Minkgirl Muses

OATMEAL

I’m sitting in front of my favorite window this morning, enjoying the play of winter sunlight on the whitewashed house across the street and eating a bowl of oatmeal. Oatmeal is the breakfast of choice for British women (of course, they call it porridge, a word I’ve never been able to embrace, because it conjures up creepy images of soot-smudged Dickensian orphans for me.) Oatmeal is quick and easy to make for the kids and mums like to eat it too, mainly because it satisfies the four F’s: it’s filling, full of fiber, not fattening, and free! Okay, it’s not actually free, but a box of Quaker oats costs about £1.09 here – the equivalent of $2.25 – and you can get about 20 bowls of oatmeal out of it for an average cost of 10 cents a bowl. I usually doctor mine with some raisins, brown sugar and chopped apple, so throw in another 75 cents for the fancy extras, and you’ve still got a meal that comes in under a buck. But I think mainly women eat it because it helps them lose weight – all the mums I know do anyway. With a glop of oatmeal in your belly, you can go hours and hours without eating again, plus eating something that looks as yucky as oatmeal makes you feel gastronomically virtuous – it’s essentially the opposite of a chocolate bar.

Women’s bodies are such tricky things. It seems that we’re always trying to grow and shrink them according to various alchemical formulas in order to turn ourselves into pure gold. Like Rapunzel, we wake up each day full of hope that we can accomplish this obscenely impossible task, if we’re just a little more diligent, a little more faithful, a little more willing to believe that the perfect body will bring us perfect happiness.

My body has never been more imperfect, but I’ve never been more satisfied with it. First of all, I am THRILLED not to be pregnant anymore. Lord Limescale asked me recently if I feel kind of smug when I pass pregnant women on the street. The answer is “Absolutely!” I want to dance a nasty little jig in front of them while yodeling “Haha chubbo! My baby’s out and I can see my toes again!” And G-d willing, that’s it for me now – any future belly I grow will be of my own and not Nature’s making.

But I think the main source of my satisfaction is that I feel immensely PROUD of my body for what it has accomplished. It grew, carried and birthed a really healthy (and really heavy) baby for a very long time. It produced all the hormones, natural painkillers and other metabolic wonder drugs I needed to make it through these radical transformations, and it now creates and dispenses the perfect food to nourish and grow this baby into a stronger and more capable human. My body did all of this despite the fact that I regularly ate crisps, occasionally drank wine, and often forgot to take my prenatal vitamins during my pregnancy. It did all of this whether or not I got exercise or enough sleep, whether or not I was feeling upbeat and positive or exhausted and depressed. It did all of this because that’s what bodies do, that’s what they’re made for – not modeling Minolo shoes or looking good on elliptical machines. They’re made for life – living it, creating it, enjoying it.

Now lucky for me, I happen to LIKE oatmeal. I didn’t always, but somehow I’ve come around to the pleasure of a warm bowl of organic oats infused with honey, pecans and sultanas (golden raisins) eaten on a cold morning. I eat it because it tastes good to me and it makes me feel good – happily it will also keep my insides healthy and maybe make me a little svelter. As I eat my oatmeal this morning, I salute British women everywhere who are forgoing rashers of streaky bacon (the national food I think) in favor of bowls of steaming porridge. I salute women whose bodies are the very bricks and mortar of the civilization thriving around us – women who wake up each day prepared to give themselves completely to whatever task lies ahead, whether it involves poop or politics – women whose belly skin sags and shifts into mystical formations of wrinkles as they burp and cuddle their babies, women who are packing extra pounds from eating comfort food after a day spent delivering comfort to others, women whose feet are sore from kicking ass in the corporate jungle. I salute you and wish you all the kind of cozy pleasure my oatmeal has brought me this morning.

Be well.

Labels: Community Muses, Mamahood, My Favorite Things

We went to Paris last weekend - Lord Limescale and I - alone. It was our last hurrah, a final opportunity for romantic revelry before we fully succumb to the joyous riot of double-parenthood. And it was a revelation to be just ourselves for 48 hours. I didn't bend over once, and my belly thanked me for it. We sucked the marrow out of the juicy chicken that is made from sleep, sex and serious eating. We walked and walked along the beautiful autumnal Seine and up and down the hills of Monmartre, and I felt fine - no aches and pains, no sciatica, no irritating pounding in my head from all the extra blood shushing around.

Paris is truly a great city - maybe the best city. I like London, but Paris beats the pants off anything the Big Smoke can offer. The best part about being there was how it is exactly the same as it was when I first visited 20 years ago. Paris has succeeded in retaining the charm and originality of its inherent character, rather than succumbing to the contemporary plague of marketing ads that cover every square inch of public space and the nauseatingly ubiquitous chain stores that seem to have completely taken over London. Okay, we did see a couple of Starbucks, but they were on really touristy streets, and they had small signs! I look forward to returning to Paris in another 20 years and finding the same bistro we had dinner at this time and being served the same menu, possibly by the same waiter!

Here are a few of the highlights from our 48 hours of freedom:

1) Walking through the quaint narrow streets of Ile St-Louis while floodlights from riverboats cast dappled shadows on the whitewashed buildings.

2) Sharing an entire bottle of vin rouge w/ Lord Limescale over dinner and having no one look at me funny.

3) Looking out over the city from the top of the Pompidou.

4) Eating raclette in a tiny family-run restaurant in Montmartre.

5) Eating fresh croissants while riding a boat up the Seine on a gloriously sunny morning.

6) Eating oysters and a huge plate of cheese for lunch.

7) Seeing an amazing breakdancing show on the street.

8) Going to a jazz club in a basement in the Latin quarter and squeezing into a tiny room with 300 other people, some of whom were doing the lindy hop in about 10 square centimeters.

