Category Archives: Summer

Oct4

The Space Between

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The hours of sunlight are short. Yet the days are long, and time seems to move fast. We can’t measure our days by the brief hours between dark and dark, as John Updike once called them. We  count the actual up-before-dawn, waking-and-productive, getting-things-done, go-to-sleep-long-after-the-sun-sets span of a daily schedule, to truly sum up how much we work and accomplish in a span of 24 hours in this season.

This quickened pace, this buzz of energy and activities, this hum in our veins … we knew it was coming. It rises like the frantic work of bees before winter. It’s part of the arrival of the school year or the busy professional season.

Autumn heralds a return to longer nights, cooler weather and more focus on work and academics. Summer slowed us down (if we were lucky) or at least changed our rhythms and tempted us to pause, linger, and have fun in the heat and light. Fall winds us up. We move faster to stay warm, or because we’re playing a sport, or because there’s something to get done once we arrive wherever we’re hastening to.

It’s the season of gathering-in. Harvest. We reap the benefits of slower times. Set aside whatever bounty we can for the lean times. Savor the brief time of abundance. Prepare for the long, frigid, brilliant months of winter that await us.

At the edge of October’s cooler presence, there’s pleasure in finding heat. It’s a dance of comfort and discomfort. We wear layers on the coldest days: sweaters and socks, hand-warmers and scarves. Then catch ourselves growing too hot, and peel off the layers again. Grow chilled and pull the protective gear back on. Then lean once more toward sources of warmth … a cozy fire, a steaming hot beverage, or an open door into a heated space.

We don’t stand still very long, because the persistent cold catches up. Amidst our rush and busy-ness, there is beauty in this changeable time of the year. It’s worth noticing: crisp and vivid.

If you stop a moment, and focus, every hair on your head, every follicle and nerve-ending, every brain cell and heartbeat, seems to stand at attention. Alive. Drinking it all in. Capturing flavors and views, burning them into memory.

Detail from a painting of County and East Streets in autumn.

Can harvest colors really be so bright? Do aromas hang so vividly in the air that you taste them on your tongue? Can sounds snap and retort so sharply? Does the tension between warmth and cold make you feel so aware of everything, so strung with tension and awareness?

Yes. Life often happens along the edges, margins and boundaries. In the metamorphosis. During the transformation. In the changes between one certainty and the next, between the point of departure and the place of arrival. Life vibrates here, now, in this transitional season, in the “space between.”

Don’t you want to stare off and step into, for just a moment, the changing hues – crimson, green and gilded — bright against a clear blue sky? Smudge your finger through the richness of long purple shadows cast by a distant sun in this season? Be robed in a swirl of golden leaves whirling and dancing in a high wind?  Breathe in, exhale out, then watch your own respirations hang there, if it’s cold enough? Extend your arms to the veiled world on a misty morning when droplets of water cling to the air itself? Watch the lights wink on in the darkness?

There is magic in this time of change: autumn. Yes, it’s busy. These schedules demand more of us.

This season also wakes us up. Reminds us that we’re here. Alive. Calls us to pay attention. To be grateful for what has passed away,  what remains here with us, and what awaits.

Sep4

Balance Between Labor and Rest

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Hopefully we each found a way to savor the past liberties of summer. In a way, I think of it as a yoga exercise that includes contraction and release. To pause. To rest from our work and worries on Labor Day weekend. If not for a whole long weekend, then for a day or even a few hours.

I reviewed my own summer checklist. Manged to include a few more wishes over this weekend, as a way of assuring some rest and relaxation:

  • Cooked a few meals using fresh crops from Appleton (which their newsletter reminds us has several weeks remaining, so that part of the green season is still in full swing): pesto from fresh basil, kale chips made and seasoned in our oven, green salad and quinoa with veggies in it, tomato-salad, fresh ears of corn.
  • Date night(s) with husband: cooking, talking, sipping wine, and watching a good sci-fi show plus some political humor on the Colbert Report and Jon Stewart Show.
  • Kayaking on the river: walked two blocks down the street, put in along the river bank, and timed our outing for high tide so it was a lazy and scenic paddle.
  • Potluck dinner in the twilight with friends: in the backyard in the flicker of candlelight until the biting insects … no-see’ums, midgies or gnats choose your preference … took the romance out of the outdoors, and we moved inside to talk.
  • Chai tea with a friend at Zumi’s.
  • Ate a kiddie-sized ice cream cone at White Farms. Anyone who has eaten there knows you probably don’t need more, although it’s tempting.
  • Read a book on my personal back-logged fiction list: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.

Other folks accomplished interesting things, including:

  • Hiked in the White Mountains, summitted several peaks
  • Camped on a lake
  • Visited Maine or New Hampshire
  • Sailed
  • Jumped horses at a nearby event
  • Boated on the river
  • Went fishing
  • Biked locally
  • Visited the beach
  • Picked apples at Russell Orchard
  • Hiked through the Audubon

Of course, we also probably all did more back-to-school or back-to-regular-life errands. Groceries. Clothes. Backpacks. Supplies. Computers and phones.

