Rox and Roll

For the love of the farmers' market

Food has been on my mind a lot lately for hosts of reasons. As most moms do, I'm constantly seeking novel, healthy ways to feed my brood. As well, I'm entering a "training" phase of my life; while I've always been a fan of mountain biking, I'm starting to swim laps again, and I've started learning how to run as well. Fueling my body well and healthfully for this level of exercise is important to me. And while I'm comfortable with my weight, give or take that ubiquitous ten pounds, I'd like to tone up while swimsuit season approaches. Recently, I've watched some friends employ various tactics to their own weight and health management: low carb, veggies-only 5 days/week, walking 10K steps/day, setting goals of races and climbs, boot camps, yoga retreats, and more. At the end of the day, every person has to find out what works for him/her or for their family, and I know that three things work for me: committing to at least an hour of exercise/day no matter what, preparing healthy ingredients before the week starts to facilitate to healthy eating all week, and employing an "everything in moderation" approach. Since this works well for my family, I thought I'd share what this looks like for ours.

Today's farmers' market haul, pictured clockwise from the carrots: kale blossoms, cauliflower, Italian flatleaf parsley, spaghetti squash, zucchini, celery, assorted sweet peppers, squash blossoms, padron peppers.

My week starts at the Sunday farmers' market, which, glory be, just greatly expanded in size. We can buy absolutely everything we need at this huge market, not just produce-wise but meat, dairy, and much more. As many do, I have my favorite suppliers, and they often remember me enough to know that I take cooking seriously and welcome their novel recipe ideas. Today's trip was no exception, as I ended up with kale blossoms in my basket. The farmer knows that I love dinosaur kale and am not a big fan of broccoli rabe; kale blossoms are in between. I'll be sauteing the top halves of this tonight with a tiny bit of olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice and zest to accompany our main course: sweet Italian chicken sausage, grilled, served with sweet peppers and sweet onions sauteed simply (in a Pam-sprayed pan -- I find no need for extra oil in this case, as the onions sweat so much). For the kids, the meat will be halved, sliced, and tossed with pasta; for me, it'll be over spaghetti squash, which is already roasting.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. When I get home from the market, I first devour what I've brought home for lunch -- today, it was Roli Roti roasted chicken, which I'll often buy whole and shred for the week's quesadilla filling -- and then stay on my feet to chop and chop and chop. This effort yields snacks and useful ingredients all week. A portion of my efforts is pictured below.
Petunia will munch on the fresh carrots (which taste SO much better than the bagged baby ones from the store!), and I'm a celery fiend (straight up -- I don't even need the peanut butter or cream cheese, as the crunch is so satisfying). Packing celery with a bit of water, which I change every day or two, is key to keeping it fresh and crispy all week. The zucchini and peppers will become stir fry and omelette ingredients after tonight's use of some of the peppers for our sausage dish -- and/or are just good raw snacks. (I always have mushrooms, tomatoes, prediced onion, and egg whites on hand, too, for omelettes, one of my lunch staples since that's often my restorative post-workout meal.) I used to keep the roughage from all of this chopping on-hand for our recently-deceased guinea pig (rest in peace, sweet Oreo). Now, I keep celery leaves, kale stalks, and the like on hand for soup base, especially if I have a chicken carcass on hand. (My kids are not soup fans, but I know that if I'm trying to manage weight and eat healthfully, chicken broth or especially bone broth is filling and good for me.)

As for the rest of my market basket, some special treats are in store, including early-season padron peppers; how I squealed when the farm told me they were on-hand, as they remembered my love of these from last year, and they're usually not ready for another few weeks! Padrons are among my favorite snack; 1:10 is hot (slightly), but they're usually sweet, and I kinda love the surprise of not knowing which you'll get as you pop one into your mouth. I blister them in a wee bit of oil (usually canola, but I think I'll try coconut this time for a change) and sprinkle them with saffron salt and lemon zest. I also picked up some unusually-inexpensive squash blossoms, which I'm hoping will last until the weekend (I'll be keeping a careful eye!), as I plan to stuff them with ricotta, delicately batter them (pancake batter is my secret ingredient) and fry them (a decadent indulgence, but an oh-so-yummy annual treat for me and for whomever is my lucky guest).

Of all of the annoyances of living in California -- high rent, high taxes, drought (which scares me for these farmers, actually) -- the farmers' markets are one of the main reasons I'm pretty sure I'll always live here. Don't even get me started on the cheese stalls, or my very favorite Oaxacan food stand, or the honey or olive oils or jams or yogurt or ... yeah, I've got to stop listing and start cooking dinner. Bon appetit!

 

An epiphany on lovability and brokenness

I'm not sure on which date I clicked Facebook's "like" button for Word Porn, but I can assure you that it was a happy day. Just as Earth Porn stimulates my eyes with tantalizing physical imagery from our magical world, so, too, does Word Porn arouse my brain from time to time with evocative turns of phrase. They're not all gems, but the good ones stick hard -- and today's stopped me in my tracks.  It's a brief, unattributed quote that I googled and found credited to Marc Hack, whomever that is. And it goes a little something like this:

"Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room."

