Snapshots, Nearly Solstice

I wake up and study voice and guitar until my fingers and throat are feeling worn. I'm fighting a cold again. This music thing is a marathon before me, and I only just got the shoes. Beginner mind is supposed to be refreshing and insightful, I think. But my mind is preoccupied with mourning. I write to a friend and tell her all the things I think of doing in my weakest moment, which is now. I feel better having said them.

"I can't think of what to write next in this story!" Sam shouts. "I just can't."
"Sit with it," I tell him. "It's Spirit coming through you. Just quiet your mind, open and relax. It's all there." I wonder why I can't open and quiet like this in my moments of despair. I think I might be peeking through some sort of tear in the fabric now, because I do hear my words and wonder at them. I am not alone in the struggle because we are all trying to sit with what is while what's next rolls in. So much uncertainty.

I suddenly cry hard in the kitchen and both boys come to comfort me. I miss my Mom. It's Christmas without her. I sob and sob. Trinidad tells me in his young man voice to let it through, it's all right. He rubs my back. I see their care for me as a reflection of mine for her and I cry harder. Sam tells me to take my time, everything else can wait. Sit down. I can do nothing else. When I am done, I get us all some chocolate. We agree that it is good.

I am sitting on a chair in the kitchen, wearing an apron and holding my guitar. I am practicing Ode to Joy over and over until I'm not sure I like it anymore. The dog sits at my feet and stares up at me as if I were Jesus. I wonder at her taste in idols. The pressure cooker hisses above my melody.

All of this is inextricable. How can who I am be anything but what I do in this season of my life?

To Work with the Dead

The moon is not a difficult thing to love. Even behind a cloud, it is soft in its gaze, always poised at the edge of its seat looking down on me. I see it tonight, and I am moved by its patience, its ever-presence, its spirit in my world.

Sometimes, I forget it hanging there. There are weeks that I do not go outside at night. I bristle against the cold, the damp. Sometimes I forget that even in the rain, the moon sits it out, waiting. When I see nothing but darkness where the moon should be, that pale golden globe holds its place in the sky, singing its silent moonlight song. Even in total darkness, it does not forget its purpose.

I wish I was so steady in my way. I wish that the cosmos had gifted me a heart that trusted light to come and come again, stretching across the darkest canyons of my love-in-waiting. I wish I could touch the stardust in me now, know that I am spinning, spinning, spinning for good reason. All for the blessing of darkness in light.

The trees stand solemnly still in the sky tonight, bare bones lifted high into the mist. I am here beside them, my cheeks chilling as I sweep the last of the leaves up from the driveway. I have borne the rest away to my garden where they blanket the cold feet of naked bushes and trees. Now I stand in the dark, afraid to go inside and return to my human existence.

Here, I am cool and wet like the leaves themselves, tall and dark like the willow. I, too, am waiting for spring. I stand awhile in the rose arbor. I pause to allow the experience to be, this waiting and watching upon entering one space as I leave another. I can go back, I can always go back. The willow laughs at my observation. She doesn't see any going back. She just sees me under the arbor.

I make this human gate, this threshold for transformation. I make it for myself. It is my axis to turn on. I pray for the light to be remembered in me. I receive the damp offerings of earth and sky. This is my home.

I am always reminded of these truths that run far deeper than me when I move so many leaves. It is always a blessing to work with the dead.

In Honor of What

I bought myself some new dancing shoes, and tonight, I took them out for a spin.

Reentry into the ballroom scene is not so very difficult in most ways. I find my cubby, stash my cycling boots, and slip on my new jazzy black slippers. I look around not-so-obviously at the selection of potential partners while they look not-so-obviously at me.

I remember how this works. New fish in the pond are the first to be caught. Often enough, they are also tossed back when -- oops! -- they forget the steps to the west coast swing. Never tossed mid-song. Well, almost never; I think it only happened to me twice. But at the end of a song, you can feel your partner's disappointment. He wears it like a leaden yoke, and it's painful for him to fully raise his head to look at you politely as a gesture of goodbye. You must pardon my masculine assumption here (the "he"); all of my women dancing partners I've had to invite personally.

Okay, so I am perched on a step, prepared to be caught. Snap! It happens. A swing dance first. My favorite, and not too hard to piece together. Then, something called a "Night Club" follows, which sounds more like a drink than a dance. "I don't really know this one," I say, smiling sweetly.

My partner takes me out, a fine lead, and I pick up the dance more quickly than I thought I would. The first time I get the basic steps without tripping over him, he nods and says, "Okay, now let's try something different."

Oh, right. Just when I get the basic down for the first time? Now we're switching it up? So we try something different. After a couple of turns, I get that, too. He is delighted and jumps into a new move which leaves me criss-crossed on the wrong side of his arms. He looks at me sideways and says, "Oh, don't worry. It's probably the hardest move in this dance."

Excuse me? That's supposed to be reassuring? What makes you think that's such a great idea, I wonder, trying out your most difficult move when I've barely got my feet moving in step with you? Brilliant. I am set for success.

One older gentleman whose name, Helmut, is embroidered on his official ballroom dancing sweatshirt, tells me under no uncertain terms that a woman must follow and the man is totally in charge. Modern women, he says, have a hard time with this. I wonder if he thinks I am intentionally trying to gum up his grace in order to bolster my feminine independence. I look at him cock-eyed. "Is that supposed to be a hint?" I ask. His confidence ebbs, and the lecture ends.