As I once mentioned, finding this equilibrium between responsibilities and pleasures is similar to performing a yoga exercise. By tensing each muscle group, then releasing it, you create overall relaxation. As you deliberately focus on each area of the body, you also realize you may have knots and pent-up tension in places you didn’t notice. By tightening or clenching each muscle area, then relaxing, you can feel the tension slip away.

Labor Day … and other mornings, mid-days, evenings and weekends … can be a chance to do the same thing. It’s never too late. In fact, this should be a year-round practice, not just a summer ritual. Check those wish lists. Take stock of postponed sets of chores and pastimes. Focus on the areas of life that are often overlooked. Pay attention to them. Maybe give them a workout, get them sweaty and active, and then let them relax again. We’ll see where muscles … or aspects of our lives … need more work and play. And come to a greater awareness of where and when to restore balance.

Sep1

If These Walls Could Talk

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What stories would they tell?

Our daughter’s friend Shelly, who has been living with us since the spring, just moved along to college! She packed up her life in 9 hours. She’s taking some things to her mom’s place in Haverhill and others to her college residence near Boston.

Outside in the twilight, skyping by phone from Ipswich to Italy for a long distance BFF college good-bye between Shelly and Sarah.

She wanted us to see how tidy it all looked: boxes, bins and suitcases, zippered and capped, stuffed with her paraphernalia, organized into different piles depending on their destination. Then she carried down load after load of belongings. Filled a truck. She’s gone and the room is empty. Last night the street outside was filled with final hugs and reluctant good-byes.

We remain behind, as our children leave. Empty nesters? Us?

Well, there’s one empty room in our house, anyway. It has been home to several girls. It’s the same bright blue room that was once Jessie’s. (Jessie chose its colors back in 2005, when we were just moving in, right before she relapsed with leukemia for the first time.) Later it was the bedroom for two beloved Rotary exchange student host-daughters: Tina Danila from Belgium and Chicca Tizzoni from Italy. In between, it has often served as a guest room for family and friends.

Now it’s plain. Bare of any evidence of its latest occupant. Shelly’s “personality” drove away in a borrowed pickup truck … it used to be spilling off her corkboard covered in favorite mementos, a bright striped bedspread, the sprawl of her adolescent clothes and shoes and books. Now there’s silence where her music played and her voice rose and fell.

It’s a room that has known a series of comings and goings. Even when Jessie was alive, she only stayed there part of the time, because much of her life was also spent inside the hospital. We always had a suitcase handy, and the room was often the recipient of random bags stuffed with the evidence of her re-entry to home life, bringing along the detritus of hospital stays (craft projects, medical items, etc).

Over time, we have moved Jessie’s memorabilia to other parts of the house, and allowed the blue room to be a blank canvas for more recent occupants. So when they move out, it’s quite sparse.

Sarah’s room, on the other hand, is only temporarily empty of her presence. It remains filled with her “stuff.” She’s coming and going all the time. She’ll be back next week with suitcases and souvenirs from her cultural exchange in Italy. A week later, she’ll pack up and head out to her first semester in college.

In many ways, Sarah’s room won’t change drastically. We expect her to come and go for years, back home on many holidays and school breaks, using the house as her operating base, even when she’s always on the go. She can safely leave behind her overflow of gear and childhood belongings, and take only what she needs for a dorm room and college life.

For a glorious few months this summer, Sarah’s and Shelly’s friends, along with our exchange student Chicca, filled our house with their clutter, debris, noise and life. We loved it.

They made messes. Built bonfires in the back yard. Slept over in sleeping bags, in small groupings, unable to let go of each other. Generated odors from gym shoes and wet swimming gear. Cooked food for each other. Burned some of it. Moved furniture. Used computers. Ate all the snacks we put into the cupboards. Made noise late at night and early in the morning with their comings and goings. Played a concert of sounds in the house with slammed doors, shouts, chuckles, thumping footsteps on the stairs and in the hall.

They filled the house. And it’s meant to be this lively. To contain this much commotion. It’s spacious and old enough to welcome all of their activity, and not be more scarred for the experience.

I admit it. It’s lonely without all of them, even if it’s nice to have some privacy again.

Chris and I will stay here, while the girls are launched to their different destinations. Oh, the abrupt contrast between all those 18-year-olds, some so tall they had to duck to walk between rooms, filling up the space with their summer busy-ness before setting off for new adventures, and the current quiet.

The house feels too big now. In other ways, it feels as if our own lives are shrinking. Getting a little more hollow. Requiring less space … a smaller footprint.

Maybe that’s not true, but it’s part of how we experience the transition. It’s a natural and honest feeling from parents letting go.

Our house as painted by Miranda Updike in 2006.

