Life & Spirit | mulberryshoots

July 25, 2012

thunderclaps . . .

Last night, lightning flashed and thunderclaps woke us up around four in the morning. I was grateful for the rain that the garden needed so badly. As the lightning continued with the thunder elapsing at longer intervals, I lay on my back in bed and thought about how lucky we were that lightning did not strike the house and that a large tree did not fall on our roof. I noticed headlights from a vehicle which came into our driveway and then drove slowly out again, delivering our morning newspaper. A few minutes later, it came back again, perhaps to deliver a missed paper since we usually take two, the Telegram and Gazette and the New York Times.

By this time, I was awake and ruminating about an idea to consolidate all my piano scores into a cabinet arranged by composer. Preoccupied with other things this year, I could feel myself wanting to practice and play the piano again, more so every day. But boxes of things had been stored underneath it, we removed a chest that went to an antiques shop in New Hampshire and the area around my cherished Steinway grand piano had served as a kind of way station for things on there way to somewhere else. After getting out of bed around five a.m. and looking on Craigslist in four states, I found a couple of candidates for music storage, sent a few emails to inquire about them and went back to bed.

As often happens during these mid-night excursions, I fell asleep again right before the time that I usually get up for the day. Feeling slightly groggy and out of sorts mid-morning, I straightened up the living room, putting away books, periodicals, magazines and decluttered the kitchen counter. I can’t seem to feel free to begin things unless there is a modicum of order in our living space. Maybe I am mildly OCD but it’s more of a help than a hindrance in an endless housekeeping cycle which I don’t mind most of the time.

Following up the idea that came to me while thunder was clapping, I received some responses mid-morning from the Craigslist options but there was nothing that felt right. When G. returned with the car around noon, I took a drive down to an old office furniture warehouse where we had found G.’s rosewood office desk and my three walnut bookcases almost twenty years ago. The third floor of treasures at the warehouse was closed off and now rented out to tenants said the cantankerous owner, telling me he didn’t have anything with glass doors as his eyes never left the I-phone in his hand.

I took my time looking around the meager goods on the floor and saw only one possibility: a light toned bookcase that I knew to be curly maple but thought was laminate because the figured grain looked too good to be true. He said, yes, it was for sale without the two drawer base that it sat on and named a price that was okay if it was laminate. I asked him if he had a dolly because I didn’t think the two of us could carry it all the way to my car. Somehow, that question made him smile for the first time. Long story short, I paid, moved my car to the loading dock meeting him just as he arrived with the bookcase on a dolly. Together we lowered it into the trunk and I returned home, picking up lunch on the way.

I could tell from G.’s tone of voice on my cellphone that he was braced for what I might be coming home with after such a short trip. By the time he and one of his men carried it upstairs, I could tell he was impressed. The last thing the warehouse owner said to me as he closed the trunk of my car was, “it’s wood,” smiling at me for the second time. G. measured the shelves and found some piano pins that would serve as extra supports to add four more shelves to the three that are already filled with dusty blue Henle editions.

While G. was out making the rounds tonight, I sat down and played the Allemande from Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the Prelude from the A-minor English Suite listening to the harmonies at half tempo. Sounded good. Felt even better.

July 19, 2012

no matter what . . .

I hope that I am not boring you with themes and ideas that I pick up from reading the New York Times. Today, there is a beautiful article about creating gardens in very small spaces. It came along at just the right time because I looked around our place early this morning and thought to myself that there’s just too much to take care of. But after I cleaned off the kitchen countertop and put away the stacks of books and other reading material that seems to accumulate overnight while I am asleep, I thought it over again.

While I pondered whether or not to look for a canary to keep company with the lone singer that I have left and after watering the money plant and the gardenia tree next to it, plucking the spent blossoms, I watered the orchids on the shelf beside my computer set-up and marveled once again at the longevity of these flowers. Take a look here at the white orchid, for example–which has been gracing this space for seven months!

On another note, there are boxes of old photographs that need to be consolidated together, a task that I have been avoiding because we all looked so happy and well at the time before misfortune ran into us later on. But I think every family has this up-and-down phenomenon in their midst, don’t you? The thing is to put them in their proper place (the past) and take some photos in the present. The cast of characters sometimes changes and all that we know is that while we don’t know what the future will bring that we will persevere and enjoy our lives.

