The Christmas of the flying baklava

     We knew in advance it was going to be a different Christmas – Rick and I were traveling to northern Michigan, to the home of one of my sisters, instead of the usual downstate gathering at my brother’s house.

     But we didn’t know HOW different.

     My brother had gallantly offered to lend us one of his vehicles for the drive from southern to northern Michigan so we didn’t have to rent a car on top of our plane fare. Because he and his children were using his truck and SUV for the drive north, the only vehicle he had available was – oh, pity – his Mercedes. No eensy-weensy Ford Focus, like we usually rent. No air-freshener-smelling rental car at all. A sleek, sexy Mercedes coupe that we could drive in style.

     So we set off in our luxury car in the remnants of a mean snowstorm, drove four hours up interstates and ice-slicked side roads, got to my sister’s and parked the Mercedes at the bottom and to the side of her long driveway.

     The family celebration was going to be in a nearby unoccupied former restaurant my brother had just purchased and Annette, my sister, had made most of the food. We helped her pack the ham and vegetarian dishes and salads and desserts and – most important – the baklava her husband, Mike, had so lovingly created.

     Is it any coincidence that so many movies are made about families gathering for holidays and the mayhem that ensues?

     During the gathering, my brother’s 48-year-old girlfriend confided that I reminded her of her grandmother (though, in context, the comparison was actually quite sweet). One family member, whose name cannot be mentioned lest she ever need to job-hunt again, introduced too many glasses of cabarnet to her over-tired body and had to be borne from the place on the shoulders of her 23-year-old son. Mike caught his leg on the wires leading to the Christmas lights on the festooned archway to the dining area and brought down all the decorations.

     And when my sister, arrived – late because she was bringing the last of the desserts – she was shaking.

     “I’m used to pulling straight back out of the garage,” she said with an embarrassed expression. “It was so dark. I forgot where you were parked.”

     Pause.

     “I creamed the Mercedes.”

     Worst of all, she said, was that Mike’s baklava had gone flying throughout her Pontiac Vibe, never to be retrieved.

     And you? Any family drama over your holidays? Maybe we could start a whole new blog.

Small victories

The chintzy printer had barely outlived its warranty when it died, so I was so pleased to replace it with a sleek, black Canon MX882 that was wireless, scanned, faxed, and almost did the dishes for you. So I was most disgruntled when the new Canon suddenly started producing copies with white strikes down the middle of the page, gave me a message the ink was running out when I had just replaced the cartridges and lit up the LED display with a “printer error” message whenever I used it. Hadn’t it been just months since I had purchased it? I called Canon and an agent there spent 45 minutes walking me through various diagnostic tests before agreeing it was just plain broke. If I had purchased it within a year, she said, they would replace it. Naturally, I couldn’t find my receipt so I contacted BJ’s, where I had bought it, and within three hours they had e-mailed me a copy of the receipt with the purchase date – Dec. 3, 2011. My warranty had expired 10 days earlier. I called Canon again and explained that these problems pre-dated my earlier phone call and were well within the warranty period and, well, wouldn’t they take pity on a loyal customer at Christmas time? The agent hemmed and hawed and said they have to go by the purchase date but that he would…. And then the battery in my phone died. I sensed Defeat laughing in the corner somewhere. I called back, got a different agent and explained the whole situation again. “Just a minute,” he said, before turning me over to Muzak. The minute became five, then six, maybe 10 and finally he was back on the line. “Your new printer will arrive within three to five days,” he said. “I love you,” I told him. He expressed no reciprocal sentiment. But it wasn’t my first small victory of the season. Last year, when the plastic lids on my new Anchor Hocking food containers warped and cracked within a week of my purchasing them, I emailed Anchor Hocking’s customer service folks. Three weeks later, new lids arrived – along with new glass containers, too. Bottom line: Have a problem with a product? Try reaching out to the manufacturer. There ARE still some good companies out there that stand by what they sell.

Making friends with money

My husband and I are a saver and a spender, and you can guess which is which. Naturally, this has led to some conflicts within the marriage, and we are still trying to mediate our differences. But now we are turning a new leaf. We have refinanced our home, wiped out credit card and other debt, resolved to live within our means and determined to pay off our mortgage in five years so we can retire while we can still walk. We have also started taking an online course we signed up for ages ago and saved in our bookmarks. It’s called “Healing Your Money Karma” after a book by the same name and it helps viewers see how the money messages they got from childhood influence money habits of today – and how the shame and secrecy that often attaches to those habits can be eliminated by replacing old messages with ones more in keeping with our adult values. One of my perceived childhood messages was that there was a powerful grantor – my father – and I was helpless to procure anything that cost more than my allowance without his approval and checkbook. That message led to some immature, rebellious decisions about money later in life – buying something I wanted despite not having the money for it being a prime example. But I am replacing that message in my thinking with a new mantra – “I am managing my money well.” It’s such a foreign concept to me. But I haven’t used a credit card for more than two months, money conversations with my husband are no longer tinged with fear or shame and I have faith that we can actually accomplish the goals we have set for ourselves. I am managing my money well. At 65, finally, I think I actually am.

