Madame Butterfly

Even someone that doesn't know how to sew on a button can create a felt flower out of recycled wool sweaters. Thanks again to Ann Brown at The Adventure Orange for the free studio class. Lucia was quite smitten with her new hair pretty and made sure each of her brothers told her how beautiful she was. I am feeling the beginning of a new obsession.

Feed the soul

"If, of thy mortal goods, thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves
alone to thee are left,
Sell one & from the dole,
Buy Hyacinths to feed the soul."

~Muslihuddin Sadi,
13th Century Persian Poet

At 11:45 pm, the house is heavy with the scent of pumpkin bread. On the stove top, two loaves patiently await for the allotted time of ten minutes to pass so they can be flipped out to cool; I patiently await so that I can then put my weary self to bed. Mind you, I am no Julia Child, whipping up something as complex as beef bourguignon or other scrumptious, fancy dishes. After all, I am from Swedish/English descent and my roots are in the Midwest, a place where jello is somehow equated with salad, a vegetable tray consists of celery and carrots, tuna casserole with broken potato chips on the top, congealed by Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, is esteemed an entree,  hummus (what's hummus?) and lentil soup are considered exotic. And couscous? Who even knows what it is. No, my tastes are much simpler than Mrs. Child's and thus, my three top meals to serve guests are usually restricted to the three following items: meat lasagna, pot roast, or the old standby, potato soup. All three are good meals, I would even dare to assert great tasting, but as my father would say, "nothing to write home about." And while I enjoy cooking, I possess a deeper love for baking; a love which stems not only because selfishly, I like my father, have a sweet tooth and thus anticipate savoring the sweetness of my labor, but also because there is something truly fulfilling for me at this stage in my life to initiate and complete a task and then look at it and say, "It is good." In the chaos of my days with dirty floors, finger smudged windows, chipped paint, mismatched socks (is there anything more annoying?), and Legos constantly jabbing me in the foot, baking yummy treats kindles a light within me which invades and hopefully drives out some of the darker, uglier stuff often corroding my heart. For me, the act of baking, the partaking of the food, and the sharing of the gift with others, is sacramental, and an art which truly nourishes my soul. So be reckless, get out your Betty Crocker or antiquated church cook books and bake a sweet treat. Share it with a friend, a neighbor, a stranger. And make sure you save some for yourself too! Peace and goodness to you.

Albany trail has nuts. Mounds don't.

When you have four kids, your house is full of broken electronics. I type this blog using a replacement keyboard and a replacement mouse and on a computer that has been in for repair already once this year. Russell has been known to show up places with my old camera around his neck looking like Jimmy Olsen - the camera being one his twin brother previously tossed into the sink full of water. So it is with that in mind that I send out a big "thank you" to Molly for giving me one of her old cameras, broken by one of her four kids, that just happened to be the same model as our broken camera. The formula went something like two broken cameras + $100 = one functioning camera. (In all fairness to our kids, I broke our camera this time.)

The photos that follow are from a Saturday morning sojourn to the Albany Mounds. When we discussed possible destinations over breakfast, Russell said he wanted to go hiking. Thomas liked the idea of visiting a site related to the American Indians. And I just finished reading The First Americans by James Adovasio and have been dying to visit one of the many ancient mounds that apparently surround us here in the Midwest. Archeologist have artifacts in the Albany area suggesting it has been continuously occupied for nearly 10,000 years. The mounds we visited were built 2000 years ago, when Jesus walked the earth I explained to the kids.

This is how all of our hikes start. Trust me, after we hiked for a half-hour out to the mounds, I had to carry them all back.

Here are the intrepid explorers in front of one of the mounds. Thousands of years old, it is completely overgrown and difficult to see in this picture. Other than the fact that the mounds rose too abruptly and too frequently to be natural formations, you could easily have walked right past them. Thomas was disappointed when we got there and realized we weren't able to go in. (I've clearly not read him the chapter about the barrow-wights in The Fellowship of the Rings. Burial mounds are not something you want to end up in, unless of course Tom Bombadil is nearby.)

Thanks again, Molly!

The severe gift

Perhaps it is because I stood peering last Friday afternoon from an outside window into the darkened front room of the food pantry in which he volunteered for nearly the last twenty-five years of his life and was unexpectedly a bit overcome by a flash of memory which transported me back to a time when he was not sick, was not dead, but well and alive, standing by my side helping me arrange canned foods onto meticulously ordered shelves; perhaps it is because my black Doc Marten shoes purchased for $2.99 at the Salvation Army located on Central and Diversey are almost an embarrassment to wear (but really I have no shame) because they are in desperate need of polishing and that was yet another act of selfless giving that he did for me; or perhaps is is because this evening my mother pulled out of her back seat four of his jackets which are now deposited onto the backs of my dining room chairs and in my solitary state while children slept and a husband read, I buried my nose deep within the folds of blue nylon and though rationalizing that my mother surely laundered the coat prior to its journey into my home, I swore, I swear, that I can smell his scent six months later, but my heart feels so raw these last few days, my eyes so filled with tears.

-an excerpt from "Rising"

Wendell Berry, The Wheel

5.

Any man's death could end the story:

his mourners, having accompanied him

to the grave through all he knew,

turn back, leaving him complete.

But this is not the story of a life.

It is the story of lives, knit together,

overlapping in succession, rising

again from grave after grave.

For those who depart from it, bearing it

in their minds, the grave is a beginning.

It has weighted the earth with sudden

new gravity, the enrichment of pain.

There is a grave, too, in each 

survivor. By it, the dead one lives.

He enters us, a broken blade,

sharp, clear as a lens or a mirror.

And he comes into us helpless, tender

as the newborn enter the world. Great

is the burden of our care. We must be true

to ourselves. How else will he know us?

Like a wound, grief receives him.

Like graves, we heal over, and yet keep

as part of ourselves the severe gift.

By grief, more inward than darkness,

the dead become the intelligence of life.

Where the tree falls the forest rises.

There is nowhere to stand but in absence,

no life but in the fateful light.

6.

Ended, a story is history;

it is in time, with time

lost. But if a man's life

continue in another man,

then the flesh will rhyme

its part in immortal song.

By absence, he comes again,

There is a kinship of the fields

that gives to the living the breath

of the dead. The earth

opened in the spring, opens

in all springs. Nameless,

ancient, many-lived, we reach

through ages with the seed.