To quote the aforementioned NYTimes article, the urban gardener says,

“I think two people can live well no matter what and no matter where. . . the idea is to take pleasure in life, and be willing to be pleased.”

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July 18, 2012

simple pleasures . . .

Here are some simple pleasures that I thought about this morning:

a. getting a good night’s sleep in spite of the current heat wave

b. listening to my canary sing while I am checking email

c. making a breakfast smoothie that tastes like a milk shake because of the frozen fruit: fresh banana, frozen peaches, frozen blueberries, almond-coconut milk, pure synergy powder, handfuls of fresh spinach

d. reading the New York Times newspaper

e. knitting a sweater for myself from sumptuous Noro Hitsuji multicolored yarn emulating the design of a sweater I could have purchased but decided to knit instead.

f. coming upon a deep brown Lopi pullover vest that I had knit and forgotten about while I was looking for larger size needles to make the sweater described above.

g. cooking rose-colored chioggi beets that I bought at the farmers market in Northampton yesterday which are hard to find with their striated pink flesh and delicious sweet flavor

h. making an open-faced fresh peach pie, gathering up the sides of the pastry like an European tart and sprinkling with cinnamon, nutmeg and coarse sugar

i. looking for a red agate canary to join the part goldfinch canary and finding a few possibilities within an hour’s drive from where we live

j. taking a whiff of the blooming gardenias on the small tree that is flourishing despite the heat

k. watering the gigantic “money plant” that is pushing up against the ceiling and now has decided to thicken its trunk and limbs instead

l. brushing my hair, liking the color and being glad I am growing it out (the length, not the color!)

m. watering the garden

n. looking forward to talking with my daughter to see how she did on her chemistry test

o. wondering how my other daughter is doing with my granddaughter on their daytrip to Versailles

p. glad that Jeremy Lin is going to Texas where he’ll get a shot at realizing his destiny rather than being put on an expensive shelf with the Knicks who treated him badly last season

q. making Lapsang Souchang tea in the morning so it’ll be iced for dinner

r. finding a patchwork design jacket on Etsy for little money that reminds me of my youth that I can wear next week to have sushi on Newbury Street with a new acquaintance

s. a perfectly cooked soft shell crab tempura at the Osaka Restaurant in Northampton yesterday

t. corn on the cob from the farmstand for dinner last night that had good flavor and was also tender

u. yellow-red rainier cherries in season and available at $3.99 a pound at Market Basket in Oxford

v. finding a Shell station in Northampton and getting 30 cents a gallon off gas by using my Stop and Shop card

w. watching reruns of “House” on TV in the middle of the afternoon while I knit

x. glad the power is still on and the air conditioning works

y. picking flowers from the garden and enjoying them indoors as well as out

z. knowing that I am in the right place at the right time.

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July 17, 2012

win-win . . .

Stephen Covey just died at the age of 79 from bike accident injuries suffered three months ago. If you’re my age, you remember well the groundswell of publicity about his bestseller, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” In today’s NY Times obituary, these seven habits were listed again:

1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
4. Think “win-win”
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the saw; that is, undergo frequent self-renewal

The wording of these seven tenets illustrates Covey’s special gift for language. That is, he simplified the message by using words easier for people to grasp. For example, instead of saying “prioritize,” he said: “Put first things first” for those who don’t know how to prioritize. He said “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” rather than using words like “empathize” or “show compassion.” His gift was to make common sense behavior appealing and put it into a business relationship context. That he was also Mormon (married with nine children and fifty grandchildren) may be parenthetical or not.

He was also driven, it seems, by his own habits: “Fortune reported that he was once seen at a gym lying on the floor of the shower room being sprayed by three shower heads while he brushed his teeth and shaved.” Finally, though–and this is why I’m writing a post about him, is that he spoke about “Begin with the end in mind.” Covey spoke about how we want to be remembered: and that if “we carefully consider what we want to hear about ourselves at our funeral, (and that is indeed how we want to be known,) then we will discover our own definition of success.”

So it seems that at the same time that this individual helped millions of people to strive for success in the external world, he also influenced how we can be successful simply by being authentic within our interior lives.

Now that’s what I call a “win-win.”

July 16, 2012

special . . .

