mulberryshoots

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" ~ Mary Oliver
October 26, 2012

fun . . .


Fun. What a weird word. I mean, think about it: f-u-n. It sounds like an asian noodle–like in “chow foon” or something. Okay, I’ll stop fooling around and talk about fun. The reason I’m having a hard time doing it is that fun hasn’t been a big part of my life. That might sound like an odd thing to many of you but I have to admit it’s true.

I’ve always been fairly serious, even as a child. Overloaded with responsibility at a very young age (5), I don’t think I ever questioned the somewhat sober tone that permeated my growing up. I just did my homework, or assignments or chores. I was obedient and spent a lot of time by myself. Too much stimulation otherwise. So today, when someone asked me what fun meant to me, I was a little at a loss.

But, by the end of the conversation, I decided that it might be a good idea for me to explore the possibilities of having a little more fun. I grew up with music and as a teenager I listened to a lot of music, all the time (Ernest Bloch “Concerto Grosso,” Dave Brubeck “Take Five,” Bela Bartok “Concerto for Orchestra,” Glazunov violin concerto, and on and on.)

I’ve gotten away from it, I don’t know why, but when I went into the Apple store the other day to get a small Sandisk removed with tweezers from my Mac Pro laptop, I looked at and bought a small silver square “Shuffle.” It’s an MP-3 player and I dragged a few pieces of music on to it from my I-tunes. I am listening to it with earphones right now while the World Series is playing on TV. I didn’t think I’d like the concept of music that would play randomly one clip after another (being the slightly OCD person that I am,) which is also why I didn’t spring for the “Shuffle” sooner.

But as I type this post, I laughed out loud when a Bach Goldberg variation (played by a terrific young Korean pianist named Minsoo Sohn) was followed by Eva Cassidy singing “Fields of Gold.” Get it?

Now, that’s fun!

1 Comment
October 24, 2012

revelations . . .


The Universe works in mysterious ways. In my experience, it almost never agrees with the way I am thinking about things. When I am brought face to face with the true meaning of something that is different from what I thought had happened, I am bowled over by it and humbled that I even had the idea that I could figure it out by myself. Does this ever happen to you?

All my life, I’ve been conscious of and tried to dissect certain subterranean things that seemed to flow through the weaving of my life. For a long time, I couldn’t figure it out. But I had an inkling that there was a greater truth to who I am. And more importantly, WHY I am who I am. Well, as of today, I understand it wholly for the first time.

Without getting into details, I can say that the pieces of the puzzle have to do with genetics, with the role of parents and other behavioral patterns that created nubs in the fabric of my past. We all have that, don’t you think? at least when you read memoirs and observe ourselves whether looking in the mirror, or not? Actually, mine seem pretty tame compared to those of writers who describe mental illness and other inherited disabilities that run through their families.

In my case, it’s not mild but it’s not heavy either. I marvel at the fact that I have managed to survive as well as I have despite the setbacks, the social stigma I experienced from being awkward and too direct or whatever.

What these revelations have resulted in, though, as hard as it has been to be brave and honest about warts and all, is. . . peace of mind. I finally know. And I finally understand. And now, I can breathe easier that there is no great secret in the sky that I’ve been missing about myself all this time. They say that “an unobserved life is a life unlived,” or something like that. Many don’t want to know much and maybe they’re happier that way.

For me, it’s revelatory and a relief. I think I’ll take the day off to recover.

Leave a comment
October 21, 2012

birds of a feather . . .

Yesterday, I went on a bus filled with women (and two men, one was the bus driver) to the Rhinebeck, New York sheep and wool show. It turned out to be a gorgeous Fall day with leaf color ablaze on the Dutchess County (NY) Fairgrounds. Honestly, I’ve never seen so many women in my life and was also surprised to see how many men there were; children in strollers and babies slung in body carriers.

There were live sheep, border collies herding sheep, live llamas, rabbits, guinea pigs. Hundreds of vendor booths with yarn, roving, sheepskins housed in building after building that I could make my way through the people with strollers, shopping carts and walkers. I spent plenty of time sitting around in the shade and on benches to bide the time. I can usually only take about two hours in a venue with this many people and it’s not a problem when I drive because I can just decide to leave when I’m done. Since I took the Peter Pan bus conveniently provided by WEBS, (leaving at 5:30 in the morning to make it to Northampton, MA by 7 a.m.) we arrived at 9:20 a.m. and left at 4 p.m. That turned out to be a generous amount of time for me but I did hear from a woman at lunch that she drove ten hours with five others from Maryland, taking hotel rooms for three nights to be at this fair.

