Winter Wonderland

I’m on a weekend snow trip, which, for those who know me, is a strange thing to hear from me. Having grown up with snow, then choosing to leave it, I am not usually one who seeks out how to return to it. I’m not a snow sport enthusiast – my family has never been to a ski lodge, and as a kid I did nothing more than sled occasionally. No snow shoeing, no cross-country skiing, no downhill skiing, no snow mobiling. Despite being raised in the snow, neither of my parents enjoyed any of these snow activities. Not that they were summer sports enthusiasts, either. Mostly I remember being cold. I grew up before Gore-Tex, before layers of artificial fibers proved their ability to wick, before, even, “wick” was a verb, and it was still a mere noun. Cold fingers, cold toes, cold legs, cold everything. One year my folks got NFL season tickets for our family. We were trapped in the stands with every possible layer of clothing but none that eliminated the cold. Trapped in the stands with hot cocoa to warm us on the inside, but the cocoa couldn’t stay warm after a sip or two. Trapped in the stands and so miserable that I’m sure I’ve never thanked my parents for season tickets that other kids would have coveted. I’m sure I used my bone-cold, can’t-get-warm-even-in-the-car-on-the-way-home misery to punish them endlessly for the mistake of trying to create something lovely like a family football day.

I was an undergrad in a place with winters so cold that my eyelashes would freeze together after my eyes watered as part of a simple physiological survival response – like antifreeze on the windshield – keep it moist with salty liquid and nothing will crack. The sidewalks of the steepest hill on campus were heated, because without that, no one could make it up to their classes. I confess I rather enjoyed the fantasy of coeds trying desperately to make it up the hill before the sidewalks were updated, sliding back down in rows, a human Prometheus trail, with the addition of backpacks and knitted hats.

I did attempt downhill skiing once. In Scotland. I was with a friend who grew up skiing. Yellow, she knew, was the color of the “bunny runs” – the ones that people like me could attempt with no skill, no history, and no ability to maneuver in the awkward gear. Toddlers and small kids suited up for the first time on Lilliputian skis are a perfect match for the bunny hill, so off we headed to the chair lift to the top of the yellow run.

But it turns out that in Scotland, “yellow” meant something else, and it took me an entire day to go down one run: one day is the length of time it takes to fall down ungracefully, struggle to get up, move a few more inches downhill, then start the process again. The only reason I went down the yellow run was because after the ski lift dropped me off at the top, there was no other way to get down. This was something that I, a lifetime non-skier, had not known: there’s no return chair lift. Almost the only means of transportation that goes only one way, now that I think of it. I wasn’t keen on heading down the precipitous drop. But there was no airlift, the only other way I imagined out of this predicament. So I had to go down the slope, initially on my skis. It’s only after I fell and like a beetle on its back wiggled and wriggled and squirmed until I could be in the right position to be helped up that I found something humorous and the fear eventually lifted. Oh, and as I bring this day fully back from memory, I recall that at some time during the falling-down-the-slope routine we saw a snowstorm approach.

By the end of the day (it really did take most of the day to go down one slope) I was covered in snow (with pictures of that adventure to show it). It was the kind of day that should have ended more unpleasant and unhappy than it was, given my wet, cold, physically challenged incapacity to stand up after falling down, but my friend and I eventually laughed and laughed and laughed. Something about being in one’s 20’s casts mishaps like this with a cheerful afterglow, and even though there were moments of utter terror and the mule-stubborn “nuh-uh” initial reaction to the awareness that the only way to end something is to endure something even worse. Something about being in my 20’s that I didn’t master as a young kid, so I didn’t punish my friend endlessly for turning me into a pathetic, frightened, half-dead cold beetle on an advanced ski run in a foreign country. My parents I punished, before, during, and after each game; my friend I forgave before I was even one tenth of the way down the slope.