David McCollough Jr. got into some hot water when people misunderstood his commencement speech at Wellesley High School a few weeks ago when he told the graduates that they weren’t “special.” What an uproar ensued! It was even featured a couple of times on the national evening news. Humph! How could anyone tell graduates that they’re not special? Well, because the second part of his message was: “because everyone is.” He went on to encourage the young to do things for their own sake, rather than for the glory of it. “Nice work if you can get it,” as the song goes.

I also read a piece in the NYTimes Magazine yesterday in which someone said, “everyone has had a bad boyfriend,” “everyone has fantasized about a different life than the one they’ve led” and I realized then and there that we aren’t special about the bad things that happen to us either. In fact, Isabel Gillies’s memoir about her husband leaving her for a colleague who was more his style is called, “Happens All the Time.” [Later, Gillies married a second husband who shared her values and was apparently more her style.]

So, we’re not special in being good because everyone is special in their unique way. And we’re also not special in the bad things that happen to us or in the stupid ways that we sometimes fool ourselves. Isn’t it a relief, actually? To drop the notion that somehow we’re singled out either for trying too hard or by not trying hard enough? Why not stop trying and just DO, as Yoda was famous for saying? Or even better, just BE?

The one caveat McCollough encouraged the young to be was to become readers and to keep on reading. Because that is where you learn. I’ll buy that.

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July 14, 2012

comeback . . .

For many, this has been a tough year. Or a rough couple of years. Whether it is due to financial loss, personal loss or a loss of one’s sense of self, that’s a lot of combined loss, don’t you think? A friend of my daughter’s who is my age and lives in Paris mentioned that she too has had “une annee assez rude” or as Queen Elizabeth once said, “annus horribilis.” I always smile at that old saying, “misery loves company,” but ruefully, I think it’s true. Sometimes we think we are the only ones going through it and that everyone else’s life is going okay, it’s just ours that feels like it is sinking in the mire.

Which brings me to a comment that I saw in passing yesterday on television. I know that some of you will roll your eyes when I say this, but often, and it turns out to be true, a phrase or a comment in a movie zings out at me as being a “message” that I should pay attention to. Anyhow, if you’re still reading, I was surfing the stations and came upon the tail end of the movie, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” in which Gordon Gekko, still terrifically played by Mr. Dimple on His Chin, Michael Douglas, returns with more force than ever, alienating his daughter (played by Carey Mulligan with dimples everywhere). Shia La Bouef (what is it about his name?) plays her lover who also alienates her because he’s a you-know-what’s behind. Anyhow, I am watching that last scene on a shadow-lined street when Carey and Shia bemoan the fact that they don’t know how to overcome the past even though she is pregnant with his child, and Michael Douglas steps into the light and says, “What’s the matter with you two? Haven’t you ever heard of comebacks?” I have to confess that I laughed out loud.

Sometimes when we are dipping around in gloom and feeling sorry for ourselves (the worst way to spend time,) we don’t always or even often, think of the concept of “comebacks,” a la Bill Clinton, or an even bigger one: HILLARY CLINTON for that matter. Isn’t it great to see her doing her job as Secretary of State when you think back to the time before she decided to run for the Senate from New York? Linear thinking makes things feel like they are spiralling down, down down into a bottomless pit; and that there is no subsequent up, never mind, an up, up and away. Not now, when people are harping at everything, including Olympic uniforms being made in China. Why doesn’t the American team just wear T-Shirts made in the USA? What’s the big deal with finding a practical solution to this tempest?

So, back to the idea of comebacks being a possibility. I have to admit that I was cheered up by that line in the movie. It says that there may be a smidgen of hope or light that things will get better, little by little. Or that bitter disillusionment in someone you held with high regard for a long time will fade over time. The loss of respect and trust in people who meant a lot to you is probably the hardest thing to overcome. So, coming back from that will probably take not just minutes or days, but weeks, months and maybe longer. After all, we’re still here in the center of ourselves. So let’s protect that sanctity and believe (hope) that something stronger will come along one day. And that we will come back.

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July 10, 2012

“shray jow” . . .

