week before Lady O moved, I think they saw each other 8 out of 10 days. So it was quite a shift - a rending - when they separated. And even though Gman has already weathered separation from a number of people he loved - he said goodbye to another best friend M back in SF last winter, his grandmother this summer, and various aunts and uncles and other beloveds appear and disappear in his life regularly - even though he understands where she has gone and that he will no longer see her everyday, he still craves her like a drug. And I cannot tell him how long that pain will last - who can know? And even if I could, he doesn't understand time yet anyway - tomorrow is as mysterious to him as last week or next year. He lives in the eternal present. And in today's present he has lost something very very precious to him.

I wish there was something that I could do to ease his pain. I can help him write her a post-card, broker an occasional awkward phone conversation, and remind him that she still loves him even though she is far away. But I know these measures are small, too hopelessly small to contain or soothe the flood of feeling he is experiencing, but which he has no words for. And of course, one of the strangest feature of this whole situation is the fact that most likely Gman will not remember Lady O at all when he's an older child. In fact, most of the blessed little life he has lived to this point will fade into oblivion as he grows up, because the part of his brain that stores memory is still developing. At best, he might have a handful of mental snapshots of his life here in London, enhanced by our actual photos and stories, but he probably won't really remember it as something that happened to him, it will be more like a movie he saw once.

I know time is the only cure here. In a few weeks, her image will fade in his mind and other friends or activities will claim his attention. He will survive this experience and learn from it more about how life works. But that's a little sad for me too - because life is full of hardships and suffering, and I would like to keep the wool pulled over his eyes about that score a little longer. I was looking at his little body the other day and marveling over the fact that he already has an inner life - an internal landscape that I have no control over - one in which he relives and processes what he sees and experiences around him. And sometimes the landscape is ugly and scary and painful. Sometimes it causes him to wake up screaming. And all I can do is stroke him in the dark, whisper soothing nothings, and hope that in the morning that joyful light will be burning brightly again in his eyes.

Be well.

Labels: , ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 6:25 AM 1 comments

Sunday, September 30, 2007

 

THE BOX

I can't wait for my box to arrive. Tomorrow is the day. For the 3rd time, we will receive a medium organic box with 10 items, mostly vegetables, from the Shropshire Organic Farm in, well, I guess Shropshire. I don't know why it took me so long to go down this obvious garden path. I guess I was waiting for the right time. I mooned over organic box programs in SF on more than one occasion, but found myself unwilling to commit to a weekly cooking regimen that might include vegetables I have no idea how to prepare. I pictured grim weekends full of frantic aubergine and cauliflower consumption in order to make space for the next box. But here's the beauty of this box scheme (in England everything is a "scheme" rather than a "plan" or a "program", which always makes me feel like I'm doing something slightly illicit,) it comes from the supermarket. This means that we control when the box arrives, rather than being committed to a set schedule. Thus, if we haven't chewed our way through one box, we can dely the arrival of the next simply by not going grocery shopping (okay, actually the groceries are delivered, but the same principle applies.) I also have more time on my hands these days, and so I can afford to spend some of it investigating how to prepare runner beans on the internet and then trying out different approaches until we find one we like.

When our first box arrived, I left it sitting open on Gabriel's little table in our kitchen for him to discover. He came home from school, wandered into the kitchen, and exclaimed "Mama! What's this?" He then spent about 45 minutes taking each item out of the box, naming it, putting it back into the box and then repeating the cycle. At one point he was walking around the kitchen triumphantly with an apple in one hand, a red pepper in another and a carrot (with fluffy green top still on) stuffed in his pocket, casually alternating bites between each item. He actually uttered the words "I want to try that" when he spotted the head of lettuce - words I have never heard my too-busy-for-food offspring emit. Upon learning that the head of green leaves was called "lettuce", he sagely recalled "goats eat lettuce." To which I replied "people do too." And without so much as a by your leave, he tore off a great big leaf and started to munch on it.