In our town, our house is 130 years younger than the oldest homes. In other words, it was built c. 1770, but the oldest-standing residences in town go back to the 1640s.

Anyway, even if it’s only 230 years old, it’s seen a lot of life. Generations have been born, married, left home, returned and grown old within its walls.

Wherever you look, the house is full of stories of centuries of town life. It’s been a single home, it’s been wartime apartments, it’s been worker housing, it’s been multiple units with separate entrances of shared spaces, it’s been a combined doctor’s office and home, and probably seen many other configurations along the way.

It had two additions added in the early 1800s, so there are three chimneys and a total of nine hearths. The remnants of others, such as the large kitchen hearth, were largely removed during later construction along the back of the house, but nine fireplaces is plenty. Lots of cooking and warming of cold hands and feet must have taken place at these hearths.

Though its bones are solid, and were once built square and true, they have long since settled. Floors rise and fall, and some are thin enough to buckle or pitch with changes in the seasons. Walls tilt. Ceilings slope. Doors creak and latch with old cast iron hardware, but swing open mysteriously of their own accord (we often tease that Jessie is visiting, but then again, we mean it, too).

Every room and story has different details, as they have been altered over time for different uses. Soft or hardwood floors, plaster or panel walls, plaster or strap and tile ceilings, wooden trim (or not). Fireplaces are much-changed: none their original size, since all were made shallower. Chimneys lean, bricks curve unnaturally, and a few are missing.

When you leave the light on in the basement, you can see it shine up through cracks between the wide ancient wooden boards on the first floor. Some stairs lead to nowhere, or turn aside abruptly. Wallpapered rooms are still tucked up under the attic eaves, probably the former too-hot, too-cold territory of servants, household workers, or poor relatives (just guessing). Some doors don’t have a purpose anymore. Closets and cupboards were tucked into odd niches around the leftover space of the chimneys. Some rooms have been kitchens, later converted back into bedrooms or other spaces, but they retain leftover sinks, wiring or stove holes.

Despite centuries of use, we don’t think our house is haunted. Unless you consider Jessie’s visits to be that, and it doesn’t feel that way to us. She’s a lively, active presence, not a ghostly one. We never detected any other activities or presences before hers.

Like every other generation who has lived here, we have put the house to work and made it as useful as possible to us. Once upon a time, some of the rooms were used as classrooms and medical staging areas for Jessie, since she couldn’t always attend school. Some rooms have been (or remain) offices. This year, we added an accessory apartment downstairs, by restoring a wall that had been removed in the kitchen with some better plumbing and restoration of kitchen fixtures (granted through approval by the zoning board of appeals — ZBA — as a permissible use). We have a friend completing work on it. Eventually it will produce some rental income to help with college expenses.

Since our needs have changed, the house is changing with us. Sarah will continue to come and go. When she’s home, maybe her friends will land here, too. So the noise and activity level will continue to ebb and flow for a few more years. But in many ways, a long-term change in our lifestyle is setting in.

We’re (almost) empty-nesters. Aaaahhhhh!

Phew. At least we have friends from England coming to stay in October. They’ll roost in Jessie’s blue room. They’ve stayed here before, contributing their adventures to the collection of intangible experiences that fill our house.

Our family stories are being added to centuries of life that have animated this swaybacked antique house. We’re part of its old bones and skin. We’re part of its memory.

And it is part of ours.

Aug31

Doing It All

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Does this sound familiar to you?

You’re in the middle of a significant event. Everyone is quiet, listening intently. The entire space is hushed, leaning forward, catching the impressive, weighty, world-changing reflections of an august speaker. And then you hear a little one call out, unimpressed by all the pomp and circumstance, the most important words in her world, “Mama!”

Yesterday was an event called convocation. The new Dean of our school spoke to the incoming class. The professors processed in their caps, gowns  and colors. We listened to flute and trumpet. And a moving message from the Dean himself about the role of religion and spirituality in today’s conflicted world.

Students and faculty attended. Family attended. And as it turns out, very young children came along.

This is a small college on a large campus. It’s built around community. And that’s more obvious than ever, when students or staff bring their babies and toddlers to the formal events.

The child calling out? She put the entire experience into perspective again. It would be easy to take ourselves too seriously. Indeed, the Dean poked fun at Harvard’s view of itself as the oldest college in America, and teased all of us because he graduated from a British college that is over 600 years old. Much of his reflection (and his gift as a writer and teacher) is to humanize, with individual detail, larger issues. As a little one in her parent’s arms did for us, last night.

I believe the faculty on this campus understands that most of us are pulled in many directions, and fulfilling many roles in life. They are, too, although there’s probably an idyllic and abstract tendency among some of the them who live almost exclusively inside the academic bubble of the Harvard community. Contrarily, many gifted faculty also travel all over the world and work outside academia, too, and bring their real-world expertise back into the classroom.