My two honorary brothers and I have an ongoing debate on relating to others post-divorce, especially in a dating sense. Brother One's theory is that post-divorce, you're "broken" for a couple of years -- incapable of real connection while necessarily engaged in a process of self-rediscovery that has no room for an Other. Brother Two is a bit more partner-bent, like I am, yet the notions of healing and emotional unavailability restricting partnership also resonate with him. We're going through our life changes together, and I wouldn't trade their kinship with me for the world. Their counsel is invaluable, and I tend to heed it, even as I would get angry every time one would refer himself as "damaged" or "broken," and even as I wondered why this purgatory was necessary. I tried living "their" way. It's possible to date -- "date" -- among those conditions. And after a significant amount of time spent entirely alone, and then yet more time testing the dating waters, I wondered if they might be right. Connection didn't seem possible. Maybe I required more healing time. Maybe I needed to love myself more. Maybe I needed just to be alone.

And all of those maybes? They're right, to some extent, just as my friend is right to call himself "damaged" or even "broken." It's not an ideal place from which to attain partnership, on the face of it. There are so many questions, and there is so much instability, and don't even get me started on the fear factor: fear of the unknown, fear of missing out, fear of heartbreak, fear of being alone, fear of being with someone, fear of the "define the relationship" conversations, fear, fear, fear. I know it, because I've felt it all.

And that's where that Word Porn quote today and my life collided head-on.

I know that I have a giant heart, and I know that I can give a lot of love from it. But that's been where my "knowns" have stopped, really. Am I lovable? Can I receive love? Am I broken? Does it matter? Am I afraid (yes) and of what (kind of everything) and so ... then what ... ? Do I need to heal (yes, always, unending), and do I need to turn inside myself to do that (sometimes), and do I even know who I am (pretty much) and what I want from myself, let alone others?

I started answering those questions in my head, and they begat more questions, and they brought me to the realization of something I've been fighting for quite a long time now, perhaps for longer than I'd even like to admit: the ultimate rhetorical question, "so what?"

So what? So what if I am broken, and so what if I'm scared to death to be starting part of my life over again, and so what if I don't know everything?

That's huge, let me repeat that: so what if I don't know everything.

I'm too smart for my own good, sometimes. I like predictability and order. I like knowns -- tangibles -- and, frankly, carefree as I can be at times, I crave stability, sometimes badly. And the instant that an Other entered that equation, well, the world became less predictable. The waiting game began for who's feeling what when and what that all means ... and then I wonder why I'm afraid. That fear of "what next" -- waiting for the other shoe to drop -- has been significant for me. And I guess that's to be expected after how my life unfolded these past few years. I doubt that ever will go away fully.

What this period of internal conflict and self-questioning did for me is something Really Good and something Really Bad.

On the Really Good side, it made me look at myself, hard. (Note that I'm not talking about looking at someone else here -- just at myself.) What do I value in me? What do I need someone else to value in me? How do I want to live, internally and externally? What do I want to accomplish, personally, professionally, in a relationship, etc.? Am I healing okay? What sets me back, and what makes me feel better? I didn't have to answer all of those questions, but I had to ask them. I had to think about them. And, like my one brother surmised, that took about two years. When I realized that today, I'm not sure whether my smile or my tears were bigger -- this brother, he knows some things about Life.

On the Really Bad side, I realized something, just as I'm emerging from my purgatory in some ways more confident while at once more fragile than ever: I had stopped looking at people -- I mean, really looking at people. I have no doubt that averting my eyes, literally and metaphorically, was a two-fold self-protective measure: one, I had long ago stopped trusting what my eyes saw, for they truly had deceived me; and two, I didn't want to look because I didn't want to plug back into the world. I didn't want to connect, because God forbid someone love me again. I wasn't sure that I'd be able to receive it or even that I'd know what that feeling was. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what that feeling was. I wasn't sure that I was ready for it, much less deserved it with all of my jagged broken pieces sticking out. I was, in short, afraid.

And when we're afraid, what do we do? We close our eyes.

But over the past couple of weeks, I think I finally got tired of being afraid.

The fact of the matter is that we're all flawed, somehow. And when we go through big life changes, like divorce, it is pretty easy to see ourselves as broken in some way, perhaps even irreparably so, whether for two years or forever. But if we spend so much time wondering "what if" and "what next" and "what now" -- and if we hide from all of those big questions -- well, then we'll never be unafraid. We'll never pick up the lovable pieces from whatever broke. I don't care so much about the broken parts any more as much as I care about the mending. And that's not something that can be done without looking at the life in front of me and wondering what I want to make of it -- looking, really looking, with eyes wide open, most especially at the people who are there on the other side of that journey back to my self that was there all along.