I found a couple of interesting things but there were no particular yarns that spoke to me. I did come across something adorable for my granddaughter for Christmas and bought some hand blocked linen goods for myself from India in one of the booths. With these finds, I was happy to pace myself through the rest of the day.

The reason I’m writing this post, though, is to tell you about what happened in the last two minutes of this dawn-to-dusk experience. The bus returned to Northampton in the dark around 7 p.m. and as we stood up to disembark, the woman across the aisle from me sighed and said something like, “here we’ve gone halfway across the world to go and buy some yarn.” When I asked her where she lived, thinking it was somewhere in the Berkshires, Vermont or New Hampshire, she said, “Worcester.” I laughed out loud because I’m from Worcester too and we had just spent about 6 hours across from each other without being aware of it. She and her two other Worcester knitting friends introduced themselves and said they’ve been knitting together for a long time. And that they knit together every Wednesday evening at a local place where the Tatnuck bookseller used to be. There’s a cafe and a new yarn shop just opened, they told me as they kindly invited me to join them.

Up to these moments riding on the bus, I had been feeling bad, remembering how awkward a fit it had been with the folks in the last post, “My favorite day” –There seemed to be a true generation gap between me and others, who texted, emailed and did everything on their cell phones, communicating via Facebook, etc. I use my cell phone mostly to let my husband know I’m on the way home.

With the sudden introduction of three knitters from my home town, I no longer felt so isolated. I laughed to myself in the car driving home about how the Universe flips things around when you least expect it.

Today, I think it’s time for me to stop resisting a birthday that is coming around the corner and to relax and enjoy my life instead. . . like getting to know nice people who knit on Wednesday nights.

5 Comments
October 19, 2012

“my favorite day” . . .


Have you ever had a chance to take part in something you thought would be incredible, did your best and then something happened that deflated you towards the end? For me, it felt like listening to a performance of a grand symphony when suddenly there were a couple sour notes at the end that were hard to ignore.

After some reflection, I’ve stopped thinking and worrying about the reactions of other people: since there’s nothing you can do about them anyway, especially people that you’ve met casually and don’t even know. What I have found instead is a rich repertoire of lessons learned on a personal level that I can take from it. And to decide on my own what to do next and not rely on what others might choose to do or not do. You can’t do anything about their behavior. But you can do a lot about your own. The wisdom to know the difference helps at a time like this.

Today, I’ve found the answer to when human beings react by circling the wagons to protect their own. As I saw on someone’s Facebook header just yesterday:

“What day is it? asked Pooh
It’s today! squeaked Piglet
My favorite day! said Pooh”

I am reminded once again by the all-wise Universe not to sweat the small stuff and to know the difference between what we can do versus what we can’t do anything about. Why is it so hard to remember that I wonder?

2 Comments
October 11, 2012

web of life . . .


Last week, G. pointed out a spider web that could be seen outside our kitchen window as he was making coffee in the morning. I was reading my email and answered absently. That evening, as I was measuring out the coffee for after dinner, I glanced out the window and was astonished to see a perfectly symmetrical web with a queen spider in the center putting on the finishing touches.

This spurred me to look up what spider totems mean. Here is some spider medicine language:

“Spiders are very delicate creatures that play an important role in the myths and lore of many peoples as the teacher of balance between the past and future, the physical and spiritual.To the Native Americans, Spider is Grandmother, the link to the past and future. In India it’s associated with Maya, the weaver of illusions.
With its gentle strength, Spider spins together the threads of life with intricate webs. Spider knows that the past affects the future and vise versa. It calls us to make use of our creativity and weave our dreams into our destiny. For many Native Americans, “spider woman” stories are important creation mythologies. One of the common feature of those are wisdom symbolized with spiders’ webs (for example, she taught the human how to weave). Also generally accepted are the ideas that her “thread” connects the human world and the world of spirits or the “above world” and the “below world”. Spider Woman also weaves the “relationship” of the Web of Life and all beings.”

So, I guess the appearance in such a prominent place might be some kind of “sign.”

Coincidentally, its presence appeared the same day as I launched a new website that I have been thinking about for a long time: “A Life Of My Own” ~ a place for women to tell their stories in their own words. My hope is that it will be a place where anonymously or not, women may reflect on meaning in their lives, write from the heart and share their thoughts with other women around the globe.