Anyway, here I am, out in the boondocks, in a place so remote that the snow is deep enough to sink through, past the top of my boots. Remote, yes; rustic, no. We’re staying in a recently built modern home with individual heaters in each room, a gourmet kitchen (stocked overly well with what you might expect from two moms who love to eat good food), and a fireplace surrounded by a big stone hearth. The kids have Legos and hexbug nanos and games and other toys and bunk beds. They’ve built two forts already, and have figured out how to peel off layers as they get warmer and warmer the deeper they get into snow play. They’ve eaten snow and delicately held icicles cracked off from tall buildings. I’ve got my adult pleasures all around this lovely dwelling: the border of a 300-piece puzzle completed, just waiting for me to lose hours in it’s completion; a couple of evocative drawings from the myriad art supplies I’ve brought, and one three-person drawing created with each of us taking turns adding something until it reached the slapstick; a glass of a good white Graves Bordeaux; a couple of McVities Digestives, a crumbly and just sweet-enough cracker that holds memories of that Scotland trip; adults and kids building more memories that will solidify our friendships. I’ve taken the (requisite) photos of snowy tree-limbs and snow-blanketed meadows. And I’ve brought along this little laptop so I can write.

And I’ve got gear now – clothes and layers that wick, that actually kept me warm as I trudged through the snow with very little ability to move my limbs because I was so layered and bundled, and could barely hear as I was wearing ear muffs under my fleece-lined ear-flap hat. An after-dinner, pitch dark walk in the snow at night, the only light coming from flashlights and head lamps. A mid-morning tramp over snow ridges on my first venture with snow shoes. A second snow shoeing adventure across tall snow banks, walking through the trees and seeing the footprints of the animals who’d come to forage. Sled runs – the first ones short and windy, the second ones sending my son and I airborne, picking up the kind of speed that requires screaming with a mixture of delight and terror. Sled runs – I haven’t been on a sled since I was a kid, and it felt youthful and silly to have such joy from a flimsy plastic contraption, but there it was, joy. [My son was less thrilled with the second run – having experienced for the first time the way snow hitting your face feels like a thousand pin pricks – and defiantly/tearfully called the sledding over. He returned to it the next day, however, on a much less steep yet far longer slope, and it was fatigue that overcame the activity, not fear. His first victory in snow sports!]

I’m sitting in a warm and toasty home, next to the fireplace, with views of snowy trees and hills and snowy mounds and bare trees and snowy rifts and puffy white clouds and white mist. I’ve had more enjoyment with snow and snow sports in one weekend than I had in the first 20 years of my life. Maybe I’ll give cross-country skiing a try later this season.

Sweet Memories

A friend told me she made an old recipe recently: Betty Crocker’s “Bonnie Butter Cake.”


As there was no actual person named Betty Crocker, perhaps she never had a friend named Bonnie for whom this yellow cake is named. I hadn’t thought of that cake for years – ok, maybe decades – but just its name brought back memories. College day memories, and, yes, I’m now old enough to be one of those people who wax poetic about the romance of those years. But it was romance, in all its forms. The adventures of learning and being on my own, testing out what felt at the time like my absolute maturity. The loves I created with women who are still my dearest friends, the attempts at love and romance and sex with men that were awkward and stilted and messy and painful and just about anything except a sustaining love life. The perfect blend of college-age enthusiasm and belief in invincibility, combined with bone-chilling self-doubt and fears of not fitting in or being liked/loved.

My senior year of college I lived in a house that for some reason had not yet been condemned, with four other women. College housing: inadequate heat, one girl’s room was what we loving called the original coat closet (off the front door, not much bigger than a steamer trunk), and we even had our requisite night with a bat in the house. I loved that house. I loved that year. I loved those friends.