Another too-young angel

My niece Leah lost her battle with cancer yesterday. She was 32. Thank you to all of you who prayed for her. I was meditating/praying for her about the time she died at a hospital in Michigan shortly after 5 p.m. For some reason, she had been on my mind all day, even before I got a text from her sister Gayle saying she had taken a turn for the worse and probably had hours to live. Isn’t it strange how sometimes we can sense things, even across miles and years? I was doing a metta meditation for her, where you picture someone and silently makes wishes on their behalf. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be free from fear. May you be at ease. And I swear I saw her drifting upward, her shoulder-length hair blowing in the swirling breeze as she ascended with tiny stars glinting around her head. She did not look frightened. Perhaps I imagined it. I will never know. But she is gone from this life and I hope wherever she is, she is out of pain. Happy. Healthy. Free from fear. At ease.

A time for prayer

My niece Leah lies in a hospital bed in Michigan, where she has been for nearly three weeks now. She is unable even to squeeze her mother’s hand. She is 32. In September of this year, she was diagnosed with stage IV non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the treatment so compromised her immune system that she now has a fierce infection that doctors are trying to beat back. She remains under heavy sedation, while her mother and other family members visit daily. Diane, her mother, tries to keep her spirits up but it is moment-to-moment struggle. I have not seen Leah for years – her uncle Roger and I divorced years ago – but I have remained close to the family and I feel the pain in their voices when we speak on the phone. There is no more helpless feeling than seeing someone you love gravely ill – as so many of us know. So, a request: please keep her and them in your version of prayer. They could use it now.

The end of the Cissy times as we knew them

Today is the last day that anyone who knew or loved Cissy Taylor will set foot in her Manchester, N.H. condo – the site of countless Derby Day parties, Christmas Eve “orphan” gatherings and other occasions of gaiety and good will. Her brother Richard, executor of her estate, closes on the condo this morning and – after seven months of valiantly executing her wishes – leaves for the long drive back to Ruskin, Fla. Last night, five of us took him out to dinner to thank him and wish him well. Suddenly, it all seems so final. I looked around the table last night at the well-wishers gathered there and thought about how it is so often one person who glues a group together, who brings them face to face when they otherwise might never meet, and Cissy was the one who united all of us present. And I thought about how easy it would be to lose touch with those good people now that she is gone. And how that would be an insult to her memory and a loss for each of us. Several of us exchanged contact information and vowed we would not let that happen. I hope we don’t. So, Godspeed, Richard, and to all of Cissy’s friends, hope to see you soon.

Varieties of prayer

The boy was maybe 4 or 5, and he was kneeling on the doorstep of a house that belonged to a dead man when Rick happened to drive by. His hands were folded in prayer, while his parent sat in a waiting car nearby. He was praying for Robert Young, “the man by the side of the road” who had been killed in a freak accident earlier this fall. Robert Young had endeared himself to many with his daily, friendly waves to all the motorists who drove past his house on busy Route 102. The child, apparently, had been one of them. Now, he was doing the one thing that seems to help in the face of inexplicable loss: offering up the pain and confusion to something higher. Then there was our friend Larry “Big Thunder” Schertzer, who joined a group of us celebrating Thanksgiving in Vermont. Larry is a man without an address – not homeless, exactly, but someone who moves from friend to friend, relative to relative, to work and make his sculptures and play his trumpet and move on. On that dazzlingly sunny, sweet-aired day that was this year’s Thanksgiving, he slipped away from the celebrants for a few moments and went outside, where he strolled a bit then lifted his arms to the sky in some kind of prayerful acknowledgement. Then there’s my version. Earlier today, I sat myself on my meditation zafu (a position I do not assume nearly often enough) and let my thoughts go, while my senile old dog whimpered softly downstairs and a cool breeze wafted through the window and I could send loving thoughts to everyone from my dearest friends to the public official I wrote about who would love to run me out of town. Seems to me it doesn’t much matter what form our prayers take, as long as we offer them.

Following his bliss

Met a very cool young man at a Thanksgiving gathering in Vermont. He was sitting across from me at a long, family-style table taking in all the conversation around him but not contributing much himself. He had thick, dark hair, a square chin and a handsome face and I tried to engage him with a standard question about what he did for a living. He gave a little half-sigh and said he had been an engineer for years, had been employed by the state of Vermont for most of that time, and had worked mandatory long hours and made a ton of money. Then he had worked as an engineer for a green environmental outfit, again working long hours, before he decided to chuck it all. Now he was doing what he loved -- potting -- and he showed me a picture on his iPhone of a table full of voluptuous bowls, vases, urns and other creations, most done in the soft blues and greens he favored. He had also bought a parcel of land, he said, and his dream was to move out of the rented house he was living in, build up a farm on that property and do his potting there. He certainly wasn't making the money he used to, he said, but he was a happy man. I would guess he wasn't yet 30. I love meeting someone who is not only young, but wise.