They keep asking me to dance. Each time, I warn them that I haven't danced much in the last decade. Some believe me and take it achingly slow. Others think I'm being humble. If they are a strong lead, I keep up. One fellow just a little older than me learns quickly that my warning especially applies to the tango. He walks me through it counting aloud. We do okay.

Then he starts talking to me. My lips work better than my legs, so they take over, and my legs fall off. Well, not entirely, but it is kind of a drag for both of us. It takes him a full turn around the floor to understand the problem and stop asking me questions. He then has to go back to telling me which foot to move: left, right, left, right.

Okay. Good again. Then he asks me where I dance when I'm not dancing here. Ummm.... really? Aren't you the guy who just taught me my right from my left? "Because there's a dance tomorrow night at the Eagles Club," he tells me. I say I'm going to the concert of a friend of mine instead. He looks disappointed. The dance is over.

One man asks if I do the Silver Waltz, and I tell him that I did once. He tries me, and low and behold! The feet remember. I recall as if it was yesterday practicing this dance while walking my dog down the bark-o-mulch path at Alton Baker park. (Yes, there was trouble with the leash.) I am so surprised to remember the steps that I almost share my celebration. Then I recall how well talking helped my tango, and I keep my mouth shut.

Another man asks me to dance. "Err... what is it?" I ask. "A merengue. You can't mess it up," he tells me. Now there's someone who's been watching, I think. We take the floor, and I do remember how to look sexy squishing grapes with my feet. This man is charmed by my flair. He asks me to dance the next waltz. For some reason, my legs don't go with his anymore, and he is irritated. It's simply a progressive waltz, he says, but I can't seem to remember which leg goes when. I suspect he thinks I'm a great dancer who is disabled just for him, just to ruin his waltz. Perhaps it is so. He gives me a very sour look. I widen my eyes and smile.

A fellow insists on teaching me the West Coast Swing. I appreciate his patience, actually, and his counting aloud. He asks me to teach him the rumba, which I manage to do, just barely. I tell him that I'm rusty because it's my first full night dancing in a decade. "Oh!" he says. "In honor of what?"

In honor of what? How do I answer that? "Transition," I say and look away, hoping he doesn't ask more.

"What kind of transition?" he asks. This is officially not small-talk. This man is fired.

I look at him blankly. One-two-three, one-two-three. Why have I not danced? Transition of my husband into a woman? Transition in and out of two more relationships following? Neither of them rooted, and never a real space to be single, or at least singular, in between...why have I not danced?

It's a transition, I think, in honor of What. Just as he said it. But that's not the pat sort of answer that's allowed on the dance floor.

Nevertheless, it is worth a new set of shoes and an evening of laughter, missteps, and sweet memories lived aloud. In honor of What.

The Saints Preserve Us!

Opening line of our homeschooling day: "All right, boys. The electricity has gone out. It won't be back. And I'm not your mother."

Sam looked horrified. "I'm some stranger who just walked in off the street," I told him quickly. "I heard you grew tomatoes this year and that your mom used to can, so I'm hoping you can teach me." The wheels began to turn.

"What do you need to can?" I asked.

"Jars. The jar pot, tomatoes," said Trinidad.

"What are the dangers of canning?" I asked.

"Broken jars, getting burned," said Sam.

"What about the long term dangers?" I asked.

"Poisoning!" they said in tandem.

"Right. And what could cause that?"

"Bacteria!" said Trin.

"Yup," I said. "That particular bacteria is called 'botulism.'"

"Botulism? No way. I thought that was a religion."

So went the Socratic lesson on canning today, heavy with sixteen quarts of tomatoes that the boys harvested and cut up from our garden. As we stewed over the details, the rich, red sauce simmered down to a precious seven quarts. I helped stir the pots as we discussed what could be a hospitable environment to various bacteria and what inhibits their growth.

Then, we went a different direction with our preservation and lacto-fermented five quarts of cucumbers that Trin and Sam picked in the garden. All of this with only some instruction (and many questions) from me! They peeled the garlic that we'd harvested in July and plunked the white bulbs into jars with proper measurements of dill, mustard seed, salt and whey. They added water and voila! A work of art that feeds the family. A living food that fends off botulism with its own vitality!

A lesson plan you can eat.

The Beautiful Failure

Today, I watched as two twelve-year-old boys worked together to build an aerodynamic car that could soar twelve inches off a press-board jump to land in a basket of blocks. This effort was at once humble and Herculean in stature.

The boys considered the track they built: Should it have sides? Should it be taped? Should it contain the plastic official Hot Wheels track? Together they sculpted a vehicle: weight, wings, propulsion, aerodynamic design. Their ideas toppled out into the space between them, then were considered one by one from all angles. They asked for more tape, paper, and elastic. I brought them balloons in lieu of rubber bands, and they used them sling-shot style and as wind propulsion for a vehicle that first looked like a car-plane, then a car-biplane and finally like a car-biplane-sailboat as more and more Lincoln Logs were taped into place to firm up the paper sails and wings.

Sideline experiments took place: Paper airplanes were tested for aerodynamic design to be incorporated, alternative materials and pathways were put into place for a smoother, more effective track. They shared the creation in all ways from inception to closure.

And they pronounced it a failure.