And then there was the cake. The roommate who made this cake made a lot of baked desserts, cakes and eventually pies. One roommate was more of a peanut-butter-added-to-macaroni-and-cheese gal. One roommate was farm-raised, and liked to keep meals within the meat/starch realm. Another roommate favored large chunks of cheese from her hometown. My contribution? I’m feeling, now, that it was a bit weak. I could make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in a hot pot, I could heat pizza on the bottom portion of my corn popper, and I could find the best, gooiest, breadiest, cheesiest pizza in town. Maybe I once or twice whipped up two of my Mom’s most crowd-pleasing entrees, both circa the 1970’s Campbell Soup recipe blitz, where America’s homemakers were learning to do a lot with instant rice, canned soup, and, forever after, the blissfully salty/sweet magic of Lipton’s Onion Soup in dried packets. My mom has a sweet and sour meatball recipe that manages to include instant rice, white sugar and lemon juice (it’s the bomb, especially with a side of mashed potatoes to sop up the extra rice-sweet sauce); and she does a thing with Campbell’s cream of whatever-comes-in-beige soups, instant rice, chicken and, you guessed it, topped off with a packet of Lipton’s Onion Soup. It shouldn’t be as good as it is. To this day, I’ve converted many friends, and their children, over to the joys of these two examples of 1970’s style cooking. I even spent a few years trying to upgrade the recipes to make them healthier – substituting ground turkey in the meatballs, whole grain rice, trying home-made cream soups, but truthfully, the flavor wasn’t there – the dishes became something to eat, but lacked the flavor memory that made them sing (and no one oohed and aahed over them, so what’s the point?).

Last night I made another old favorite from my Mom: peanut butter cookies with the Hershey’s kiss in the middle. My son helped me with each step, and we made much-too-big cookies for what the recipe called for, so instead of making 48 cookie dough balls and sticking 48 kisses in them, we had 17. This is about the number of cookies my son can make before he gets bored. His first bite released a melodic “Awesome” that spanned several additional syllables. My husband’s response was that he had been thinking about an ex’s peanut butter cookies recently, the best he’d ever had, and whether he could dare ask me to make them and, of course, he knew he couldn’t, and now he doesn’t need to. “What cookies? Were there ever peanut butter cookies before these?”

For me, they were delicious and memory-laden, the best food combination I can imagine. I don’t think I ever made a Bonnie Butter Cake on my own; I always left it for my friend to make (I helped her in college, I’m just sure I did). But maybe it’s time for me to bake one. I checked my seemingly ancient Betty Crocker Cookbook only to find that it’s too modern (1986!) and the recipe is omitted. But thanks to the Internet, the recipe is completely accessible. Imagine the memories it would evoke. Yum!

Image adapted from ifood.tv

"My car's in the shop."

Not a particularly frightening or dramatic statement, but allow me to explain how it became so. First, said car, a reliable, lovely little sedan from the line of cars made in the last decade, died in the parking lot of a sporting goods store last weekend. I thought maybe it was because I’d bumped into a camouflaged pole sticking straight out in the middle of the parking structure throughway, but temporarily out of sight as I was backing up to squiggy into a spot enragingly marked “compact car” which, actually, would have accommodated at most a bicycle or two. But the car quickly restarted, I replaced my lost gloves (yes, at my age I still lose gloves, although not frequently), and chatted briefly with the cashier about memories of when gloves and mittens were sewn with yarn into the arms of coats. Mission successful, I drove my reliable little car through the rest of the errands and day trips that filled the week.

Then Tuesday night came, my turn to drive carpool. I had in my back seat the chatty 5th grader and my silent 4th grader, and the car stalled on the way to drop them off. Not a good feeling. I pulled into a parking lot, restarted, and off we went on our drive, paying very little attention to the car, which was now back to normal. Except it wasn’t. I dropped the kids off, and began to head home, and didn’t make it past the first stop light before it died again. And then again. And again. But there’s no good place to pull over during rush hour urban traffic, so I kept re-starting the car and going as far as it would go.

I was frightened. And I did that thing therapists are always telling you to do – I acknowledged my feelings. Out loud. Alone in my car, I engaged in a monologue. “I’m scared. This is frightening. Of course it is. It’s dark out, I’m alone, and my car is dying.” I had my cell phone and AAA card, so I was covered. I could get towed home from anywhere, so I decided to go as far as I could before I called for the tow. The most that was going to happen was I was going to be inconvenienced by not having a car the next day, and it’d cost more than I could afford. “It’s just money,” I continued in my patter. “I’m safe right now, and I will be. Just pay attention – stay focused.” I was mostly frightened of being rear-ended, as I knew that each time I was at a stoplight, the cars behind me would assume I’d move forward, and I might not. Long story longer, I kept talking to myself and my car, soothing and encouraging us both. I coaxed that little thing with gentle acceleration and kind words and even some pats to the dashboard all the way to the local garage where I knew I could leave it and the car guys would fix it (Thanks, Gene and Eric). It died for the last time just as I turned to park right in front of the shop. A victory.

