Sunday Morning ~ Well Fed

Cidziwa ndi mwini mkhuto wa fulu. ~ Only the tortoise can know how well fed it is.

~ Chewa proverb

November 29, 2020

Hi Everyone,

As the snow fell on Wednesday I realized I could just enjoy it without anxiety. It was the first thing to be grateful for the day before Thanksgiving. I didn’t have to worry about people traveling, only smile as I looked out my kitchen windows at the ground turning white, then turn back to my pies. There was no need for two pies this year; there was not even a need for one, but I like pie and love the smell of them cooking. I figured breakfast for the week would be pie. I usually make three: pumpkin, pecan, and apple, but this year I got seduced by a photo of a cranberry pie with streusel topping and decided to go wild. I had already intended to embrace this isolation and refused to get all weepy over the lone state of the holiday, my favorite of the year. I love cooking and I love feeding people, and I also like being grateful so Thanksgiving is my idea of the perfect culmination. I get that it’s history is steeped in rosy lore that has a very dark side. But at it’s core, wise, generous people helping refugees survive should be something to celebrate. The fact that those newcomers were terrible guests is another side of it. But I wanted to focus on the very basic idea of Thanksgiving. A desperate group of people fleeing persecution saved by a native group of people who held human decency in higher regard than ownership. It’s historical simplification is a fantasy, a boiled down version of the truth, but I appreciate a holiday focused on giving thanks for what we have, sharing a harvest, and valuing togetherness. The side dish of understanding how history gets distilled into snippets for good ratings is just starting to be served. We’re growing up.

This year we all agreed to stay put, either solo or with their household and be safe and responsible. Lord knows we’ve suffered enough as a country this year and the thought of adding risk to an already volatile situation was just not acceptable. So I watched the snow and thought how nice it was that I did not have to worry about anyone driving up that day. I usually busy myself frantically until everyone is safely parked in the driveway, often not until after midnight. It’s a lot of effort to get here: traffic, early winter weather, last minute travel delays, all moot this year. 

I didn’t need to make the whole meal, but I still wanted the house full of the holiday senses, and I realized I could do that without exhaustion or worry. I made everything smaller and simpler. It was rather nice. I love that we can all be adaptable without mourning about it, after all, we are so very fortunate compared to many others. So we adjusted and accommodated and I heard no whining at all. We video called during the day, compared recipes and menus, and shared sentiments but not pathogens. I was glad to see everyone safe en place and my single place setting in front of the fire was quite lovely. I texted with friends from Malawi recalling the Thanksgiving dinner we hosted for sixteen when the power went out just as the meal was to be cooked. Chimemwe and Catherine lit a fire for me and we cooked everything outside, which, in the November heat there, made more sense anyway. This menu was definitely not designed for the tropics.

A small group of friends planned to walk in the morning then have an outside fire here with coffee and cider. We woke to pouring rain on Thursday, stunning how the temperature swings, and a fire was out of the question. We walked in rain gear, dripping from hat brims while we talked and appreciated the beauty of the island we live on, no matter the weather. A park ranger here said, “We have golden days and we have silver days.” and Thursday was definitely silver. After our soggy walk I made coffee on the porch and we stood apart, lowering our masks to sip. After coffee and chat we all went our separate ways, glad we could figure out a way to make the best of it.

And now that the soup is made, the pie shared, and garden vegetables gone, I’m turning to advent season where I’ll take stock and do my part to share what I have in hopes that everyone may be as well fed. The darkness is setting in but I look forward to the brighter days I know are coming. 

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Coming In

Imfa ilibe odi. ~ Death does not ask, “Can I come in?”

~ Chewa proverb

November 22, 2020

Hi Everyone,

Tomorrow would have been my mother’s 100th birthday. She died ten years ago, a week before we were to gather for her 90th. Instead the gathering was her funeral, but it was still beautiful and she would have loved it. We had five days with her before she died and I was able to gather my siblings from across the world to be there for her last days. She was ready. There wasn’t a moment of anguish as she slipped from joking around while watching jeopardy to a deep sleep, to a permanent one. I miss her but I feel her always with me. I was happy we had that time together as a family, all surrounding her as she drifted deeper and deeper into another world. It was so peaceful. We took turns sitting on the bed with her once she stopped talking. It was a perfect passing with all her children together, talking and reminiscing, laughing, caring for each other. I am so grateful for that. When the priest came to give her last rites we all placed our hands on her. She was covered with a quilt I’d made, an appliquéd tree, with leaves, the shapes of our hands, hanging from the branches. I couldn’t imagine it any better–– leaving this world under the touch of her children, loving her and thanking her. Nothing existed outside that room. 