I’ve been on campus all week, with n0n-stop orientation and info sessions. I’ve been so busy with these events, that I didn’t read the text on my cell phone, from my daughter in Italy. Or the one from my husband. I postponed replying to emails from clients. I couldn’t talk to friends. Yet I’m needed in all those parts of my life, too. Next week, when the schedule starts to settle down, I hope I’ll find more balance.

For now, I’m part of a small class of students with diverse backgrounds. Their average age is 26 … much younger than me. But I’ve met a handful of people in my position … returning after decades of life in the working world, with settled homes and families and careers, now going back to school for some reason. People from several nations, and all over the country, with all sorts of goals for their degrees.

It’s my experience (after a few days of orientation, so take it for what it’s worth) that the college welcomes us as complex people with multiple roles in our lives. Yes, I’m a full-time college student again. I’m also working and available to clients. I’m a mom with a college student who will need support from time to time. I’m a spouse who’d like to be present in my relationship. I’m a volunteer for several organizations. I’m a friend with connections to tend.

Andover Hall

So I was a member of the audience listening to HDS’s Dean, David Hempton, speak. Trying to catch every word, as we gathered outdoors under the tent on a bright August evening, at the close of summer and coming of fall, with Andover Hall in the background. He offered his first words addressing the school as our new dean.

And then a classmate’s child cried out, “Mama!” No one paused to frown and criticize. There wasn’t a gasp of outrage. A patient father went off to get a red plastic wagon. A mother (and student) escorted her young daughter inside, probably to the bathroom. In the rear, a baby gurgled.

Education in the context of life. The dean’s words at the front of the tent. The baby’s call for “Mama” in the back. I think they “get it” about life and equilibrium. I hope so. It’s why I believe I’m called toward this vocation. You can’t really separate these parts of self: mind, body and spirit.

Aug30

Go In to Go Out

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Yes, we all know by now, the seasons are changing, and many of us find ourselves in transition. In the middle of all this change, chaos and bustle, self-care becomes more important than ever.

After all, most of us are responsible to and concerned for other people in our lives. We serve as partners, friends, colleagues, caregivers, guardians or advocates of some kind. We are engaged in relationships with people who need or expect some connection with us.

Yet if I don’t make it a priority to pay attention to my own wellbeing, who will do it for me? Admittedly, I don’t claim to know what that means for everyone else. Probably you know what’s good for you, and what’s not. You know what you want to do, what you should do, and what you’ll do anyway …

I have a well-intentioned debate with myself almost every day. It takes on countless variations. Sleep in or wake up for yoga? Drink caffeine or water? Take the stairs or use the elevator?  Walk or drive?

So this is just another reminder to me … and anyone else who needs it … to make time for what helps maintain equilibrium.

  • Sleep. (It’s the greatest gift we can give our bodies and minds, which are designed to rely on this daily renewal in order to operate at best capacity.)
  • Movement and exercise. (Our bodies work better when we use them. People in recover from joint replacements, for instance, are often supported and encourage to move as soon as possible, especially to reclaim as much function as possible.)
  • Nutrition. (Eat well. Hydrate. Choose healthy meals. Refuel.)
  • Spiritual practice. (Prayer, meditation, reflection, journaling, music, etc.)
  • Pastime or avocation. (Something you love to do, that engages a different part of the brain or different muscles, changes your rhythm and focus, and helps you switch gears. Maybe it’s yoga or running or reading  or crossword puzzles or cooking.)

Today, in a “being well” session during a week-long orientation at Harvard University, we were encouraged to continue our spiritual and physical self-care practices, regardless of how hectic life gets. After all, when we’re the most pressed for time and energy, when we’re pulled in too many directions, when we’re overwhelmed … that’s exactly when we need balance the most.

The reminder was posed as, “We go in, so we can go out.” This was the wisdom offered by Kerry Maloney from the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at Harvard Divinity School. Her challenge suggested that we take care of ourselves (“go in”) so that we can serve others (“go out”).

By this, she meant that we turn inward … that we engage in self-care at the level of mind, body and spirit … so that all those integrated aspects of ourselves are whole and in good health. By maintaining internal equilibrium, we have resources and energy available to share with our loved ones and our larger community.

It’s a timely reminder, as we hasten toward the next page in the calendar, and enter an autumn humming with appointments, commitments, obligations and activities.

 

 

Aug24

Last Summer Wishes

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Are you ever ready? Yes, yes, some of us are muttering, “Is it time for school to start yet? Will summer ever end? I’m ready …”

But are we ready? Do we wish to give up what we have right now? Do we desire to reach for something else?

Each season seems so brief, when we look back at it.

Moon over Castle Hill during Entrain concert (image by Miriam Novogrodsky)

At the beginning of this flip of the calendar, we felt wealthy. For instance, just weeks ago, I lived inside a largesse of time and possibility. Our summer schedule seemed well-stocked with a balance of plans and freedom: days and evenings, nights and mornings, to dawdle away or jam with activities … to spend as we chose.