Getting the box has changed my life overnight in a couple of important ways. First, for the last 2 weeks I have been making my weekly menus based on what comes in the box, rather than what I arbitrarily imagine in my head or what a recipe book says I should cook. This is probably an obvious point to a lot of people, but it's a big new thought for me. "Oh, I could cook based on what's in season and what's available locally, rather than based on a set of recipes or principles that have no relationship to the place and season I am living in." Next, it occurs to me that maybe my son has never shown much interest in vegetables, or fruits for that matter, because mostly what I have offered him has been divorced from it's natural environment - ie. baby carrots lathed, scrubbed and packaged in plastic. I taught him how to eat red, green and yellow peppers awhile back by showing him the whole pepper, exploring the smell and texture with him and then cutting it open to reveal the seeds and the hollow interior. We sliced off rings and wore them as bracelets around our wrists. We tried biting straight into the peppers without bothering to cut out the seeds first. We've investigated peppers from top to bottom, and now when he finds them cut up in his stirfry, he doesn't flinch like he used to, I think mainly because he has some intimacy with the food in its whole state. He likes to eat his grapes off the stem too, rather than carefully destemmed and piled in a bowl. Intuitively, he seems to be interested in food that is as close to its natural state as possible. And of course, the vegetables that have come in our boxes thus far taste fantastic. The peppers were super sweet, the courgettes juicy, the lettuce buttery and crisp.

The other thing I like about the box is that it has made me think more about how far the rest of my food travels. This has already been on my mind, because "food miles" are a big deal in England. Not only is there a heavy "Buy British" marketing campaign going on at the moment, but "how the common citizen can contribute to global reduction of carbon emissions" is a constant topic in the daily news. I've been interested in buying local food for years, but somehow the intense schism here between the growing public awareness of the value of local food and the fact that British supermarkets still import a ton of food from places like South America (which is over 8,000 miles away!), has really highlighted the issue in my mind. My discomfort with having my food flown into my kitchen was highlighted recently - in the same supermarket order that yielded my first box, I also received a package of organic beef (Baby Pickle has been asking for iron.) I felt comfortable ordering organic beef from the supermarket because I assumed it would be British beef, since Britain produces so much of it. But when I unpacked my groceries, I discovered that my steak had originated in Argentina, and I totally freaked out. I wasn't concerned about the quality (Argentina is famous for its beef), but I absolutely could not get over the fact that this pound and a half of steak had flown 1/2 way around the world to be in my kitchen. It seemed the functional equivalent of drinking gasoline. As it turned out, the steak actually wasn't very good - too tough - but I felt desperate to finish every morsel of it. My suddenly awakened food morality was overwhelmed by the idea that I would toss even an ounce of this extraordinarily expensive (in environmental terms) beef into the bin. And so, I have decided that from now on we are only going to buy meat from the local butcher. And I think the same is going to be true of fruit and vegetables as well - no more grapes from Chile, apples from New Zealand, or asparagus from Guatemala. I'm still on the fence about bananas (which only grow in tropical climates), but I working my way toward a "no tropicals" policy.

It's funny how you can stare a thing in the face for years and then something small can change your perspective just enough that you can really see it. Watching my son dance around the kitchen with a smile on his face and vegetables tumbling out of his arms was the last push I needed to fully embrace a "Slow Food" mentality for our family. If you have children, you know that there is almost no greater pleasure than knowing their bellies are full of vegetables. The feeling is a solid "this-is-all-I-need-to-be-happy" kind of contentment that transcends almost everything else. If my child is well-nourished, I have done my job as a parent and I can relax knowing that he will grow according to his own and nature's plan. There is almost nothing else I need to do.

So I sit here tonight, on my cozy red couch, replete with the anticipation of another such moment of fullness tomorrow. When the box comes, Gabriel will paw through it, possibly trying some new foods or reacquainting himself with the texture and taste of his old favorites. And I will crack open the cookbooks and start developing the specific manifestations of my new strategy for weekly menus - eat the delicate things and the strange things first! - and share a small prayer with the universe that we should be blessed with so much bounty.

Be well.


Labels: ,


# posted by Christine Young @ 11:56 AM 0 comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?