They did not offer this observation in dismay. It was merely a fact, stated plainly as one might observe an overcast day. Nothing to spoil anyone's picnic, but not the hoped for outcome either. One boy told the other that they needed to have a playdate again soon, and this was agreed upon heartily.

What can we make of it? Is accomplishment achieved after successful trials or after many highly creative ventures? Is there a different sort of accomplishment that is born of each?

I remember, as a teenager, deciding to spend the day building a raft that my girlfriend and I could float onto our local slough. It was a rather strange idea from the get-go; neither of us had any building experience, and we never would have dreamt of going out in the mucky, highly polluted slough on any other day. We somehow did not compute that the project might entail getting wet.

I remember that we hauled to the water's edge something that resembled a souped-up pallet. The slats would obviously let water through, but in a moment of unsinkable pride in our creation, I volunteered to be the first to push off on our "boat."

It sunk.

Not too deep. Up to my waist in brownish-gray water and up to my calves in suctiony silt, I determined that I had merely mounted the vehicle incorrectly. Giving the thumbs up to my girlfriend who watched wide-eyed on the bank, I clambered aboard from the other side and managed to stay on top of the wooden flat, even as it sank a few feet below the surface. In this way, I effectively deep-water surfed downstream.

I remember laughing. I remember the weight of my overalls moving through the muddy water stiffly and the moment when I realized that my head, too, was going to go under. The event is elevated in my memory -- relinquishment in the face of ecstatic creation.

It did not matter that my boat did not float. The entire venture became a sort of performance art. The gray sky laughed down at the brownish-gray me, and we were one in our mirth, awash in the bowels of creativity.

I always wonder, no I sempre wonder (Italian captures the longing in "always") what the goal is, anyway. We humans measure our efforts and our accomplishments neatly into units, indeed we measure the value of a creature, of a soul this way at times. For what are we but the energy that finds its path in the world, creating and being created? Who are we to measure the value of outcome when the means itself is born of our deepest truths, our perfect grace?

The boys saved their car-biplane-sailboat for the next passersby to take note of -- a monument to  creative failure.

I myself am humble witness to the wonder.

Work

There is the kind of work you do that has an end: a sinkful of dishes, sweeping the kitchen floor, scrubbing the fingerprints off the door jamb (I don't think I ever do that).

There's the kind of work that eats you up so that you forget you have feet, eyes of your own, children even: working the beehive, working in the classroom, performing onstage.

There's work that you do with joy because you nest it among the things you love: mowing the lawn while blasting the soundtrack to My Fair Lady at dusk, paying the bills with a good cup of Chai tea, doing a boatload of dishes with a friend who really has something to say and an amazing ear for the listening.

Then there's that bottomless sort of work that threatens to pull you down with it: a case and a half of tomatoes, a huge bag of onions and forty jalapeno peppers that ask to be salsa'd in the day before you fly to Kansas at four a.m. the next morning.

You look at that kind of work and you wonder: How? How am I going to get that done? My Fair Lady is to friendly and fair, no one seems to have the ear you're wanting to share with, and it is impossible to pace yourself with landmark "endings" (I'll give myself an hour to do the tomatoes, thirty minutes for the cilantro...), because you really and truly have no idea how long any of it will take, whether you have all the correct amounts of ingredients the recipe calls for (my God, you'll kill your family with botulism if there are two too many peppers), and if, in fact, you contain the moral fiber to get through a job that contains so many unknowns.

The tomatoes wash like this: one shiny under the running tap, two so little dust, really what's the point, three how deep is this basket of tomatoes, four it doesn't really matter when I'll never see the bottom, five inhale, six exhale, seven inhale, eight exhale, nine there's no other way, ten exhale, eleven....

But onions are bound to make you cry. And after you cry, you realize that all the confusion that sat planted in your mind, in your heart, was just a boulder waiting for gravity and a rain of tears to send it slowly onward, downhill, and with a whoosh, you find that there was meaning, there was peace in your relationships with all those people you were afraid to call while chopping.

You call them to you, tell them about your celebrations, your fears, your confusions, and they listen and share their own. It's all the truth, and then there is an end to tomatoes, to peppers and to onions (lo! those friends shared your table and a knife, chopped beside you). There is an end to cilantro and garlic, and while you forgot to purchase bell peppers (you never could grow them), the store is still open and you can stop there on the way to picking up the kids from soccer.

Everything falls into place in that cosmic gospel way and everything makes sense, everything comes together so that you can see it all has an end, all a point of closure for celebrations and mournings.

It somehow doesn't matter if the salsa ever gets finished, though it will, of course. And we will keep picking up our work again and again, harvesting, preserving, and searching for the things that feed us.

Because it's good, work.  Yield: 16 and a half quarts.

The Sometimes Difference Between Boys

NVC Family Camp, Vashon Island. The dinner bell rings. Trinidad sits bolt upright in our tent and snaps his book closed.

Trin: That's the dinner bell, and I've vowed to myself to always be first in line for every meal. (He unzips the fly and leaves the tent.)


Sam (sitting up slowly and reaching to move a lock of hair from in front of his mother's face): That's the dinner bell, and I've vowed to always be right where I am. And that is a vow I will never break.

Into Light

According to Sam, this is what is needed to gain a new skill: Experience and experimentation. He is satisfied with this assessment and not drawn to say more about it.