We blinked, and now suddenly it is almost gone. It feels as if we’ve used up our wealth of time. Or worse, let it slip away, unappreciated.

Now there’s just one week until Labor Day weekend. Counting down. Ticking away summer in our last adventures!

Our exchange student (aka, Italian host-daughter) Chicca and our own eldest child Sarah are savoring their final days in the United States, and then they travel to Italy early next week. Their last few days are filled with:

  • Evening concert at Castle Hill
  • Camping at Pawtuckaway in New Hampshire
  • Swimming
  • Friends
  • Bonfires
  • Sight-seeing in Boston
  • Whatever else fits into one last long weekend …

Many high school and college students are already deep into training for the fall sports season. School begins next week for many local public schools. College students are moving into dorms (or flying away, similar to Sarah, to their destinations around the world for global exchange).

Folks with different seasonal vocations or roles will soon (if they haven’t already) be starting new schedules and projects. Me? I expect to be indoors for the much of the remaining month. (Who planned this?!) Next week, for instance,  I’ll spend four days at orientation for grad school.

So what will be on my personal wish list for the remainder of the summer?

  • Enjoy being in Boston and Cambridge next week. (Maybe get outside and spend time in Harvard Square.) Walk along the Charles River.
  • Kayak on the Ipswich river.
  • Walk on the beach.
  • Picnic.
  • Bonfire.
  • One last late summer dinner with friends.
  • Jump off a bridge (into the river)?
  • Harvest part of the share from Appleton fields.
  • Date night with Chris.

We have one week remaining. Okay, a little longer. So pay attention. Don’t let it slip past you, unacknowledged. Grab hold of some of it. Enjoy it. Make it count.

Then perhaps we’re ready for summer’s hot sweaty rhythms to wind down. We’re able to welcome autumn’s vivid colors and crisp days into our lives.

And the goodness of what we have experienced over the past few months … and surely there are some bright, wondrous, simple interludes to be savored and remembered … will continue to provide healing and balance, long after the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer.

Aug21

Same Place, New Viewpoint

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Chimney on roof of Castle Hill during Thursday concert.

Do you notice that you take where you live for granted? That something extraordinary must happen, for you to pay attention to what’s around you? Either a visitor from out of town (we have an exchange student from Italy spending two weeks with us) or a different view of the same place (I went up on the roof at Castle Hill during last week’s concert with some young people).

I’m not claiming that every single acre or square inch of land that humans occupy (or don’t inhabit) is exceptional or memorable. I know that much of it is mundane, or only made wondrous by our experiences and their sentimental attachment to the places in which they occur. And yet, often there are remarkable resources and sites nearby.

Ipswich happens to be bursting with such treasures. Several Trustees of Reservations properties, including Crane Estate (Castle Hill and Crane Beach), Appleton Farms and more. We have a tidal river (Ipswich River) which wends its way from fresh water origins upriver, over dams, under bridges, through salt marsh wetlands out into the bay and ocean. The landscape of Ipswich includes village center, business district, historical structures (more pre-revolutionary war homes and buildings than any other town in the United States), pastoral and farm settings, wetlands that are part of the “Great Marsh,” proximity to a barrier island called Plum Island that’s an Audubon bird sanctuary, deep water anchorage, miles of white sand beach, and so much else.

Edward Hopper’s work: Dawn in Pennsylvania, 1942.

Yet if you live in some areas, you’re surrounded by pavement. Bricks and concrete. Aluminum siding. This isn’t inherently bad. Often artists, for instance, make us look twice at the places we have stopped noticing, because they’re not innately “inspiring” to us. The painter Edward Hopper, for instance, is one artist in a 20th century movement that caused people to look anew at their own surroundings.

Yes, even our most ordinary landscape can be special. Did you count cracks in the sidewalk as a child? Isn’t that sidewalk special now because of the memories you made back then, watching the grass grow up between the slabs of concrete? Doesn’t that paved space hold, for you, the imprint of the games of hopscotch and foursquare you drew in chalk? Or the snap and pungency of tar bubbles you popped with bare feet on the street in the summer? Or the blades of grass you plucked from their weedy roots and tried to use to whistle? Or the whir of cicada’s wings in the extreme heat, rising and falling with the speed of their wingbeats? You stop hearing those sounds, they become background stimuli … white noise. Yet they’re there. And if you suddenly stop and pay attention, they’re remarkable in their way.

Rooftop view of people attending reggae concert at Crane Estate / Castle Hill (Trustees of Reservations property). Rarely see the concerts from this vantage point!

I’m lucky to live here. And although our landscapes may vary, many contain magic in them. Inherently, because they are beautiful in their origins and their current state. And also because we carry their potential inside us, and bring it to any place we call home, when we pause and look twice, listen again … pay attention.

Maybe because we have a guest in the house, or I’m looking anew at the world just now, while Sarah’s preparing to leave for her adventures … in this moment I can see and honor that.