A dear friend died this week without the warning my mother gave us. So there was no last goodbye, no reminiscing at the deathbed, no hands on him as he received the final sacrament. I never asked him over the forty five years of friendship if he’d have wanted that. Maybe not. And now in this strange and tragic time there is no sitting with his family, no making tea for them, no bringing a plate of food, no encouraging them to take a bite. No planning a funeral, picking music, deciding who does the readings or what to wear. So strange and unnatural. We sit in our separate spaces, a circumstance we read about in novels and history books, not live through. But here we are.

I’m still working through my stages of grief. The reality hasn’t completely taken hold yet; it’s only been a couple of days. I go in and out of denial and grief, still thinking I might get an email or text from him. I think about an after life and what that means. I was certainly raised with talk of heaven and hell with purgatory in between. I was young when my maternal grandmother died and remember overhearing my mother on the phone saying she wanted her dressed in a blue chiffon. Later, I told my mother I saw a lady in a blue dress flying up to heaven, conjuring up a Mary Poppins-like ascent. My mother was washing dishes, and she turned her head toward me and laughed but said nothing. I remember looking at the knot of her apron in the middle of her back and wondering if she knew I was lying. I guess I was trying to reassure her the system was working and didn’t quite get the humor. I don’t know when the literal shifted but during some developmental stage somewhere the whole notion became more spiritual and fluid. It’s not an actual “life” in the “after”. So what is it then? It’s hard to describe but I feel it as more of a presence, a peaceful and serene presence. 

When our friend, Dan, died of AIDS (a painful, tortured death) I had a vivid image of him at his funeral saying, “No! Hey! I’m ok!” as the organ played Danny Boy and we cried our eyes out. Was this my mind playing tricks? Maybe. But so what? It made me feel better and believe him at peace. And now I want to believe Pat is with him, old friends, roommates, groomsmen. Not sitting together drinking beer, but somehow cognizant of being back together in the same club, relieved of gravity and painful joints, tube feedings and nausea, floating free. 

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Promises, Threats, and Possibilities

Fodya ndi uyu ali pa mphuno; wa pa cala ngwa mphepo. ~ The real tobacco is in the nose; the one on the finger is for the wind.

~ Chewa proverb

November 15, 2020

Hi Everyone,

Don’t believe all you hear. What we can taste is the reality. Empty promises are blown away on the wind. Oh how I miss Malawian wisdom punctuating my daily conversations. Along with stepping into the backyard to pick a lime or ripe avocado, the experience of life there amid the steadfast belief in a better day was a rich existence. I think I’m allowing myself to miss it more now that I have hope for our state department. It feels like a fire was recently extinguished and we are assessing the damage but haven’t gotten the insurance check yet. I’m in the imagining stage of how to reconstruct. 

What is the difference between an empty promise and an empty threat? They really are  similarly cruel. I have spent many hours counseling women in abusive relationships and it’s incredibly frustrating. As my mother said to me, “When someone tells you you are stupid for thirty-six years, you believe it.” It’s a long hard process to get them to believe otherwise and understand how much better their lives would be without the stress they endure. Leaving an abusive relationship is not easy. The threat of never seeing their children again, of killing their cat, of being murdered keep them in a dangerous and toxic situation. Fear is a powerful motivator and those threats are real. These examples are blatantly and extremely abusive, but there are more subtle, craftier abusers. The ones that tell you everything is your fault, who dangle the pursestrings, who promise glory if only you behave, who tell you they really are leaving their wife this time. I’ve sat with these women and heard all the promises and threats in different varieties. And I struggle with how to get a chink in the wall to shine a light, gently, lest she never come back. Who wants to hear we’ve been duped? It feels so shitty. Especially when your bank account is now empty and there’s some serious egg to wipe off that face of yours. 

When I found myself facing the end of my marriage I spent $125 for one visit to a divorce lawyer an hour away. She’d been recommended by a friend and I was still in crisis. I drove there, crying the whole way, somehow thinking she was going to fix this whole thing. She welcomed me into her office and I blubbered the abridged story and asked her what I should do until he came to his senses and came back. She, in an apparent attempt to save my money as she charged by the minute, said, “He’s not coming back.” I stared at her in disbelief. How could she say that? I was outraged! How dare she? She didn’t even know me! Or him!  I didn’t hear much of what she said next. She may have listed some things to do but she may as well have been talking to a mannequin. I got up numbly and left her office and told myself all the way home what a terrible lawyer she was. She, of course, was right. He didn’t come back but it took some time to accept that my world was crumbling around me. Once the reality took hold, I took care of it myself, went to the town hall and bought a packet titled “Divorce With Children” for a dollar. Then it was a step by step walk toward independence and solvency which wasn’t easy, but it was doable. The first step in that long walk out of the woods, however, was recognizing the difference between empty threats, broken promises, my own illusions, and reality. 