9) Going back to bed.

10) Getting exactly what I ordered in French and actually being able to hear the difference this time between "on y va" and "en hiver".

If you've never been to Paris, you should go. I don't think it matters when, with whom, or for how long. There is something so elementally good about the city, that its pleasures transcend economics, weather, and less than well-suited traveling companions. The first time I went was in the blazing heat of August when I was 20. I was visiting a friend - a fellow student - who promised me he had a place for me to stay. This turned out to be false. His plan was that I go to Shakespeare & Co. and charm the notorious womanizer George into letting me crash on the floor of one of the communal apartments upstairs. I used all my money to book a flea-bitten motel instead, subsisting only on baguettes, but nonetheless I had a delicious time wandering the streets in the heat. The second time I visited with David. I was 25, and it was our first trip together anywhere. We were living in SF, and discovered it was cheaper to fly to Paris for Xmas than it was to fly to New York! It happened to be the first year in 10 that it snowed in the city, and we were freezing the whole time, but we didn't care because we were in love. The last time before this one was 5 years ago at the tale end of our 3-week European tour. We were tired of traveling, it was Bastille Day and everything was shut, but we still spent an idyllic afternoon lying in the grass underneath the Eiffel tower.

Paris is a city for dreaming. I dreamed of Pickle while we were there this time. And while I can't remember what she looked like, I know I dreamed of how she's gestating in a rich international soup - San Francisco - Edinburgh - Florence - Washington DC - Paris - and how little bits and pieces from all these cultures are going to be embedded in her like bits of colored glass in asphalt - making her journey through life just a little bit more sparkly.

Be well.

Labels: My Favorite Things, Rebirth

EQUINOX

Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary
wellspring of all religions, the hallmark
of the mystic, the source of all true art...
It is a privilege to be alive in this time
when we can choose to take part in the
self-healing of our world.

- Joanna Macy

Today is a special day. First, it is the Autumnal Equinox, which means that the earth is poised equally between light and dark, day and night, before we slip further into the growing darkness and hibernation of the fall. So, it represents a brief moment of balance which only occurs twice a year, a space between the inhale and the exhale.

Second, it is my birthday. I'm 37 today. A good solid number. And a prime number to boot. I've always liked prime numbers - numbers which are only divisible by themselves and 1 - they seem so full of themselves, tributes to individual identity. After the first batch of essential divisors (1, 2, 3, 5, 7), we have 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, and now 37. To me, prime numbers carry a certain amount of potency, a little magic even, and a great deal of mystery.

So, in tribute to the number and the day, I'd like to offer (in no particular order) a list of some things that I'm grateful for:

1) Living this long. By average estimates, my life is half over (or half begun). And yet, I have already lived longer than many people in many places can expect to. I'm grateful to the universe for continuing to give me the resources I have needed to sustain my life.

2) My mother. For being a stay-at-home mom. Something I definitely didn't appreciate enough in the feminist haze of my adolescent and post-adolescent years. But she gave me a lot of time and attention, more than I may be able to muster for my own kids. And it mattered.

3) My father. For many reasons, but especially today for his regular $100 birthday check. It's nice to have a few things you can count on in life. A birthday splurge at the bookstore is a joy I enjoy today courtesy of dad.

4) Swimming. Nothing feels better than the feeling of my body moving through water.

5) Trees. As long as I live, if I have a window to look out with a bit of sky and a tree to see, I'll be okay.

6) The Ocean and the Sky. Whenever I've been sad, depressed, or confused in my life, I find that half an hour gazing at either of these constantly changing marvels sets me right. Tom Robbins says "Spend 1/2 hour every day reading poetry, being in your body, writing with a hard-on (girls too), and looking at the sky." As apt a recipe for a good life as any I've encountered.

7) Chocolate. Especially Lindt milk-chocolate truffles.

8) Fluevog Shoes. A San Francisco treat.

9) Books. Of every stripe, but lately especially memoirs.

10) Money. And that I have enough of it not only to meet my basic needs, but to buy things I love like chocolate and shoes and books.

11) My Health. Specifically the abilities to walk; see; hear; eat, digest and shit without pain; sleep soundly; and grow and carry two babies in my body without undue hardship.

12) Music. There is so much to be grateful for in this category: jazz, new flamenco, the female diva crooners like Annie Lennox and kd lang, taiko drumming, Tchiakovsky, organ music, and my all-time favorite instrumental on the harp guitar "Because It's There" by Michael Hedges.

13) Being born American. This an unexpected and fairly recent gratitude. Despite all that is wrong with our country and all that we have to be embarrassed and ashamed about, as a woman and a citizen, I have more rights, privileges and freedoms being an American than I would as a citizen of most other countries. I have the ability to speak, dress, and work in any way I choose. Something not to be taken for granted.

14) David. I remember being 20 years old and thinking that I would live the rest of my life alone (probably with a bunch of cats), because I couldn't imagine meeting anyone who I could stand to share my life with or who I imagined would want to be with me for that long. We've been together for nearly 15 years, and while there is lots that we struggle with and plenty to still learn about each other, he has been for me and with me through so much. When my mother called at 6am 4 years ago to tell me that my sister had been in a life-threatening accident, I was only able to gasp. David, in his sleep, heard that giant intake of breath and immediately knew something was terribly wrong. He came charging out of the bedroom and threw his arms around me and held me tight, never asking what was wrong, just holding me, containing me, while I cracked and fell apart.

15) My Friends. All the many varied friends I have collected over the years. Especially the ones who keep reaching out to me and pulling me close even when I'm busy and distracted.

...to be continued.

Labels: My Favorite Things, Rebirth