Aug8

Among the Overgrowth: Cilantro

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Another week of picking up the share at Appleton Farms. You’ve heard me discuss the sometimes sacred and spiritual nature of these visits to the CSA. Other times it’s just a chore to cross off your to-do list.

Depends on whether you go out into the fields to pick, because most of the magic happens during the intersection of human action, plant eccentricities, and whatever critters might be keeping you company out there (birds, butterflies, bees, beetles, mosquitoes, and mice and other scurrying rodents, to name a few).

Some weeks, the skies are slung low with clouds or lightning tears across the sky, and we don’t go into the fields to pick. Other days, it’s so hot and dusty, you wonder if you’re sane to consider going out among the low rows of crops, to bend and stoop, snip and pluck, filling pint containers or bags with your harvest of flowers, herbs and (some weeks) vegetables.

This week, we gathered herbs and flowers. Along the way, we learned a lesson about persistence.

Specifically, we walked among the rows, hunting for cilantro. Its familiar name was missing among the stakes labeled by such savory titles as mint, oregano, parsley, thyme, dill and basil. The CSA uses signage to make it clear where each crop is grown, row by row, and where to pick. Yet we couldn’t find it. We quartered the field, back and forth, systematic, but undirected. No luck. No cilantro stakes.

Of course, we might have tried looking for it under other names. Did you know it’s also called coriander, Chinese parsley or dhania? (In our culture, when we speak of cilantro, we often mean the fresh green leaves. Its seeds are identified as the coriander.) It grows commonly in regions from Europe and northern Africa to parts of Asia, and now in North America; it’s a common ingredient in many international cuisines. Possibly the most widely used herb in the world. As eloquently stated by a writer for culinate.com, “For just about anyone who grew up in the diverse culinary traditions of Latin America, the Caribbean, Portugal, northern Africa, the Middle East, the South Asian subcontinent, and most of Asia, cilantro tastes like home.” The same lacey green fronds, regardless of label, add a biting zest to all sorts of dishes.

Another confession. I hunted for cilantro, though I have no intention of eating it. I’m a member of the population that doesn’t like its flavor. Yes, we come in two groups: like or dislike. You can’t be in-between, when it comes to a preference or distaste for cilantro.

In fact, the plant’s flavor is actually a polarizing debate among “foodies.” It’s loved or hated, nothing less. This topic has been covered by publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Smithsonian Magazine, and inspired movements such as ihatecilantro.com. For those who love  and eat it, because of its bright note of flavor in any dish, it’s hard to imagine why you’d turn it away. Cilantro-haters are often accused of being picky eaters. Yet there’s some evidence that the aversion to cilantro’s flavor is a genetic mutation; some tastebuds are just destined to revolt against it, because it transforms into a different chemical experience in measurable (but minority) percentages in any population. Cilantro-dislikers describe it as tasting like soap or hairspray, but to me it has the tang of aluminum. Ick. And I’m in good company. Per the same articles cited above, Julia Child felt the same way; she disliked both cilantro and arugula.

So I was walking through the field, hunting for an herb I don’t even enjoy, because my friend wanted some for her cooking plans. The whole point of the day seemed to become the triumph of finding a small bouquet of cilantro.

Finally, instead of giving up and returning wearily to the car after multiple hikes in and out of the field, we asked a farmhand. At first, she said there wasn’t any.

Then she winced sympathetically. “I know frustrating, isn’t it? We’re just getting tomatoes in, and we’ve had cilantro all season, and just when you want both, we’re running low. We planted another crop, so we hope there’s some later on this month.” Finally she added, “Well, we took down the cilantro sign, because it’s mostly all picked, and what’s left is hard to find because of the weeds. But if you walk past the dill, halfway down the row, and push aside enough weeds, you might find some.”

Back out into the fields we walked. Toward the weeds. And what they hid in their depths.

Now mind you, I have made a case for weeds. In my “garden” (dry, desert-like side yard), there are more weeds than healthy domesticated species. Spiky, tall, persistent and oddly lovely. Striking from my point of view, anyway. (You are welcome to your own opinion, of course.)

We turned right at the small feathery fronds of dill (also almost all picked and gone, also unlabeled, but visible if you knew where to look). Hiked beyond the knee-high growth of grass blades and vibrant weeds. Paused. Pushed aside leafy wild plants, seeking domestic satisfaction. Found the pungent leaves and stems of the cilantro. Worked our way down the row, reaching among the growth of unwanted plants, for the ones we did seek. Filled a small bag with cilantro, to use in cooking

The lesson? For me, it was the promise of finding what you want, if you don’t give up. If you look enough. If you go back once, twice and thrice. If you ask for directions. If you persist past the overlooked, overgrown appearance of the row. If you hunt among the weeds. You just might discover what you’re seeking.