When it was all final I took a trip to France to visit Michel, a missionary priest I was very close to in Malawi during my Peace Corps days. He was the godfather of my son born there, had been to visit us here twice,  and was then retired in southern France. I dreaded telling him about the divorce; he was so close to our family and it felt like such a failure. I couldn’t bear that he’d be disappointed in me or us. I’d written to him ahead of time so it wasn’t a surprise when I arrived. I knew he’d still love me, that wasn’t ever a concern but just having to admit my marriage failed was hard. I stayed in a guest room in the retirement home and shared daily meals and mass with the White Fathers. I prayed and cried, still sorting out how to rebuild what I lost. I prayed for my family, that my kids would be ok, that I would figure out how to make a good life on my own. I was careful not to demonize my ex and Michel never asked for many details. One afternoon, after an amazing lunch in the dining hall where the retired fathers swallowed their medications with their wine, Michel took a nap. I sat quietly in his room and looked around for something to read while he slept. I pulled a photo album off a shelf labeled “Visit to America 1995” and opened it. The album held photos of his last visit to Maine when he’d visited the kids’ school and told stories of D Day. There was a photo of me sitting at our dining table and underneath was written “Linda, my great friend from America”. Next to it was a photo turned backside out. I pulled back the plastic and turned the photo over. It was my husband with the line under it, “Joe, my great friend from America.”  I looked at Michel asleep on his bed and wept. He must have done this when he’d received my letter explaining what had happened to us, turning the photo over as a statement. Finding his gesture was an incredible validation for me. I thought how he hadn’t ripped it up and thrown it away. He was leaving room for the possibility of healing and reconciliation. I put the album back on the shelf and never told him I’d seen that. A few weeks after I returned home, Michel wrote to tell me he’d been diagnosed with acute leukemia and he died six weeks later. I am so eternally grateful I made that trip.

I know I am only a small speck in this complicated country. I know my story is only one of zillions that didn’t turn out so well. But I do believe we can recover from this blight in our history and build something better. We’ve got so much of the world behind us who know what’s in the nose and what’s in the wind, ready to turn over the photo of the last four years.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ The Naked Chicken

Linda mphepo iombe kuti uone maliseche a nkhuku. ~ Wait for the wind to blow for you to see the nakedness of the chicken. 

~ Chewa proverb

November 8, 2020

Hi Everyone,

What  beautiful morning. I feel like the house has landed with a jolt and we are stepping out into a colorful new world. Like so many others, I feel like I can breathe again. I feel a weight lifted off, as if I’ve been pinned under a rock with a life-threatening injury. The injury is still there, but at least I can move, assess the damage, get treatment, and start to heal now. That’s what this world seems like to me today. 

What a high tension week; I felt like I was jumping out of my skin. My friends in various parts of the world started sending messages on Tuesday. Many said they were praying for us. It was truly a testament of how American leadership has been missed. I believe in the power of prayer and was buoyed by their kind words. It was snowing on Tuesday as I read them. I wondered about the symbolism, caught in an episode of magical thinking. Was it a sign of  whitewashing the past four years? Or was it the ice queen speaking? I shook my head and tried to stay present. I told myself, “This type of symbolism is the whim of authors in novels and fantasy stories.” But, being a winter lover, the snow gave me a good feeling. It was pretty and distracting. It was surrender, like going in to take an important test. Having studied as much possible, there is nothing left but to do the best you can. It’s a panicky sort of relief. Throughout Tuesday I checked for reports of violence but heard none. That was very good. I felt better as the day went on. I went for a walk with a friend in the snow. I stopped to buy milk. I tried not to perseverate on the feeling I had election day 2016 recalling photos of women putting their “I Voted” stickers on the grave of Susan B Anthony.

The day passed and the evening came and we all know how that went. I knew the polls could be off, but how many times had I dismissed the polls when they weren’t in my favor then lived to see them be spot on? I’d been reassured but realistic throughout the campaign, especially in the close races. I knew the Maine senate seat was not going to be easy. Then Florida went down, not unexpected, but I couldn’t take anymore. The thought of that state going underwater with seniors living without services sent me into a panic. I couldn’t watch or listen. I went to bed and fell asleep instantly. Denial. I’ve been there before. When I knew my husband was having an affair but didn’t want to face it, I slept. It’s a relief. Tuesday evening I felt like the rock I was pinned under would kill me after all. As much as I was trying to keep myself alive under there and believed the rescue team would come, it seemed I was not going to make it. I woke and I did not look at the news in the morning. As long as I didn’t look there was still hope. I repressed the fact that I lived in a country where half the people voted for this travesty every time it bubbled to the surface. It was more than I could bear. I made tea and puttered in the kitchen. A pandemic and fascism? No. I couldn’t cope with that right then. My son was here (thank God) and bopped into the kitchen, smiling with a spring in his step. I looked at him as he pulled out the coffee beans and asked, “What? What happened?”  After he ground the coffee he said, “Oh, I’m feeling good. Biden’s got this. He’s ahead now in Michigan.” as he shook them into the pot. 