But I will. Experience we amass from birth, perhaps before. Experience guides our experimentation, gives it the wings of angels to teach us what we most need to know, whether we like the outcome or not. (Do we experiment in our first moment of awareness, or is experience that awareness simply put -- the tabula rosa of our existence here on Earth?) Ongoing experimentation is a way of pulling ourselves forward, integrating yesterday with tomorrow in this only moment we are given: Now.

Our experiments are the seeds of plants well established. These are not new skills we are "gaining" -- they are fully realized abilities that we have always harbored, waiting for the season in which they are to emerge. And so we root, flourish, and flower to give seed again and again, realizing the divine beings that we ever are.

I watch you, young Sam, with eyes that strive to take in your whole being, your living potential, your infinite Being stretching into light. And I honor the learning I experience in your hands.

Help Where You Need It

At 12:15 p.m., I weighed the dilemma in my head: lunch, housecleaning, soccer games. How could I time it all "just right" so we didn't get cranky with each other before lunch or after the soccer game? I needed help.

"Boys," I said, "we have to leave for the soccer game at 3:30, and I'm guessing that you don't want to have too full of a stomach -- maybe eat an hour and a half ahead of time? But then, there's the house cleaning that we were going to put off until 1:00. We'll need to be cleaning in that window if we want to eat later. And I don't know how hungry you are right now."

"Yes, eat at 2:00," said Trin. He walked out of the room and headed for the vaccuum cleaner.

Sam hugged me and looked a little mournful. "I wish we could do something fun for a reward," he said. We usually set ourselves up with something preferred to follow housecleaning which does not yet rank at the top of our favored projects list.

"Well, you could use my iphone for awhile if you like --" I started, but Trin cut me off.

"No!" he said emphatically. "We've both had way to much screen time lately. It's time we did something else."

"Oh, okay," Sam acquiesced. He took out the broom.

In the time it took me to wash the dog and clean the bathroom, they had double or triple swept to my standards the entire house (thank God it's only 750 square feet). Trinidad decided he would walk up to the store and buy himself some ice cream which he is likely to share.

Do you know what a relief and joy it is to share with my children the chores that keep our home orderly, functional, and beautiful? And perhaps moreso, it is a delight to share the orchestration of these tasks, to know that we all take part in the same plan of activities that meet a great many of our needs, and that we are willing to stretch together to do the less-preferred activities that make it all possible.

Taking in that celebration.

Let The Piano Play Itself

I ran my first formal homeschooling day with the boys yesterday. We studied Spanish, gardening, the human skin, multiplication, writing, watercolor, and Chaucer. I worked on the piano with Sam, opening my heart to his despair and terror in the face of all the music he's "lost" over the summer break. We did yoga and played Rat-a-tat-cat. In between, I got a chicken in the slow cooker, fielded grocery acquisition calls, and contributed to breakfast, lunch, and clean up.

At the "end" of our day, there was laundry to hang and fold, calls to make, a cat who needed first aid, and my bedroom that needed first aid after the cat's ongoing abcess drainage. The cucumbers were ripe and ready for pickling, the garlic needed to be hung, and the aronia berries begged to be harvested. Most horizontal surfaces were heaped with Lego, playing cards, clothes or dishes, and I am scheduled to teach a workshop here on Sunday.

I hung out the laundry piece by piece. This job usually belongs to the boys, but I wanted to give them a chance to play and integrate after a pretty intense day. I strongly wanted to contribute to their needs  and at the same time, I was tired, overstimulated, and confused about how to meet all of the needs on the table. In addition to my household and home business tasks, I've taken on outside employment that I need to finish prepping before Monday. Whew.

I lifted one wet piece of cloth after another. How will it happen? I asked. How can all of this possibly get done when I am so drained, so empty? There are not enough people, there's not enough time....

"Let the piano play itself." The words returned to me from years past when I studied piano with Ben. He told me that if you allow the piano, it will push back at you after you press each note in order to return to its original position. You may receive its energy and use that impetus to play the next note. The image that Ben shared shaped the teaching of my workshops until, now, participant energy carries me elliptically through my workplay so that presenting workshops is a joy.

I shook a damp blouse in the sun. The cotton rubbed against my fingers, pregnant with water from the washing. Clean. I let the sensation fill me. I looked across at my garden, a forest of selectively cut lettuces and kales amid tangled vines of tomatoes and cucumbers. Their jeweled colors threw the sun back at me. I opened my eyes, my heart. I took it in. The laundry drifted between the basket, my hands, and the wooden rack. Effortlessly, one piece after another found its place in the sun. I breathed in with gratitude the blue of the sky, the sound of my children playing.

"Can I help you, Mom? To make it go faster?" Sam asked at the back door. I smiled.

Today, I am taking in the beauty of the day. The crows playing in the park have fueled my pedaling to the bank, the store. Trees have waved me forward, cheering, to discover the next bit of chaos 'round the bend. The sun glinting in Trinidad's honey colored hair reminds me that we have plenty of time to get to the soccer match.

Time may be all we have to measure out the giving and receiving of our love.

Mother's Medicine

It started late one night with a fever that wouldn't break. My hand rested on the tiny chest of my one-year-old that rose and fell rapidly, the heartbeat impossibly fast. Is he okay? I wondered. What else can I do?

I called Selene. "He's so hot!" I told her. "I don't want to wake him, but I'm scared." I could hear my friend's mind slowly waking to my terror. I knew I could trust her to want to help; she'd been the one I'd called in the middle of the night nearly a year ago when our house caught fire.