I have been making traditional Peking Ravioli dumplings for a long time, the wrappers from scratch. Somehow, I got it into my head to replicate a dumpling called “shray jow” (water dumplings) that I tasted at some dim sum parlors in the past. A few weeks ago while I was in the Asian market called “88” in Brookline, I came upon a stainless steel TWO-tiered steamer. Having cooked as much and as long as I have, it seemed a little late in the game to be buying one–but I didn’t have one and the generous sized kettle would also be perfect for dipping a Peking duck before hanging and roasting too. Or, for cooking lobsters! So I came home with it, and the search for a shray jow recipe that mirrored my memories began in earnest.

It never continues to amaze me that even when I have a shelf full of Chinese recipe books, that the one I’m looking for is not there. Online, I found so many variations that it wasn’t even funny–with really weird ingredients. Finally, after a couple of efforts where the taste was close but the texture was not, I came upon a recipe that worked. It involved chopping up the raw shrimp into a paste, adding sherry or rice wine and cornstarch to it, and flavoring the pork/shrimp mixture with oyster sauce after adding freshly chopped bamboo shoots, green onions and fresh ginger root.

So if you’re inspired to try it out yourself, here’s the recipe that I tweaked and sent to one of my daughters who wanted to make them after seeing these photos. I made them when my other daughter came to visit a week and a half ago.

shray jow recipe:

Use equal parts ground pork and shrimp. Buy large or extra large shrimp and clean the black lines on both sides of each shrimp–then chop them up until the shrimp is a paste. Add sherry or Chinese wine to the shrimp and a spoonful of cornstarch in a little chicken broth (or water.) Mix well together before you add the shrimp mixture to the pork. Chop up fresh bamboo shoots into very small dice and add; ditto green onions and fresh ginger root. Add a tablespoon or so of oyster sauce and mix well. Let sit in the fridge covered with plastic wrap.

Line a steamer plate with napa cabbage that is not wet. Take wonton wrappers (round ones) and wet half of the round, add filling, pinch together. Keep them covered with a cloth until they are all folded. Then place them on the cabbage–brush the dumplings with chicken broth or water or a combo–this is important or else the wrappers sometimes stay too dry and don’t get cooked enough. Bring water to a boil and steam the dumplings for about 15 minutes or until they look done.

Serve with dip: seasoned rice vinegar, soy, a little sugar, scallions, ginger, a little water and drops of sesame oil–stir well and serve.

Enjoy!

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July 9, 2012

change (again) . . .

What is it when someone says they don’t want to change? I want to change all the time, it seems. When I learn that I may have thought the worst of someone when I felt down and out, I’d love to change and trust in the best of them in the future instead. They say you can’t change the past but I disagree because I’ve found that you can certainly change the way you think about the past–and therefore how you might feel about it at this stage in your life, especially if the shift in perspective allows you to feel a little better about things.

I seem to be at a stage in which there is a lot of loss of things that I valued in the past. The only way to “repair” things when a workman has carelessly uprooted and demolished the bed of red daylilies that have been in the front yard for over a decade is not to bawl him out (which I haven’t done although I wanted to) but to go online and buy 20 fans of red and red/orange daylilies on eBay and plant them in the barren space, this time, making a small stone border around the plot and mulching it so that the mistake doesn’t happen again.

I am happy to say that the poor hydrangea plant that had also been cut down twice (by the same workman) actually sprang back with some new leaf shoots after I rescued it last week. There’s an area of new white hydrangeas that seems to be forming a grouping in the front yard, visible from our third floor bedroom window. The rescued hydrangea will find a home there too, along with some pieces of old red brick that I will encircle the plot with, just in case.

It’s slim pickings these days at the local nursery across the street from Wal-Mart. I stopped by there yesterday after buying a small vanilla cone dipped in chocolate at the Dairy Queen up the street. It was drippy as I walked through the perennial sale table where I found a lone lunaria plant. They grew abundantly in the garden of our house in Lexington where the kids grew up. It’s also called “honesty” or “money plant” because you remove the brown papery edges to reveal a white, translucent inner shell that shimmers when it is dried. I had paid for it after I had decided not to spring for the tall gardenia tree in bloom on the asphalt, baking in the sun. The soil was dried out which made it all the more astonishing to see so many beautiful flowers on it. On the way to my car, I saw the owner of the nursery and asked him if it might be on sale. He said sure, he’d look it up and see what he could do. A few moments later after a $20 discount, I left with the gardenia tree on the front passenger floor of the car.

