Coexist

My grandparents, though their families had been in Louisiana since before it was a part of the U.S., spoke only their French dialect as young children.  When they began school (in the years before 1920), there was a new idea about what it was to be a "good" American.  It meant to be assimilated into the blander greater culture.  They were punished severely (and I imagine incomprehensibly) if they spoke any language other than English.  

Within a generation, their language was made academic.  I studied French in high school.  Lucky for me, I also studied at a French university and really learned the language.  I tried to give my daughter, Gem, the best of both worlds so she is bilingual.  In that way it's come full circle.  

Did you know that (contrary to popular opinion) the United States has no official language?  Yep, and I say that's a good thing.  People always do and always will find a way to get things done across a language/religious/cultural/regional divide.

Some countries have 2 or more official languages:  Switzerland has 4 and they're doing all right.

What it is that makes us want to either be like everyone else or make everyone else like us?  Why can't we just enjoy who we are and enjoy others as they are?  Is it too Kumbaya to think we can?  

I can walk around my neighborhood and find people with many different religions, languages, cultures, and families.  I consider each to be a friend, would gladly go out of my way to help any of them, but don't necessarily look, act, talk, or think like them.  

This was all driven home to me recently when our family returned from a trip to France.  Gem had been there the whole summer; my husband and I just a couple of weeks.  I couldn't believe the negative remarks people made about France and the French.  Whether or not I agree with a country's policies, I would never assume that all its citizens are in lockstep agreement with it.  (I sure don't agree with many U.S. policies.) 

Here's what I think about the French:

• They love their children and want the best for them.
• They value family and friends.
• Most live their lives according to what they see as right and good.  And are doing just fine.
• They eat very well.
• The graffiti artists in Paris are ingenious; how do they get into those spots?

All of which I could say about any other people in any other place.  We're all richer when we make connections rather than divisions.

Baby Whispering

My husband and daughter call me "The Baby Whisperer," because my superpower is the ability to make all babies love me.  Really that's not true.  My real talent is the ability to love all babies.  Babies just recognize this and respond in kind.

I am always respectful -- I'm not a grabber, toucher, or kisser of babies I don't know.  But I am irresistibly drawn to make eye contact, smile, and play a game of peek-a-boo.  Since I have the great good fortune to work with young children (0 to 3 years) who have special needs and their families, my baby whispering skills are a great asset to me on the job.

Baby whispering isn't enough, though.  Parent whispering is often the skill I need even more.  Lucky for me, I have a heart to love parents too.  I am in a very privileged and delicate position, entering (intruding into?) a home, a family.  I often wonder how they can bear it; sometimes emotions are so raw and close to the surface.

One gorgeous little boy (M) has so many physical, cognitive, and medical needs that no less than 6 different therapists/care providers come into his home each week.  By the time I arrive on Friday mornings, I can tell Mommy and Daddy are exhausted.  

Last Friday it was obvious that they were distraught over their latest bad news.  They've already been through so much.  I fought my instinct to smooth it all over with optimistic cheer and just listened with all my heart.  I didn't agree or disagree as they talked for a couple of hours.  I tried to keep my expression neutral and not insult them with pity. 

Not for the first time, I tried to imagine what it is like to expect and plan for a new baby, only to relinquish cherished dreams over and over again as first one, then another and another obstacle is placed in your sweet boy's path.  And still find a way to hope; talk about grace under pressure.

I'm not saying that these (or any) parents are paragons or any such saccharine sentimentality.  But I do believe that it takes a special talent to find dignity, humor, and hope in the face of such continued opposition.

That is a real superpower.  M's parents have such gallant optimism about the future because they have a talent for love.  I am grateful to witness and be part of their love for sweet M.  The trick is that we see and value all of M -- not just focus on the disability.

M has worth all on his own whether or not he does the same things the same way other children his age do.  Not everybody gets that -- but I am lucky to see it.  M's parents and I made a list of all the things we love about him:

• liquid brown eyes with long, long lashes
• all boy!  He loves motorcycles and will turn his head whenever he hears one on the street
• dimples when he smiles
• the way he totally relaxes against my chest when we're reading Good Night Moon
• a fighter!  He does not like to roll from tummy to back and lets me know.
• the way he gurgles and smiles when his brother's new puppy licks his hand
• He spits out his sweet potatoes just like my daughter used to.
• Until Daddy says, "All right now, M.  Is that manners?" with that stern daddy voice.
• He's a football fan.  M shows real pleasure watching the big game with daddy, brother, and cousins.
• No one else will do but Mommy when he wakes in the night.  (a blessing and a curse!)
• If he is fussy anytime, he will instantly calm when Mommy sings "Sleep Baby."  Just her voice across the room ("I'm coming, Honey!") is often enough to make him content.
• Big brother plays too rough with M...and M loves it!  Like that time he took him outside to play in the sprinkler...