But I was frightened. Little moments of vulnerability and mortality piercing through my packed-schedule life. I didn’t want to die, and that was my ultimate fear. How quickly I went there – how thinly veiled our thoughts are on top of this ever-present fear. I wasn’t thinking so much about me dying, but a more primal, maternal fear – my child is not ready to lose me. Plain and simple: I’m not done being his mother. So I told myself (not the car, just me), “Tonight is not the night I’m going to die.” I just kept driving, acknowledging my fear, my thumpy heart, kept my flashers on, kept breathing, kept giving myself permission to be scared but to keep going. I was so grateful the kids were safe and sound and that they weren’t in the car with me. I didn’t have to be brave and actively parent at the same time. That was a blessing. I got the car and I to the auto shop safe and sound. Another blessing. A friend was driving right by the auto shop (on her way to hang out with me at my house) so she was able to drive by and scoop me up and drive me home (Thanks, Phyllis). Another blessing. I used a friend-favor for one ride to work (Thanks, Andy), and considered how many rides I could get from friends, cabs or my husband to get me through all the maneuvering I had to do for two days. Then I remembered busses. First, school busses entered my consciousness, so rather than use complicated driving logistics, my son took the school bus (that stops across the street and down 2 houses from us) two days in a row (Thanks, Public School System). It took me more than 24 hours to remember city busses, but I finally did, and took one. I walked one block from my house to catch the first bus, stopped at the transfer stop which was across the street from the auto shop, I walked over to find out about when my little car would be ready (not ‘til after 5), walked back across to the bus stop, waited 10 whole minutes for the next bus, then arrived one and a half blocks from the entrance to my office. It cost me $2.00. A bit cheaper than the cab would have been (Thanks, City Bus System). Blessings, blessings, blessings.

My car’s set to be completed tonight. All the disruptions and inconveniences have been handled. It’s gonna cost more than I know where the money will come from right now. And off we head back into our schedule-packed life. My husband will pick me up from work (Thanks, Honey), and we'll go somewhere (cheap) for dinner. I’m alive another day to keep being my son’s mother. I’ll listen to the final draft of my son's homework tonight, which includes writing a letter to his future self that his teacher will hold and mail to him in 5 years; when I get home from work I’ve got to wash his karate gi and change the sheets on his bed; tomorrow, the last day of school before winter break, is the day some parents will be in the classroom to present the class holiday gift to the teacher. I’ll be there too. Blessings, blessings, blessings.

What if . . .

I was thinking about fear the other day. Not my own fears (at least not initially!), but those of another. She wants to know what she might do with her life if she weren’t so governed by fear. What would it look like? What would she do? Who would be in her life? As I was listening, I had even more questions, most likely more about me, mainly: What if she opened up parts of her she’d closed down a long, long time ago?

I think we all ask this question from time to time. And if we’re honest, we can admit that we deliberately limit our lives, choose options as if “we have to” or as if “they’re clearly the right thing to do” when, in reality, it’s more likely that the fear to choose something else was stronger.

Of course, this line of questioning is usually reserved for moments when SOMETHING MAJOR HAPPENS. We check in with ourselves, take stock, come conscious to the way we are actually living our lives, allow ourselves a momentary awareness of what we choose to prioritize and do based on how we actually spend the minutes and hours of each day. As the SOMETHING MAJOR fades, we return to life as usual, slip back into unconsciousness, and the fears that hold in place all of our daily choices resume their place, unchallenged. We tell ourselves that we are so pleased that we’ve asked the question, feel so very brave and honest for having the courage to admit the discrepancy between thinking we do things for one reason and realizing we do them because we’re afraid. We’ve thought about it, asked the question, and we tell ourselves that’s enough; asking it proves we are as brave as we have to be. No one really expects us to answer it, do they? Think of the upheaval it would cause. No, after we ask the question, we put it away, tuck it somewhere where we’re unlikely to stumble on it again inadvertently.