And the worst case scenario, after time spent hunting among weeds and wildflowers? Even if you don’t find cilantro, you’ve gained the benefit of time spent in the sun and elements. Along the way, you’ve let go of the other stressful parts of life for a little while. It’s as good as yoga, as far as I am concerned, being out in the fields, picking part of your share.

This time, we harvested sunflowers and cilantro to be used in my friend’s favorite recipe for Thai vegetable spring rolls. And as I do every year, I’ll try a bite, always hopeful that I’ve somehow been converted to a cilantro-lover. But that’s another adventure … Today was just the journey of gathering the leftover cilantro from its exile out in the field, its row unlabeled, overgrown by weeds.

Aug8

Wild Berry Season

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My neighbors Hugh and Gary were recently out of town, and gave us permission to pick raspberries from the bushes around their home. They’re called canes, and they actually have thorns, so you have to pick with care.

Now if you are diligent, you may accumulate enough of these ripe wild fruits to concoct something sweet and filling. A dessert. A pie. A crumble. Something scrumptious.

Or you could just eat them as you plucked them. Save a few for one more serving at home.

The best intentions in the world cannot transform a half-pint of berries (because you ate as many as you saved) into a pie. So you might as well just finish them off.

Maybe you think I have lazy afternoons to stroll around, picking berries. Hah. Three of us ventured among the raspberry canes, plucking and slurping, on a late weekend afternoon, between chores and errands, because the enticement was too great not to go. And we didn’t want the offer to go to waste.

And yes, we each wanted an excuse to linger in the golden light and green boughs for a brief part of the day. To escape from the dirty, messy, sweaty tasks that had driven all of us earlier in the day … to remember that it’s summer, that life is bursting to be discovered and savored, and this was our chance.

Berries like this have a short time in the sun and the summer. Weeks, maybe. Birds and mammals will feast on them. We must compete for their juicy burst on our tongues.

The best ones hide, tucked beneath the dappled shade of overlapping leaves, among the thorns and daggers, so that you have to bend, cock you head to one side, and maybe even double over to peer from another angle, then reach thoughtfully through the gauntlet of “prickers” (as we used to call them when we were kids) before you discover the best cluster of ripe ones.

There’s a specific sensory memory I have, brought to “living color” with the scent of the ripe berries, and the sensation of the summer sun hot on my shoulders as I reach among the branches and leaves, into the purple-blue shadows, to find the sun-kissed promise of berries awaiting my tentative fingertips. I did this as a child.

And my mother always promised to make a pie, if I picked enough. But I never did. I nibbled. I sampled. I slurped and snacked. I brought home enough for a small bowl with a little milk … because that’s how we ate them, back then. Never enough for a pie.

Now? I’d eat them with oatmeal, or topping some of Meryl’s homemade ice cream. And I would taste my own long-outgrown childhood, and realize that some of life’s pleasures continue even into our later adult decades.

This week, my friend Meryl hiked up the hill while I kept her daughter company. She returned with enough blackberries to make a bursting-at-the-lattice-crust-seams pie. You can see some of the remains here …because it didn’t last too long, once it came out of the oven.

Childhood. Adulthood. Berry-picking. Some parts of summer, fleeting as they are, give us back the magic of life.

Aug6

Time: Then and Now

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I recently teased my friend’s daughter, almost outraging her, about freezing time so that she can’t grow older than 14 years. She is reaching for everything that comes after this year. High school. Summer jobs. Learner’s permit. Driver’s license. Voting. Graduation. And everything beyond that.

This young lady is the same age that my youngest child Jessie would be, if she’d continued to grow up.

Isn’t it provocative, to consider what you’d do if you could slow, stop or reverse time? It’s certainly been the subject of many stirring and playful plots by authors and screenwriters over the centuries. It could be a thriller or a life lesson, depending on whether you’re Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Audrey Niffenegger or H.G. Wells.

Time. Stopping it. Letting it flow.

At some points in life, we’re in such a rush. We want what comes next. Just like 14-year-olds. As children or teens, we’re looking ahead. Counting down. Or counting up, depending on your point of view. Striving toward the goal of being a grownup. Yearning for what seems so enticing.

Yet ask almost any recent high school grad. Wouldn’t they sometimes prefer to relinquish the pressures and responsibilities piling up on top of them, and just be a kid again? With only a child’s concerns? They’re staring adulthood in the face, feeling it shifting their frame of reference, altering their sense of the value of free time and work time, play and respite, labor and effort, privacy and intimacy and friendship and social liberty versus  commitments to college, jobs, loans, housing, relationships and many other binding connections.

A recent graduate might actually wish to stop the hands on the clock. Or spin them backward, to return to what seemed like simpler times.

If you look backward or forward with too much idealism, it’s basically a “grass is always greener” viewpoint. Every moment, past or future, is layered and complex and special and compromised.

In other instances, we’re wise enough or foolish enough, or at just the right cognitive developmental stage (babies, for instance) to loll around in the moment. Bask in it. Splash in it. Submerge ourselves inside it. Be present, here and now.