Well, the real list is way longer than this, but I am already more in love with M than ever just looking at these few things.  What more could any little boy be than M already is?

Happy birthday, Special Boy!  Today you make two, a real milestone.   I'm wearing black and gold for your favorite team.

Shadow Shot Sunday

This picture describes our quintessential Sunday morning breakfast.  Black coffee (for me, everyone else takes cream and sugar) and the crosswords for my sweetie.  He is some cocksure of himself doing this puzzle in pen!

I love the way the shadows bring out the elegant pattern of my china.  I get a surprising amount of pleasure from sitting down to a meal with these unassuming, cream-colored dishes.  They are to me much more beautiful than other, more expensive, patterns I might have gotten.

Thank you to Harriet for giving me the "Shadow Shot Sunday" idea and opportunity.

This morning I made one of my favorite breakfasts:  pain perdu (aka French toast).  I love sweet potatoes and when I cook them, I always bake extra, then puree them and freeze them in 1/4 cup portions.  The night before I make pain perdu, I leave a couple portions out on the counter to defrost.  Here's my recipe:

Pain Perdu

5 slices of whole wheat bread
1/2 cup pureed sweet potato (butternut squash works too)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons cinnamon (I love cinnamon and really don't measure.  I probably put lots more.)
1/2 tablespoon nutmeg (ditto what I said about cinnamon)

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a cast-iron skillet to medium-high.
While that is heating, mix sweet potato, egg, cinnamon and nutmeg.  Liquid will be thick.
Dip a slice of bread (both sides) into the mixture until it's saturated.
Put the bread in the skillet and brown on both sides (about 2 or 3 minutes per side).
While one slice is cooking, be soaking the next.

I like to eat mine with powdered sugar, Gem and Sweetie (dear husband) like maple syrup.  It goes great with fresh berries or any seasonal fruit.  Yum!

Thoughts to Ponder

Every so often I come across a quote that inspires or touches me in some way.  I write it down, fold it up, and put it in a jar in my kitchen.  Once a day or so, I just pull out a thought, ponder it, and move it to the next jar (for thoughts I've already pondered).

I never know what thoughts will come out of the jar.  Sometimes, they are words of comfort:

"To everything there is a season" (Ecclesiastes) or "Housework done imperfectly still blesses your family" (Fly Lady).

Sometimes they are words of advice that I dearly need:  "Leave evil and it will leave you"  (Arab proverb), or "Between stimulus and response, one has the freedom to choose" (Stephen Covey).

Sometimes I get inspiration:  "To unpathed waters, undreamed shores" (William Shakespeare) or "Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling"  (Margaret B. Runbeck).

Often visitors find my kitchen stash of quotes.  After they read a few, they sometimes want to take one away with them.  There is one quote that I continuously have to replace.  It's from the incomparable poet and penseur Maya Angelou, "My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return."

I think I can see why; it's inspiration, advice, hope, and assurance all in one.

                                                                                               

Today I worked a little more on my niece's butterfly.  I used a very long stem stitch around the wings and for the smile.

Tiny, colorful seed beads line the inside of wings.

I did some lopsided French knots for the eyes and nose.  For the antennae, I used an outline stitch in blue, then couched it in green.

To capture the sweet exuberance of this butterfly, I'm thinking of the bright colors that a child might use in her art work.  Now I have to figure out which stitches to use for the segment lines along the body.  

Ripening Figs

Just a couple more weeks and they'll be ripe and ready.

There is a fig tree in front of a house a few doors down from us.  Neither the owner of the rental house nor the tenant -- nor anyone else in the neighborhood for that matter -- seems to crave the velvety sweetness of the figs.  Not even my Sweetie and Gem.  Just me and a whole hoard of insects.

As they turn purple, I slip down there and pick bowls of them to take back home and eat.  There are lots I can't get to (I'm petite, ok?) and they drop onto the sidewalk, fermenting in the summer's heat.  Bees, ants, and flies circle drunkenly around the gooey little splotches.

The price of figs in the supermarket being what it is, it's surprising that no one else is picking them.

This year I'm going to do more than just eat them as they ripen.  I want to make preserves or something so that I can enjoy them in the months to come.  Trouble is, eating them fresh is the only way I've ever known figgy goodness.  Fig recipes, anyone?

Sew and Sew

I learned to sew from Sister Barbara at St. C Academy. She inspected our buttonholes and hem stitches with an eagle eye and many's the seam I had to rip and redo. Sister Barbara presided over my first projects, from a simple pencil skirt (with zipper!) to my prom dress that year and I still thank God for her even-handed guidance every time I pick up a needle and thread.

Throughout my college years and adult life I've made clothes, curtains, and costumes.  In recent years, my interest has shifted away from the practical, but I still love to sew.  Mainly I'm interested in hand sewing nowadays, the kind of thing I can curl up with in the living room while everyone else around me is doing their own things.  