"Did it come on suddenly?" she asked. Yes. "Did you try belladonna?" No, that's a good idea. "And it's Sam, right?" Yes. I heard her shuffling books as she looked up remedies that might match the constitution of my particular child. She suggested one or two other possibilities.

"And Kristin? You're afraid, and I want you to remember that Sam is in God's care, too. You don't have to do it all. This is an opportunity for you to trust in that. Are you with me?" Yes. I could always count on Selene for both homeopathy and prayer, despite my pagan tendencies.

Selene was probably the first in my tribe to take her family's health and wellness into her own hands.  She gave birth a year before I did and quickly ventured into homeopathy as the easiest path to "first, do no harm." She saw a homeopathic physician regularly and invested in fat texts to extend the care beyond her financial means. I was in awe of her passion and her knowledge.

I ambled into homeopathy shyly, and naturopathy more carefully still, wanting to be certain that I did not get cavalier with Mother Nature's medicines. I saw myself as too far removed from nature to know instinctively how to use it. I grew up with very little medicine myself and even fewer trips to the doctor. My mom always seemed to just assume I'd recover from anything I'd come down with given time.

The joy of homeopathy, Selene pointed out, was that it provided a way that comfort could be given within the time it takes to heal. And sometimes, the time could even be shortened...dramatically. Over the course of years, I came to agree with her on both counts and stocked my first aid cabinet with the old faithfuls: arnica montana for bruising, euphrasia officinalis for eye problems, coffea cruda for sleep difficulty, and drosera rotundifolia for dry coughs. These worked regularly on our family, though I know that while it never worked for us, Selene's clan swore by pulsatilla. Other remedies are kept in a jar at the back for particular ailments: aconite, belladonna, valeriana, rhus toxicodendron and others I can't pronounce.

That last, the rhus, made its rounds about my neighborhood when the chicken pox came through. It is not the only medicine that we share in a neighborly fashion. There are at least four houses on our street full of children of all ages who regularly require the medical expertise or support of one or more of the parents among us. We trade advice and remedies freely.

Dana, the soccer player, is good for a splint of any sort and gave me exercises and advice that straightened out my sprained ankle when we didn't have insurance. Tesha has a variety of remedies on hand, both herbal and homeopathic. She is also keen on nutrition for both pets and people. Brandy is up for borrowing my euphrasia herb to make tea with to put in a compress that her preschooler loves for  "pink eye," but Brandy's elder daughter is wary of my witchcraft after she tried a comfrey poultice that healed the skin on her leg before the infection had cleared -- my tough learning to look before making suggestions around comfrey!

Another mother friend, not a direct neighbor, is an excellent resource in all things herbal. She has been wildcrafting since the days before I knew the definition of that word. Mele taught me to trust in the many first aid plants in our midst including plantain for scrapes and stings, dandelion for the upset stomach (helpful after a bad burrito before the big soccer game), and dock for nettle stings.

Mele also taught me to steep herbs in olive oil, stirring them daily until the color and qualities from within the herb coloured the liquid in shades from pink to gold or green. Together, we heated beeswax, some from my own bees, and spun it into the infusions to create a salve that we could pour into so many tins to bestow upon friends and family during the winter holidays.

And what of the traditional holiday treat-sharing among neighbors? Dana's daughter shoved my hummus under her mother's nose when she got home from work. "Try some!" Jetta told her. "Kristin made it instead of Christmas cookies. It came from the weeds in her garden!" I had mixed the garlic and chickpea paste with the ground root of dandelion to cleanse our extended family of the ills of too much sugar in December.

Finally, how could I fail to mention the book that supported me in transitioning into this scrappy, do-it-yourself model of home remedies? Smart Medicine For A Healthier Child by Janet Zand, Rachel Walton, and Bob Rountree carefully lists the homeopathic, naturopathic, dietary and conventional treatments for whatever ails you from A-Z. It also contains sidebars with clear symptomatic points at which it is advisable for a parent to seek medical attention.

With the cost of care being what it is and insurance hard to come by, our self-reliance and interdependence have cultivated a sense of peace and ease in respect to our own healing and well-being. "Believing that a professional's opinion is necessary above one's own intuitive and rational senses is the source of tyranny itself," says Seda. And I believe her. She would also have me mention prayer, and that has often graced our family as well as her own family of origin -- four children growing up in the wilds of Wyoming. Christian Science served them well, and continues to remain in our arsenal of lovingkindness.

So, if it's a prescription you want, here it is: nurture your neighborly healers, yourself among them!  Together, we are assuredly the most caring, convenient, and sustainable medicine one can afford.

Making Change

Two weeks ago, I got fed up. In the face of imminent budget shortfalls that will grow our already enormous class sizes (2nd largest in the nation, by state, in elementary) next year, losses in P.E., music and the arts, as well as further days cut from our school year (already the shortest, by state, in the nation), our city refused to pass an income tax that would act as a bandaid to schools that are losing a lot of life-blood. At the same time, I participated with anxious hope as our school attempted to win a $50,000 Pepsi grant to cover some of our cuts. We lost yet again.

We need faces to represent the statistics of school budgets cut, I think. We need to refuse service if there are so many primary needs met. Can you imagine being a young person sitting through 7 hours of desk time with only two 10-15 min. recesses and no P.E. class to move around in? What are we doing to our future populations when creativity is discouraged in the absence of designated times for art and music? What exactly do we mean by "public education?"