I nearly collapsed with relief. The rock was being lifted!!

After that moment I did not question a Biden win. I knew there’d be drama but was absolutely sure he had this. The rescue team was on it’s way. Yes, I was discouraged by how close it had to be. Yes I was very worried about the senate, but all that was fleeting. But having been so close to the abyss, I felt unadulterated elation, like finding your toddler alive and playing after he’d been missing in a Chuck-E-Cheese. Since then I’ve been disappointed and confused by finger pointing and blaming about the closeness of this race and how far off the polls were. I see it differently. My feeling is that with the sustained sabotage, the voter suppression, the blatant cheating, the Russian interference, the Iranian interference, the deep history of racism in this country, the gerrymandering, the disinformation, after all that, ALL THAT, we still came out on top. This is the predicted landslide in my opinion. If we can take Georgia and Arizona with this handicap, holy hell it was a landslide. Yes. And when the wind blows on that chicken, I suspect we’ll see we gained much more. 

Congratulations everyone. I am so proud to be a part of this. I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work. There are so many more rocks to move.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Fate

Kali konse kouluka, kamatera. ~ All that flies, comes down.

~ Chewa proverb

November 1, 2020

Hi Everyone,

On a trip to South Africa in December of 2016 I was still reeling from our election results. I found myself hoping the electoral college would prevent the inevitable inauguration, knowing that would take a miracle. It was a loop that went round and round in my brain. The other loop was our country going from technicolor to black and white the day the fraud took office. It seemed all the more poignant traveling in South Africa. We drove through a good part of that immense, spectacular country and got immersed in both it’s history and it’s beauty. We visited the museum at Nelson Mandela’s capture site and I stood for a long time in front of a photograph of people voting in the first free election after apartheid. I had a hard time tearing myself away from that image. I thought about our own recent election and the Americans who chose to sit that one out. I wondered how they may have changed the course of our history. The lines in the photograph before me were more than a mile long, snaking around and around dirt paths. People waited twelve hours in some places to cast their vote for the first time. Violence was predicted. People worried there would be no peaceful transfer of power. But what actually transpired that day in 1994 was a mostly jubilant celebration of democracy for the first time in that nation’s history. The election was on April 27 and Nelson Mandela was sworn into office two weeks later on May 10th. In 2016 I was glad we had a longer transition period. Today, I’m wishing it was two weeks. I walked away from that photograph toward the exhibits documenting the struggle to end apartheid and the fierce conviction that sustained the fight to gain representation. I felt sick that so many of us take voting for granted. I didn’t fully realize then how difficult we make it for people.

I am anxious, excited, terrified, and hopeful. The 2018 caravan never arrived and hopefully the violence won’t either. I am joyful at seeing the numbers of people waiting in line here to cast their vote. I’m both aghast and not surprised at the repeated attempts to thwart them. It’s like watching a sloppy chess game with very high stakes. 

We raised our kids without a television and spent a lot of time reading aloud to them. Once a year we’d read the entire Lord of the Rings series and it became part of our family vernacular. When the movie came out, my teenage son and I went to see it. In the first scene with the Black Riders I had my eyes closed and buried my head into his shoulder. His teenage self gave a little shrug to get his ridiculous mother a decent public distance from him and said, “Mum, you know what happens! What’s the matter with you?”  This is all to say, I get anxious about the outcome when I know what’s going to happen. I still get tense when the flying monkeys come out in the Wizard of Oz. I’m nervous when I see instant replays during football games. So the next three days are just ridiculous. My cautious optimism ebbs and flows. I hate being a chump and I cover my ears when I hear someone say, “Yes, that’s what we thought in 2016.” I was overconfident then, too. 

I hope the pendulum is swinging back and we’ll be celebrating soon. I’ve been in a frenzy organizing things as a way to work off nervous energy. I’ve made a quilt and sauerkraut. I’m afraid to stop moving. I go through my address book looking for friends to call in swing states.  I’m holding onto my faith in gravity and the human spirit, and am ready to strap my ankles to tackle whatever comes next. 

Stay safe my friends. 

Love to all,

Linda