I don’t know if it will catch on or not, but it’s out there now as a part of the web of life.

follow-up photo of spider tending her two-week old web!

Leave a comment
October 11, 2012

birthdays . . .

Yesterday, my mother-in-law and my husband G. celebrated their birthdays. He was born at five minutes to midnight and just made it under the wire on her birthday long ago. Among his other five siblings, his mother has always had a special place in her heart for him. We brought over the glass flutes for chilled Minuetto Prosecco along with some sparkling white grape juice to toast the birthday folks.

Six of us sat down to a lobster dinner, cooked and served with well-honed ceremony: testing that the lobsters were done by the sniff test taken on the landing looking into the kitchen. Expert chopping up of the cooked lobsters so that the meat was easy to extract from the shell. Boiling water was poured into bowls set with dishes on top containing warm, melted butter for tender morsels of lobster.

Afterwards, we were joined by more family and shared a birthday cake from a favorite bakery and then, taking turns, opened birthday cards. This is a family where cards are read aloud and savored. They are more important than anything, including gifts. Gram turned ninety-four yesterday and was in good spirits surrounded by her family. Nothing makes her happier than that. G. was in fine spirits too, taking good natured ribbing as everyone joined in the fun of getting together and telling stories about when they were kids.

More and more as time goes by, I am struck by how simple life can be. It almost feels like some kind of bell curve where things settle down to the essentials sooner or later: putting aside differences to be present at a celebratory dinner while birthday cards are read aloud. A good time was had by all.

1 Comment
October 2, 2012

prizes . . .

Okay, so the MacArthur Fellows were named yesterday.

These are the so-called “genius” awards consisting of about half of a million dollars to each of the people whose exceptional endeavors are singled out by the MacArthur Foundation. One of them this year is a stringed instrument bow maker in Boston. Another is an economist who surveyed about a million sources of data to come up with conclusions about how we learn. Chris Thile, a mandolin player whose recordings and Youtube clips attest to an amazing ability ignored phone calls from MacArthur, thinking they were political robocalls.

When my kids were growing up in Lexington, we knew a family with the same surname as ours who lived up the hill from us. Tragically, the mother died from a blood clot after routine knee surgery. The father, who taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) raised the three girls by himself and my daughters were friendly with them as classmates in school. Years later, I happened to hear that one of them had gone on to MIT herself and formed a group of her peers to invent and develop very simple devices that would help people in third world countries. Her invention was a handheld water purifier that worked manually by cranking it. Amy Smith was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2004.

I don’t know about you, but I look forward to hearing about these awards every year. It comes after the Nobel prizes are announced earlier in the Fall. And they come after the Pulitzer and Booker Prizes, I think. In a way, it’s great to hear about these acknowledgements of human creativity and exceptional talent.

Sometimes I wonder, though, how other superhuman efforts are acknowledged in our culture. Like the parents who live across the street from me whose eldest son has cystic fibrosis, living in a wheelchair, picked up everyday by the public school bus. Or parents who have kids who are autistic or disabled in other ways that entails a lifetime of care and concerns about their welfare when they reach adulthood. One of my mentors when I worked at Genetics Institute had a son like that. The loving care he and his wife provided for their child extended beyond themselves to efforts putting through legislative initiatives in the public sector to help others with the same plight.

When I think about acknowledging meaning in one’s life, it comes in many different forms on so many different levels. The MacArthur celebrants are on one extreme of the spectrum. On a daily basis, there must be zillions more along the way.

2 Comments
October 1, 2012

happiness is a choice . . .

I almost put an exclamation point on the title of this post today. My college alumnae quarterly had just arrived the other day. In it was a highlight about Lois Markle, an actress for 60 years and quoted her comments about contentment:

“Finding contentment: I was not a happy young woman.
But when I realized that happiness is a choice you can make,
that’s when my life turned around. The older I get, the more
I cherish everything.”

Those of us who might be apprehensive about growing old can rest assured that this kind of wisdom falls into our laps sooner or later. Each day is filled with promise for simple pleasures and the choice we have to be happy. We may not know that the choice is ours. But when we realize that it is, the dark before the dawn disappears. . . forever.

Leave a comment
September 24, 2012

staff of life . . .


Sometimes I can get roiling around in my head about deep life issues. That’s a sure sign to do something else, like cooking. The other day, I bought an oatmeal scone with maple glaze at a local bakery. It was one of the best things I ever ate. I looked it up online and sure enough there was a 1999 recipe for maple oatmeal scones by Ina Garten. As per usual with some of her recipes, the ingredients were so rich I couldn’t believe it: white flour, wheat flour, instant oats, a POUND of unsalted butter cut up into little bits, buttermilk, FOUR eggs, maple syrup.