I don’t know if this woman’s courage to ask the question will propel her to action, to choices she fears could turn out disastrously – except maybe they won’t – and, more truthfully, except that any decision or choice or action or inaction will ultimately lead to some kind of loss/change/withering/dying. Since we’re all locked into the human experience, we’ll all experience moments of tragedy. So why do we think we can avoid them – or that we should? Any decision I make is likely to result in something ending anyway – that’s how things go – cycle of life and all – things have beginnings, middles and ends. Even my breakfast today is now over. I don’t rail at the injustice of this ending, but I do when other things end. I don’t try to prolong breakfast as if every other meal will be a disappointment. And I certainly don’t want to avoid a meal just because it’s gonna end. But replace “meal” with some larger life decision – a relationship moment, a professional moment, requests that would draw me far outside my comfort zone, and the inevitable backing away response emerges. We back away from things we fear. We shouldn’t fear life. We shouldn’t fear mistakes, disasters, ruinous endings. They're going to come anyway!

What would it be like if we acknowledge our fears daily, wonder aloud about how we’re making choices, look not just at our calendars

of appointments and lists of daily/weekly/ annual tasks and chores and responsibilities and determine what, exactly, we have brought in to our life? Then we might be able to determine the mirror image –what is not in our life. Like those old visual perception exercises – where first we see the obvious, color-saturated image of what’s there, and if we look long enough, the empty space begins to take its own shape. Once we see it, we can never not see it. But most of us don’t look at the white spaces in our lives.

[photo from varenne.tc.columbia.edu]

Writing Stories Together

Tonight my son’s homework assignment is to write the first draft of a mystery story. It’s to include dialogue, six of this week’s spelling words, and he’s to define character and setting. We’ve been going back and forth at the kitchen table for longer than you’d think it would take to write a page. My son stops writing mid-sentence to tell a joke with no punch line:

“What’s got four wheels and spins?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Me neither,” he said, breaking into uncontrollable laughter.

He just looked over my shoulder and OK’d my punctuation for the dialogue.

It’s been dark since 4 pm. Our holiday lights are up in the window. My husband is in the kitchen making a lentil/lamb sausage soup, my son and I are sharing a cup of tea, and there’s a lovely winter candle with blue and white snowflakes on the table, in the midst of binders and papers and pencils and composition books and my laptop and holiday cards from friends and the withering colors of a fall floral bouquet my husband brought home over the weekend. The days are getting shorter and shorter, it’s cold outside, but this is a great moment of warmth.

Meeting the Buddha in the Road

I’ve heard that one way to reach enlightenment, or at least not to be so frustrated by daily irritations, is to assume that everyone we encounter each day is a Buddha, an eminent teacher sent to help us learn an important lesson about ourselves. Many of these Buddhas are wrapped in loving-kindness, and meeting them is a true delight, and we open ourselves easily to their teaching. Others are not so easy to meet.

Yet in this way of thinking, we are to greet even the most
challenging of people and circumstances with an openness to learn from them, a humbleness that perhaps we are their Buddha in the road, and that we are all here to learn and grow. The thorns of a rosebush make the rose more precious, make us slow down and carefully take the flower, appreciating how its beauty is protected by the prickly, dangerous bits. We must always anticipate the thorn, and we might accidentally get hurt, may be careless in handling the stem, and then we will bleed. Just a bit. And we forgive the rose.

