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.