I am not so worried about my kids. We have the resources, as a family, to supplement or even homeschool if we choose to. I am thinking, primarily, of the thousands of children and families that do not see themselves in choice about the education that they are paying for with taxes and not receiving in a way that adequately meet their needs.

I am thinking that choice is power, and sharing power in our community is what will make positive change happen. So, we're going on strike.

We are the customers here -- children and families -- and we have a right to send our educational offering back to the kitchen if it is half-baked. The problems lie in the districts, the state government, and even the federal government's support (or lack of) for this system. The problems are many, and there are countless possible solutions.

Right now, we need to stand up as citizens, families, and students to say that we want our faces to be seen behind the numbers ticking away in this crisis. We are a part of this community, and to support education is to nurture long-term social sustainability. The prisons get three times the funding that schools receive. Where will our disenfranchised, under-educated population go, I wonder?

I can tell you where we're going. The boys and I are riding our bikes to the state capitol building in Salem this weekend so that we can be on the steps to protest on Monday morning at 10:30 a.m. At the same time (10:30 a.m. Monday, June 13), I invite people from all over our state to pull their children from schools and meet in their district parking lots. Tell friends and community, and we will all show up en masse to make a stand for quality education!

This is our chance to show what a monkey-wrench is thrown into the works if we, the customers, refuse to participate in an educational system that is woefully short on resources. We can build awareness in our community and legislature on Monday. We are to be reckoned with!

I hope to see you there. It takes courage, and I know we can all play our part with loving hearts and the full expectation of finding a way.

A Confession

Forgive me, God/Goddess, for I have sinned.

I have stood before the altar of the Great God Pepsi, and I have typed in my email and password more than twenty times this month. I have heard the crackling pop sound effect that resonates from behind my keyboard and the luscious bubbling music of cold soda trickling into a glass. I have sinned in my mind about drinking it.

My sins run deeper yet. My kitchen table is full, truly full, of empty Pepsi bottles. More are recapped with the safety seal broken in crates on the floor. I have acquired them rather dishonestly; others have brought them here. Others have paid.

All in the name of education.

This month, our alternative school has been chosen to participate in a popularity contest with 2,999 other good causes to receive a grant for 50K from Pepsi Cola Corporation. That's $50,000. A sum that equals teachers, a reading program. "Everything would really be okay," I'm told by our lead teacher. It would.

But there's this little hitch about the voting. In this month of May, everyone gets one vote per day, two if they text one in. And you get more (surprise!) if you buy some Pepsi, remove the top and enter the code in the cap. You get ten more votes in fact, and each is a "Power vote" valued at 5, 10, 25, 50 or even 100 votes.

You now understand the state of my kitchen.

My kitchen is not the only one littered with liters. Kitchens across Eugene and the nation are full of Pepsi right now, full of hope, as this morning we were in slot #19 -- only 9 away from the top ten that will receive the "grant." (Read: Cash Prize! Thank you, Bob Barker.) This fact moved teachers and parents alike to fill our VW buses, bicycles and hatchbacks with Pepsi to drop off with friends and family to get in the vote!

Are you sick yet?

Some of the kids are for sure. Someone out there is in bed with Pepsi poisoning right now, mark my words. My kids believed me when I told them it was only for scientific experiments, drain cleaning, and laundry. They bought Mento candies and attempted explosive events in the back yard. But surely others drank it.

Okay, so I might get in trouble for admitting it, but Seda was one. She is very ill and regrets it, for the record.

It is sad, sad sad. I'm embarrassed to say that the worst consequence is upon us one day before the closing of the vote. I am sitting on this conundrum: I have convinced my boyfriend that it is his civic duty to vote with Pepsi since the state of Oregon as a whole doesn't seem to give a rip about our children's education. No P.E., music, or art and class sizes at 30+ for lower elementary next year.

Ben has been plunking away at the keyboard, activating power codes, and voting with the spinning golden cap for our school. And our rank has fallen...to 56. In hours. All of our potential gifts for the children of tomorrow dumped like so much Pepsi down the drain because 2,999 other noble causes in this country got bit by the hope bug -- perhaps it was a scorpion? -- and they are now messing with our chances.

Since when do we gamble for our children's future? And when did public education become a charity?

With all due respect and even admiration for those who have made a tremendous effort at this grant (ours are the sins of the innocent parents and teachers who wanted only a decent education for our children), I am praying for forgiveness. I am praying for answers. And above all, I pray that our children can forget that we once tried to buy them school with poison.

Today's Work

How can I stretch my mind, my heart, to find tenderness for all of our gifts and limitations?

"Do not apologize for the state of your garden," he chided gently, a man who had been a garden educator for years. "It's exactly how it's supposed to be."

To celebrate that, to hold it dear, I must extend a gentle heart to my work in its many forms as it contributes to both order and chaos: there was the time I chose to write rather than to mulch, the day I slept late to recover from a quarrel that lasted until three a.m. and I did not water, the day I spent at the coast instead of planting the onions.

Dandelions and curly dock I have made friends with. Nettle and bittercress sustain me as I wait for spring lettuce to unfurl before the sun. The crab grass still strikes dread in my heart and the morning glory, it's dark green leaves tender and small, are poking through the too-thin mulch as I turn away, unwilling to watch.