I don't like the hassle of setting up the machine and then putting it away again.  So I haven't been constructing any garments, but I do hems and repairs to things that need it.  I also have been making some pictures.  I mainly use fabric (applique), embroidery, and beading.

Gem likes her hair to swoop down over her right eye.  I made this a couple of years ago when her glasses broke and I just couldn't throw her old pair away after they were replaced.  So here is a sort of portrait of Gem with her glasses, some fun boucle yarn, beads, and scraps of fabric I had on hand.

I don't know what she thinks of it, but I framed it and hung it up.

This is a more recent applique.  I love my chickens and this picture of a mama hen with her hatchlings is actually 2 small pictures.  They are mounted, but not framed yet.  

I wonder what Sister Barbara would think?  She would be happy that I am still sewing and enjoying it.  Maybe, though, she would also see me as a little lazy.  You see, I rarely rip out and redo my mistakes.  Instead, I just work them into the picture the best way I can.

Sometimes it really works out.  With this Mama and Babies I measured the background fabric wrong and needed about an inch more in both length and height.  So I set the pieces aside for a while until I happened upon this pretty gold ribbon.  I used a variety of goldish beads to attach the border to the picture and, frankly, I like it better than my original plan.

I have a 6 year old niece, Vava, who is a real artist.  I love her drawings and am using one of her butterflies right now to make a new applique.  Here are some of the fabrics and colors I have in mind:

I learn a lot by reading all kinds of needlework blogs and I've recently read about Gwen Marston's Fearless Quilting.  I don't know if I'm interpreting it right, but I think of it as just what I do.  If I make a mistake, rather than ripping it out, I try to turn it to my advantage.

Kind of like life.  When I do something wrong, I try to have a good heart, pick myself back up, and keep moving.  Maybe it even comes out better than my original plan.  You think?

Handiness Theorem Proves False

I married an engineer.  That means he is extremely handy around the house (can fix or build almost anything) and extremely nerdy around the house (makes waaaay more math references than I ever need to hear).  Over many years of experience with both, I have developed my very own mathematical theorem.

I have tested this hypothesis with a large sample of wives -- spouses, I should say to be nonsexist -- and it almost always has proved accurate.  Being artsy, I don't feel constrained to have 100% accuracy for my theorem to hold up.  (Sorry, math and science types.)  So "just about everyone I have talked to about it" counts as a sufficient sample to prove my hypothesis. 

So here's my Handiness Theorem:

The handiness of the man is inversely proportional to the permanence of his relationship with the recipient of the handiness.  

In algebraic notation, it is h²  + g²  ≥  w²  +  h² where h = handiness, g = girlfriend (temporary relationship he has to impress) and w = wife  (permanent relationship where not a lot of extra energy is needed because she already loves him).

This means that when my sweetie and I were first dating, I mentioned in passing how bright the lights in my dining room were and that I really preferred more indirect lighting.  The next weekend to surprise me, he colluded with my two roommates and installed dimmer switches in the living and dining rooms.   Motivating both roommates to try to steal him.  Didn't work.  A series of handiworks followed me from one apartment to the next throughout my college years.  (Did I mention my various landlords loved him too?)

Could I have ESP?  Is this why we dated for 5 years before marrying? Hmmmmm...

We became engaged.  The kitchen door wouldn't stay open properly .  Took him 3 weeks to get around to that one.  The toilet ran; another 2.  There were probably more handiness needs, but I can't remember it all.

Now we've been married for almost 23 years.  We live in an old house that almost always needs something done.  Suffice to say that there is a light bulb that has been burned out for a month now.  (I'd do it, but the ceilings are 14 feet high and I can't carry that giant ladder upstairs.)  

Well, shame on me -- I take it all back.  Despite the fact that my beloved husband just hates my chickens (calls them "raisin-brains"), he has built me the Versailles of chicken coups.  We call it the "poulet chalet."

It's actually a 96 square foot poultry compound.  There is a small roosting box which houses a roosting bar and a nest with an external egg door!  (The front of the box even comes off for easy cleaning.)  The food and water hang underneath it.  A ramp for them to exit the box leads to a protected outdoor area, completely predator-proof that I can shut in the evenings. (Even in the city there are lots of raccoons and opossums around.)  This is roofed (8 feet high) very sturdily.

This "protected pen" is inside a larger outdoor pen which has storage for hose, food, cleaning supplies etc.  It has a variety of perches, and lots of room to flap around.  This is also over 8 feet high and walled/ceilinged with hardware cloth.  I planted merlitons, tomatoes, flower and other vines and plants that will offer the chix food, cover and loads of chicken fun.  Other amenities too numerous to mention (and boring for everyone but me).  

Now that's love.  How lucky can one woman get?  Who needs light bulbs anyway?  Handiness Theorem retracted.