You might as well know that I have loved gardenias for a long time because it was one of my mother’s favorite flowers too. I used to buy them for her when I was nine while I was in Washington, D.C. where I took the bus from Maryland for my piano lessons. One creamy, fragrant blossom cost a dollar, the same as what my lunch would have cost at Neisner’s then. I remember that she was a hard person to give things to in those days and later on too–and that the gardenias were not always taken out of their cellophane wrapping. Nevertheless, I kept giving them to her over the years for special birthdays and so on.

I also ordered some when my second husband and I got married, just the two of us there with the Town Clerk in City Hall many years ago. So I bought the gardenia tree, not as some kind of nostalgic reminder of my mother, but because I liked it. Simple as that. Now, if that isn’t change, I don’t know what is.

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July 4, 2012

trust . . .

Lately, I’ve been thinking that trust, or lack of trust, is one of the main ingredients to our recipe for life. Especially in times like this when the world outside is full of bully politics and internecine battles about what we should believe and what we should do. The American Dream is definitely gone, having disappeared “in sixty seconds.”

What’s left? Belief and trust in our marriages? In our family relationships? I tend to go overboard in being generous towards those I care about. And then withdraw when I feel it may have given the wrong impression. There is not one of us who doesn’t have some kind of personality quirk (or disorder as some are prone to believe,) learning disability (dyslexia or more) or other qualities that might be captured as “narcissistic” or self-involved. In fact, it seems to me that the constant exposure and reiteration of personality descriptions has rendered us all into pie charts of inadequate behavior in one form or other.

Which then lends us to have trouble trusting others. After all, if we’re all so needy in character or integrity ourselves, how can we then trust others not to be the same way? Maybe trust is not where it’s at, after all. Maybe it’s faith. A kind of loyalty that transcends what our rational mind tells us. Yes, maybe that’s it: faith in ourselves and in others.

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June 30, 2012

an ordinary life . . .

twice pan-fried noodles with grilled teriyaki chicken

This morning, I read an article called, “Redefining Success and Celebrating the Ordinary” in the New York Times. What a relief to find that there are others who point out how skewed our culture is towards defining personal success. All we seem to hear about are prizes or “wins”: the Olympic qualifying heats that are broadcast multiple times on TV; the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prizes, Emmy Awards, Tony Awards, the Oscars, Facebook IPO, Guggenheim Fellowships and the Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress. An example cited in the article was a student who was a “straight-A, piano-playing quarterback.”

Sure, it’s okay to recognize achievement. But the emphasis by the press and our culture on landmark accolades can make the rest of us think, “What am I, chopped liver?” The answer is, nope, even if you aren’t Nora Ephron nor written books, articles, movies and directed movies that everyone recognizes, you can still say something witty and your husband will smile at you while eating dinner, just the two of you .

The NYTimes article focuses on having conversations with your children about success, so that everything doesn’t merit the overused “good job!” when all a kid does is get their fork into their mouth without spilling food. I also think these ideas are valuable for people like us who are baby boomers and beyond in age. For example, when someone retires from thirty-odd years of service in some public domain and is awarded a medal or a service award, that’s nice. But does that also include whether those individuals were generous people with themselves outside of work? You see where this could keep going, don’t you?

I’m not altogether sure of where I stand in all this either. If I were to start making a list of the ordinary things that make up my life, it might include:

a. being adventurous about cooking, and “cooking from scratch,” although last weekend, I had my fill of making homemade Peking Duck wrappers when the coffee cup I wanted to cut the dough rounds out with still had coffee in it and spilled on to the dough. I don’t think anyone noticed if there was the taste of coffee in them after putting on the hoisin sauce, scallions and roast duck, though.

b. being determined and curious: that’s what my husband says are some of my best qualities.

c. being willing to admit to my own mistakes even when it makes me feel bad for awhile. I am always taken aback when people are unable or unwilling to admit to their own mistakes, such as breaking a couple of eggs while carrying the groceries. But, whatever.

d. in the spirit of the article, I could describe myself as a “straight, piano-playing cook.”

Anyhow, I think the Fourth of July weekend is a good time to think about personal independence, and to consider whether it’s possible to release ourselves from cultural ideals that we have to be extraordinary in order to feel worthwhile. Or, as the tagline in the NYTimes article poses, “Isn’t living a life of integrity as praiseworthy as fame and money?”

What do you think?

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Category: Life & Spirit