How may I set foot into the pathway of my garden welcoming the presence of every being, green and brown? How can I find it in my heart to offer amnesty to the myriad slugs and snails, flea beetles and aphids? (It is not actually mine to offer, I know. They allow me to grow here, too.)

My work is not the work of the lonely. Raccoons, a pestilence to my chickens, eat snails. The chickens will do serious seasonal damage to the crab grass if I give them half a chance.

I suppose it's about trust, knowing that the resources are here with me to find harmony, peace, and beauty in this bed I've made. When I turn my eyes to the earth and see only obstacles to my intentions, I may close them again and recall all the beings that I am connected to that together encompass a greater vision, and I am offered a view into that.

When I open them, voila! The morning glory blooms effortlessly into tiny flawless cups of sunshine, greenery raises its head in every spot I've not taken the time to cultivate, and my mother Earth reminds me that the world is always in movement, always unfolding whether I am capable of bearing witness or not.

The garden is possibility. It is a model of patience, waiting for me to find love.

By Sam, Uncut

Sam escaped off to his room tonight and wrote this, which sounded an awful lot like a blog post to me:

"I was playing basketball in my bedroom when my brother, Trin, called for me. I wondered if he wanted to talk to me about a giant spider that I saw a couple days ago. It turned out that he wanted to give me tips on how to make a good picture. I said that I didn't want any tips, exept for money tips. Mom laughed."

I have printed it exactly as Sam wrote it: spelling, capitalization, grammar. I am delighted with his ability to express himself at barely eight years old!

This is what he had to say about writing afterward: "When you play video games, you get done and you always want more. When you write something like this, you go 'oh, now I got that out!' and then you [feel ready] to do all kinds of other things you like to do. Because you got it out. And it feels good."

What an important point to make! I had been sharing with the boys my joys in witnessing their art for the evening (Trinidad was drawing landscapes with the guidance of an art book from my mom while Sam drew or wrote) and told them that one of my concerns in making computer games accessible is that they would always use the time doing that instead of using their imagination and (in my mind) growing their souls. Then Sam pointed out the above.

Wow. The difference between hungry and full, yearning and content. I had never thought of it that way.

Trinidad, on the other hand, earnestly argued for full reign of all of his faculties with computer access included so that he could grow his ability to choose and discipline himself.

I think he has something there, too, and as usual, it asks more growth from me. :)

Wise

Tonight is Sam's last night of being seven years old.

"It's not healthy to hurry," he told me quietly as I rushed around gathering food, water, shin guards, and shoes for Trin's soccer match.

I laughed as loudly as I agreed. Then I rushed on.

We picked up Trin, and I lit into him (translation: earnestly expressed my feelings and unmet needs) about not calling me after school as we'd agreed this morning. For almost an hour, I had chewed my nails waiting for the phone to ring so I could tell him to walk the 2.5 miles home alone -- a new independence for him -- but when it finally rang, it was a friend's mother who had taken him home with her son as rain was pelting the soccer field where they had played. If only I could instill in him awareness, that invaluable notion that (m)others have needs at the same time we do....

We talked and listened and talked with each other, and in the end I could see how he saw it and he could see how I saw it, and both of us were moved to tears that we could be seen, really seen by one another when there had been such tension only minutes ago. What precious relief and hope filled us both as he wiggled into my lap for a snuggle, long legs dangling shoes nearly as big as my own off the end of the car seat.

Later, Ben offered him a book from the 1950's that showed a pictorial progression from a woman with a cat outward into the cosmos until the Milky Way itself was only a speck in a cloud of stars.

Awareness, I thought. How insignificant are my efforts to cultivate family-oriented awareness when I am missing so much: the young man with the sign on the corner who is shivering in the cold while I drive to a soccer match (borrowed car), children eating chemicals that are marketed as "hot lunch," kids being crammed thirty-six to a classroom. How much am I willing to take responsibility for in a given moment?

How big is my cosmos?

"It's not good to hurry or worry," said Sam.

And he should know, being nearly eight years wise.

Turning

Did I tell you that I tried to stop the world with my shoulder?

It's been aching for a year or so, inflamed to crisis point twice. How did that happen? Hard to say.

This is what I know: people have been dying left and right in my world for the past year, all of them mothers or children. I am not opposed to death, not opposed to the sun setting. I am not against that which is most predictable, lightness and dark, and how could I be? I am sitting inside it.

All the same, I think that I wanted it to slow down a trifle, give me time to say goodbye in my own human way, uncatch my breath. I think with that in my sub-mind, I set my shoulder against it.

The physical therapist, Erik Verdouw, master of the art, smiled knowingly when I told him this. Think of the speed with which this planet revolves, he told me. Think of how everything that appears to be still is yet in constant motion. If you lay on your back in a rainforest when there is not a breath of wind, the trees will creak and lean gently at all times, repositioning themselves with the turn and tilt of our planet. You cannot stop it, he said.

In fact, I do not even think I slowed it down, me with my shoulder. But maybe that's not so. Maybe the pain of withholding scraped into my art so that all that lay before me for a year was blank canvas. There have been precious few blog posts. So much has felt private, guarded. I did not wish to harm anyone in my attempt to capture moments with words.