Since C. was coming out for dinner and staying overnight, I thought it might be a nice treat to make the scones so we could have them with afternoon tea when she arrived. The recipe was a little tricky because, as with pie crusts, it’s important to incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients so that the result is little bits of butter still showing. I did this by carefully pulsing the flours with the cut up butter in my Cuisinart and it was perfect. What was harder to do was to mix the dry and the wet ingredients together because the bowl I was using wasn’t big enough to stir everything together. So, I ended up piling the dough onto a board with pastry paper on it and gently mixing it by hand. As you know, handling dough just toughens it (as in making cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning) so I was careful just to turn it over, pressing it together gently to incorporate the dry with the sticky dough. I rolled the dough out and cut it with my old fluted round cutter and baked them in the oven. I made a maple syrup glaze, using less confectioners sugar and more syrup with a tiny bit of vanilla. Sprinkled the tops with oats as Ina’s recipe suggested.

When they were all done, I wasn’t sure it had been worth all that effort, but C. said later she thought they were one of the best things I’ve ever made (which is saying something since I cook a lot.) G. also gave them out to his family and a friend in need down the street. SHE called afterwards to thank him for the scones because they were “so delicious.” So okay, maybe I’ll make them again. The next time, I’ll use a larger SQUARE fluted cutter that I ordered on Amazon. We’ll have them when we get together over the holidays with fresh fruit salad, bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese, greek yogurt pancakes with maple syrup. M. (C.’s sister) had sent us the recipe for the pancakes–and C. and I had them for breakfast on Sunday. They’re slightly tangy, super tender and out of this world!

Last week, I had also seen a recipe in a British magazine at Barnes and Noble for homemade ginger ale. It reminded me of the concept of making tisanes in England with scented geranium, lemon verbena and so on. The recipe required cooking equal proportions of honey, chopped up fresh ginger root and water, a half cup of each into a saucepan. I used more ginger root and sliced it up in very fine slivers. Boil for 15 minutes and then let cool. When ready to serve, use a pretty glass (these sweet hobnail tumblers are from Anthropologie,) fill with ice, spoon 3 tablespoons of the strained ginger syrup and stir together with very fizzy club soda. Top with fresh mint.

Although we were planning to have hot Lapsang Souchang tea with the scones, the afternoon was still pretty balmy so we opted for drinking the iced ginger ale with the scones. A nice combination as it turned out. So I thought I’d share these recipes with you today. Enjoy!

4 Comments
September 21, 2012

“epilogue” . . .

The other day at the local library, I picked up a book by Anne Roiphe entitled “Epilogue.” Although I had not read her other books, her name rang a distant bell and so I checked it out. It turned out to be a memoir of her life after the sudden death of her husband of forty years.

I’ve read other memoirs about widowhood, notably Joan Didion’s book, “Magical Thinking” and Joyce Carol Oates whose title I can’t even remember because it seemed to be an excuse to publish another book when she had already remarried someone else by the time her widow memoir about her first husband was published.

That’s actually a lot of what these books are about: husbands, and marriage. In Anne Roiphe’s book, she misses her husband because he did everything for her: paid the taxes, did the cooking, earned a good living, provided homes in New York and in the Hamptons, hosted and cooked for their annual Seder, celebrated with their grown children and grandchildren. Lots of marriages are like that and that’s not what bothers me about Roiphe’s book. It’s her slightly unappreciative tone towards him (he didn’t leave me any life insurance and I can’t afford to keep the house in the Hamptons,) her daughters and especially sons-in-law that make her appear to be a miser emotionally at the same time that she is desperate to find a new man for companionship, or at least to provide her with what’s now missing.

I’m writing about a book which I laid down many times, picking it up to read more parts of it and finally finishing it last night because the unintentional take-home message for me was so loud and clear:

CHERISH, revel in and appreciate the life we still have with our partners now before one of us dies. Don’t look back with annoying regrets that you could have been kinder, nicer, more accepting, less critical. Hug each other now. Let the small stuff really go. Really. Stop worrying about what you can’t do anything about.

Treasure the present moment for all the days you have left, no matter whether it’s for just a short time or for a longer one than we might expect.

I guess that’s a great gift to receive from a book that was so annoying to read.

Leave a comment