Sitting on my deck the other night and looking out at nature, I had some big questions on my mind and no answers at hand when I had this epiphany: perhaps distilling things to their simplest form really is the way to live. Watching a doe nuzzle her mama, it struck me that loving connection really is simpler than we often make it out to be amid all of our excuses about why it may not work. In reality, if we're not here to love and be loved, even amid our brokenness, I don't know why we're here at all.

With that awakening, I feel like I just emerged into the world again, perhaps a bit weak in the knees and uncertain, but, without question, mending, loving, lovable, and determined to be unafraid, welcoming that light back into eyes that I'd like to think retained their mischievous sparkle even behind their (un)closed lids.

Nine is Just Fine

Oh, my heart. This boy. I cannot believe that this is the last year in which I'll have a single-digit child but, since it is, I plan to savor every minute of it.

Check out that little hand on mine, the last of the baby-fat knuckles soon to disappear, the scratch of a play-hard life unfolding just as it should, the ever-present mystery dirt under the fingernails that I've given up all hope of ever abolishing ... my baby's hand, my last baby's hand, my little boy, my growing boy, my son. On this, his ninth birthday, I offer him this humble tribute.

Dear Son,

You are into all things scientific right now, so let me explain to you how you funkytowned your way into this world. You were upside-down and backward -- breech -- and doctors had to do something called an external cephalic version to flip you into the correct position. You were due March 20; they performed this procedure today, March 3, your birthday. It took two doctors' four hands plus one doc's elbows to flip you over, and I'm pretty sure I sprained your dad's thumb in the process, because, Sweet Jesus, that hurt! These docs swore that they had never had an ECV fail such that a baby had to be delivered immediately -- and, to some extent, they were right. The ECV didn't fail, but your umbilical cord was wrapped around your head in such a way that they decided you had to be made to come that day, two and a half weeks early. Since your sister was two weeks overdue, I wasn't quite ready for you to be, by that calendar, like a month early. Instead of my carefully-planned routine of a packed bag and a boombox with carefully-chosen classical music -- your sister, for example, came into the world to Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique -- I put on my iPod headphones and listened to "Southern Cross" two-hundred times on repeat. Thank God for David Crosby singing you into this world, and darned if the differences in tunes don't in some way explain the differences between you and your sister!

While the docs may have successfully flipped you, and while I may have delivered you naturally at the end of a long and somewhat-scary day, attempts to keep you from coming into the world upside-down and backward did not thwart your natural tendencies to go your own way. Thank God for that. You are always up a tree or on something with wheels or moving moving moving somehow, for you have only two speeds: go, and sleep. I wouldn't have it any other way. You keep me on my toes, sometimes literally, as I reach to lift you down from atop something-or-other, knowing that part of the reason you climb so hard is that a) you have my climbing genes, and b) you know I'll be there to help you out if you're stuck. Please always keep exploring; Mama will always be there when you need a hand.

I wondered what it'd be like to have a son after having such a girlie-girl daughter. I feared it a bit; whatever would I do with a BOY? Your sister showed me. Aside from your parents, *nobody* will ever love you as much as your sister, and I'm pretty sure that nobody -- parents included -- will ever have as much patience with you, either. She not only plays with you (ok, when she feels like it, sure, she is a teenager!), but she also listens to your hundred thousand questions and engages you intellectually. Seek that from everyone around you. You are fast reaching the point where you will no longer suffer fools gladly because you are so. darned. smart. And those conversations with your sister that you've been having about stuff like nuclear energy are a prime example of what you should seek from people who will be at the heart of your life. Never stop talking with each other about the stuff about which you're passionate, and your sibling bond will be tight as duct tape.

Our bond will be that tight, too, son, especially after this year in which your larger-than-average brain has been exceeded only by your larger-than-life heart. You touch me in so many ways each day, like last week, when I was bemoaning the healthcare changes I had to make because of a doctor's office snafu, delaying a non-urgent visit and kinda souring my day. You said, "Mama, I have $57, and you can use it to go and see the doctor now if you want, and I don't even need it back." That's the kid you are -- that kid, the kid who tries to make easier the life of those around you, the kid who builds his mom Lego creations to keep on her computer desk so that you're with her while she works, the kid who keeps us all in stitches laughing because no kid ever in the history of man has ever been as funny as you, even when it's last night at dinner when you have a bag over your head in a restaurant and are bumping into everything in sight and totally out of control because of too much sugar. I rarely can correct such questionable behavior because I'm too busy laughing.

In the past year, you've made a new BFF who seems to share your raging intellect and fascination with all things scientific. You've written a book on velociraptors and have begun one on explaining chaose theory to kids, summed up by you as "life always finds a way." You still love baseball, but you've also fallen in love with sailing. Someday, Son, I'll sail with you to see the Southern Cross. That'll seem full circle.

'Til then, and long after, may you always be near good climbing trees, good libraries, and good friends and family to keep that fabulous mind of your stimulated. Enjoy this last year of single-digitdom; I'm quite sure I will.

You (and your sister) are my heart - xoxo Mama