Our bees have died, too. I am embarrassed to say it, shocked, and sad. I know things die. It is in my picture of the world. Every rotation is complete; we greet the dawn and the dusk each day the same, and still the sadness turns me in my tracks across the yard. I lean against the rabbit pen and cry with a dull moan like tall trees moving without knowing why.

I understand nothing. One hive has honey, more than twenty-five pounds left, I think, and the other needed feeding. But now, it's hard to say whether even the light hive starved; the marauding bees are filling the air around it, and they have been swarming it for a time, I suspect, looking back.

Between the frames, the bodies of my bees are piled light and paper thin, softly coated in mildew. They have been dead awhile, and it has not been wet.

All of this stopping things with my shoulder hard against the turn of the world, this effort to pause, take things in, has rendered me blind, I see. How did I not notice that the bees were not my own?

I am a stillpoint in a sea of color, some cosmic kaleidoscope spilling perfect prisms into one another at every rotation. Something always sticks and holds within the glass, but still the colors change, falling all around as if the stillness itself demanded motion at its edges.

I am breathing again, and that is something toward letting go, moving along. At dusk, I will check the hives in my full bee suit to be sure my colonies have indeed collapsed. Then, I will bring the boxes in so that the spring swarms I plan to catch will have a meal waiting.

What else is there to do?

How To Fight

Let me tell you how to fight.

It's not the way I was taught: tough lady pushing or pleading with words, sometimes sharp like daggers, and slammed by a fist or the flat iron back of a hand nearly as big as her head.

Not that way.

Not the way I did as a child either, screaming all the right words inside my head fierce as beach wind but only shaped by it on the inside -- a thousand steep dunes with cryptic passage to the sea.

Not like my father who shreds those around him without realizing that he is always right behind each, bearing the scars he has left on one and all.

Let me tell you, it is much softer than all that, and still it is deeper and darker than I ever thought possible.

This is how you fight: you listen. You crack yourself open and you let the other come rushing in until you know how they taste, how they smell, how they move in the world. You open your pores until the other seeps into you and you can feel how they feel because they are not outside and other at all.

You soften because all those holes leave you open and full at the same time, moving, jitterbugging with the electricity of connection.

And then you can speak, and when you speak, your words don't belong to you anymore. They are words of love, because it is love to listen like that. And you speak from deep down where you broke yourself open. You speak from that brokenness and there is a chance you will be heard from that place because words from down there, they echo. They sound different like a song in a narrow red canyon, and that music is rare and demands an ear.

But sometimes not. Sometimes the walls just shake all around and there is no ear, and that is no time to stop trying.

That is no time to be silent.

Into that canyon, you pull the ear, you bend it and teach it how to listen, how to crack itself open. You sing into it so it cannot resist, and the more that fight means to you, the softer you sing. How can you resist me?

I have you in me now, and you may be right or you may dance with me here.

Being right is lonely.

Being right does not echo or shine or even break through walls. Being right is a dull thud in our favor, and we want more, by nature we want more.

We have to fight for it.

The Mixed Yes

A week before my last post, I learned that my mother had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Two weeks ago, she passed on, thin, frail, and resolute on completing her journey whole-heartedly.

My mother did not talk about the fact that she was dying, not if she could help it. She chased the doctor from the room when he came to tell her that there was nothing more they could do for her. This dying thing was her business and her business alone, I imagine she was thinking. The doctor found her tenacity endearing.

She did not say much in those last days as we sat beside her, captivated by her passing. What she did say mostly appeared disjointed and dreamlike. When she spoke with us directly, her eyes widened with childlike presence and singular clarity.

"Oh! It's Kristin Ann." My arrival seemed to both delightfully surprise and meet expectation.

In the last year of her life, my mother found herself remarkably at ease with much of her world. She rarely argued with her husband. She looked at the lavender, lambs, and donkey in her fields and proclaimed herself happy despite economic challenges. The boys and I spent over a week with her at harvest without a single conflict -- unheard of and fulfilling in ways that left us both in wonder.

She had relaxed. I had relaxed. We were both trying to get used to this, looking at each other sideways and smirking. "Just sitting here staring straight ahead," she'd say as we surveyed the valley at cocktail hour beneath the buzz of summer cicadas.

I look back now and wish I could have earlier released all of the strifes of our relationships, all of my worries about her responses that I held long after the volcanoes of menopause had gone dormant. I wish I could have enjoyed her more.

I hold the mirror so that I can see the front of me from behind. I hope that I can enjoy my children and family now for who they are, that I may open my heart to them wholly in this moment, releasing them from the roles I perceived them to play in the past. I hope that I myself can find my grace in present time so that I may proceed with compassionate attention that is not minefield careful, not clinging to armistice for dear life.

I want at least some of my yes's to be whole-hearted if not open-hearted, embracing the joy of embarking rather than the complete consciousness of all needs met and unmet. I want to say "I will!" with excitement and take the hands of my comrades for better or for worse in every commitment, whether it's soccer, dance, ritual or art.

I celebrate the 'yes' of abandon. Analysis can be made, inner reflection spent, but once decided, may the expression be ecstatic -- I'll do it!

I see the price of a mixed yes as a lack of riotous color, and that color is what paints our view of the past. When I survey my life from that pinnacle, whenever I may find it, I want to look back on what I left behind in vivid splendor. I want my children and loved ones to recall the color I added to their world, the times I said "yes!" with all of me, never looking back.

It's too much to expect that every time, I know. Perhaps I could do it just often enough to leave an impression.