So recently, I was tugged into my own past during a lively reminiscence with this same 14-year-old girl about our favorite Disney television comedies. Hannah Montana, to be specific.

I found out, much to my shock, that the television series continued beyond the years I’d watched it. Why was I surprised? But I was. I’d missed some seasons, because we don’t have expanded cable access at home. And I don’t have a reason to watch it anymore.

So where did I originally watch this Disney series? When I spent endless hours at Childrens Hospital with Jessie. That was a surreal slice of life, living inside a climate-controlled atmosphere, unable to feel the touch of wind or sun most of time, shut inside an environment with its own rhythms and traditions and language, unlike anywhere else in the world: time lifted out of any other reality, stretching out from hours and days into months and years.

We spent time meaningfully. We conducted plenty of school work and tutoring, reading and writing. Creative projects with fabric and glue and paper and paints and clay and scissors and every sort of craft material you can imagine. Imaginative therapy with music and play and art and talking and role-playing.

But we also spent recreational time playing competitive video games, board games, reading books or watching hours of movie and television, when Jessie felt especially yucky.

Do I miss living in the hospital? No. Do I wish I could snuggle up next to Jessie in bed, watching her favorite Disney shows … yes.

Though the reality of Jessie’s mortality was always palpable, we couldn’t imagine a time we wouldn’t be able to feel her curl up close, still fitting into our laps at age 9, thin and graceful, long and prickly, moody and sweet. It’s impossible to imagine that you won’t be able to touch, protect, play, argue with and console your child. It’s impossible to imagine the emptiness where arms once encircle, or a weight that won’t press against you any more, or a breath, or a voice, or a giggle, or a brush of her fingers.

We’ll say good-bye again again, in a healthy, natural way when Sarah goes to college in the fall.

But a child’s passing? His or her permanent departure? You can’t imagine that will eventually feel like.

Yet the shadow of it  made us pay attention to the time we had with her, and each other, in the moment. In a sense, it focused us. Acted as a lens, and changed how we viewed and measure time. We tried not to take any of it for granted.

Afterward, time changes again. You must grow familiar with her absence hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year. Now we measure time, in part, by what came before. And after. For instance, as my conversation with a 14-year-old revealed, there are  years punctuated by High School Musical and Hannah Montana. And years without.

Some children will achieve those milestones that my friend’s 14-year-old yearns to reach. Others will never get there.

Yesterday during the PMC, I watched the results of time’s progression: its blessings and its losses. Survivors posed for a “Living Proof” photo, and many of them were once toddlers or elementary school students on treatment for cancer. Now they’re teens and young adults riding to support cancer research. Like Sarah, many members of those families grow up to study medicine of some kind. I also sought out and hugged sweaty panting adults riding in memory of their children. Others, whom I don’t know, rode for siblings, spouses, or parents.

Then there’s Hannah Montana-time. I realize that some parents don’t approve of the Disney channel. Or Hannah Montana. Mostly on principle. It represents some frothy, silly values that don’t gibe with feminism, for instance. It’s sort of like letting little kids play with Barbies. It demeans, in a way, a more intellectual and wholesome value system. There’s merit, of course, to that position.

Yet it doesn’t make me feel guilty or apologetic for enjoying Hannah Montana with Jessie.  I have written before about the importance of letting children feel like princesses. Role-playing. Therapeutic play. Externalizing experiences and developing scripts and games and roles around it. The potency of magical thinking and the power of fantasy, dreaming and escaping. (Aside: Hannah Montana was a big hit for little girls of Jessie’s age, in part because they could imagine themselves living a double life as “regular kid” and a “superstar.” The possibility of being either ordinary or fairy-tale … or both at once. And in Jessie’s case, perhaps her wishfulness extended to being healthy, as well as all tossing around all those long blonde tresses and rocking those great wigs and outfits.)

So yes, I appreciate the value of my Hannah Montana-years. But I don’t think I’d turn back time. Nor would I fast-forward it.

Here? Right now? A whole lot of life is happening in our family. Sarah’s last month at home before college. My final few weeks before graduate school. The start of a new season and transformation in our family’s life.

The same is true in most families, for a variety of reasons. Summer versus autumn. Vacation and camps versus school, sports, extracurriculars and work. We’re all in the height of this time of year, but it will come to a close soon enough. We’ll all be in the middle of transitions, and the stress that comes with them.

For now, I’ll just savor right where I am. Sure, maybe I’ll sneak in a new episode of Hannah Montana, in honor of Jessie and childhood and the silly ways we escape difficult realities, and the magic of both childhood and a rich adult fantasy life. (Trust me, hours upon hours of Disney channel didn’t steal Jessie’s ability to use her imagination … or mine.) But mostly I’ll try not to tune out; I’ll pay attention to the experience of my living daughter Sarah, who is letting go of childhood and grabbing onto adulthood, even as I write this journal.