I have cultivated many skills to enjoy and navigate the small moments of interaction with strangers and acquaintances, and I’m proud to say I’m almost always pleased with how I meet different people on the road. I have met the Confused Buddha, the Frightened Buddha, the Lost Child Buddha, the Grieving Buddha, the Lonely Buddha, the Jealous Buddha, the Insecure Buddha and even the Stingy Buddha. I have been pricked by these Buddhas’ thorns of self-protection, yet the wounds have been clean and easy to heal, and I have understood that the intention was never to harm me, but to protect themselves. I’m sure I’ve become the Irritable Buddha or the Impatient Buddha in response, but I hope that in doing so I’m forgiven, as I come to forgive these others for their temporary woundings. But usually, I’m closer to the Laughing Buddha – people tell me they love my laugh, my warmth and positive attitude, and I even heard from someone today that I have a little giggle in my phone voice. What a compliment this was.

Yet less than an hour before I heard this about me, I had encountered my least favorite Buddha: the Angry Buddha. We traveled for a short time together, this Angry Buddha and I. I initially mistook this person for the Creative Buddha, the Spiritual Buddha, the Enlightened Buddha. Maybe even the Savior Buddha, as at the time I think I was looking for someone to rescue me. That should have told me what I needed to know, but it didn’t. Not then. All I knew was that I was getting smaller and smaller, less and less like my usual self, like a Vanishing Buddha.

Even long after even our paths have separated, the Angry Buddha continues to appear without my beckoning. It’s not really a meeting, more of an ambush, a hijacking out of my safe and snug life. A hostile takeover, creating fear, pain and entrapment. The infliction of harm not through accident or the self-preservation of thorns and defenses, but through the intent to destroy. Without any control over the moments of meeting, I am often caught unaware, which by now is a sign that I have much in me of the Naïve Buddha. Every time we meet, I am surprised, stunned, angered, troubled and hurt. Where there was one Angry Buddha, there are now two. In the aftermath, I’m flattened for a bit - I’m hollow and depleted–the Defeated Buddha.

I’m sure meditation books and spiritual advisors would tell me that I should meet the Angry Buddha with compassion and kindness. To not form any attachment to the Anger, but connect with the innermost Buddha nature hiding underneath. But I’m not anything like an enlightened being, and I may never get to this place. I don’t meditate, don’t do yoga faithfully (it probably doesn’t count that I incorporate some yoga poses into my gym routine), and often forget to even breathe deeply. I just want to get through my days in a way that makes sense to me. And the Angry Buddha wreaks havoc with what I think makes sense.

I always recover from the encounters with the Angry Buddha. Then comes the glimpse of the lesson I am learning. The recurrence of the Angry Buddha calls attention to how much of my life is spent alongside the Kind Buddha, the Supportive Buddha, the Smart and Funny Buddha, the Benevolent Buddha, the Thoughtful Buddha, the Eager-to-Learn Buddha, and the Generous Buddha. Such a life of blessing have I now that these Buddhas permeate my household, my family, coworkers, and my closest circle of friends. My son is the Joyous Buddha; my husband the Noble Buddha. To them I am the Loving Buddha, the one they look forward to seeing each day and someone they eagerly learn from.

So here’s what I aspire to express one day as my gratitude - for both the Angry Buddha and the lessons you have taught me:

Thank you, Angry Buddha, for teaching me the things I am willing to fight for. You saw me as a flower – perhaps - but never a rose. You have never forgiven me for refusing to die after you cut my stem. I will continue to fight your attempts to take over my life and poison what is dear to me. I used to fear that having to engage in such a fight would poison me, prohibit me from being the kind of person I want to be. But it hasn’t. It’s done the opposite. It’s freed me up to appreciate and enjoy the loving-kindness surrounding me. I’ve had to grow different thorns and be willing to use them. Most people in my life see me as the rose, even when they encounter some of my pricklies, and they forgive me for them. You have made me an active creator in my own happiness, no longer waiting or hoping for someone to make it for me. Your continued attempts to diminish me have forced me to become fully alive, and what a choice that has turned out to be.

Oh how I wish that when you cross my path again, you’ll have transformed from whatever life lessons are awaiting you. But until then, I promise to use you, Angry Buddha, to remind me to cultivate loving-kindness for the roses in my very own garden.