The power of neighborhood

The plot is an old one, invoked in countless books and movies: Giant corporation seeks to buy up land in order to exploit it for its (fill in the blank) value, offers outrageous sums of money to (usually impoverished) current landowners, pits neighbor against neighbor and either gets run out of town or prevails. But now, that real-life movie is playing in my state. The big corporation in this case is Hydro-Quebec, the world’s largest producer of hydroelectric energy, and it seeks to run a huge transmission line down the backbone of New Hampshire so it can sell power not to folks in this state but to locales SOUTH of here. This weekend, I spent some time with my friends Daryl and Brad and heard for the first time about how some of the New Hampshirites in the path of the proposed pass have been reacting to the plan. And that would be, not well. Three or so years ago, Daryl and Brad built their dream house in Colebrook, N.H., on a site chosen for its remoteness, hunting opportunities, beauty and privacy. They’d barely had a chance to get fully unpacked when they learned that Hydro-Quebec was planning this project, and that Northern Pass towers would march right across their front yard if it went through. So they did want many leading characters in such dramas do – they decided to fight, and to reach out to their neighbors (many of whom they’d never met) to join them. That’s how they met an elderly woman I’ll call Ella, who lives on just hundreds of dollars a month but would rather spit in her shoe than accept the $800,000-plus Hydro-Quebec was willing to give her for her modest property. And a farmer down the road who was offered more than a million for his property but declined, saying he wouldn’t know what to do with a million dollars but he sure knew what to do with the land he’d grown up on. Daryl and Brad themselves have hosted neighbors and state lawmakers for meetings to talk about ways to fight the plan – and to remind themselves there is strength in solidarity. While Hydro-Quebec tells homeowners who refuse to sell that they might end up staring at towers anyway, without the money some of their neighbors have accepted, the hold-outs tell each other that if enough of them say no, the project cannot proceed. Rick and I went through a smaller-scale version of such a battle years back, when a developer was threatening to put in a 13-unit subdivision next to us, practically using a shoe-horn to maximize the number of buildings he could fit on the acreage. We gathered neighbors together, looked for opportunities to fight, learned that the land had once been sprayed with lead arsenate when it was an orchard and passed that information on to our Planning Board. When the developer learned how much it would cost to clean up the lead arsenate, he high-tailed it and the property is now under easement and can never be developed. The power of neighborhood. May it work for the likes of Daryl, Brad, Ella and whomever else holds respect for the land above money.

A break in the clouds

I haven’t written a blog for two weeks now. I’ve been a little on the blue side – maybe having to do with turning 65 and the approach of winter (in so many ways), a sickly dog, working hard. But last weekend came a break in the clouds. It was the annual get-together of Rick’s childhood and high school friends, who call themselves the Loons – hence, a “reloonion.” Most people there were in their 60s, with a couple in their 50s. One is on crutches after almost having died from an infection, and a hospital’s mistake, last year. Another was recuperating from a hip replacement. Another walks with pain from chronic neuropathy in her feet. But there were two notable exceptions – Nuala, who’s maybe 4, and her sister, Fiona, 13 months, the only kids present. They are the children of one of the Loons – a man also in his 60s – who met a woman at church after the end of his unhappy marriage, fell in love, remarried and sired these gorgeous girls. I spent part of Sunday with Fiona in my arms, entertaining her while her parents finished eating breakfast at the restaurant where we’d all met for a farewell meal. I walked her around, bouncing her in my arms, and watched her big blue eyes while I showed her pictures on the wall, lights on the ceiling, plants hanging from baskets – pretty mundane stuff. But to her they were sources of great wonder. I think wonder is something I need more of in my life, especially as I get older. Maybe we all do. “Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder,” E. B. White wrote, in a quote Rick has taped to our bathroom mirror. Last Sunday, I encountered it. I plan to keep looking for more.

The power of pennilessness

Earlier this week, Rick and I refinanced our mortgage (to a sweet 3 percent) and one of the conditions of the deal was that I close all my credit card accounts except one. This was quite agreeable to me, as I have far too many credit cards and use them far too freely, almost as though charging something made it free. But I had misunderstood which of the credit cards the bank was allowing me to keep and, days before the closing, I had paid off and closed that account myself. Which meant that, as of Monday, I had NO credit cards and – my payday being almost two weeks away – no money, except a little spare change. So, unless I hit up my husband for cash, I had no way to fill my gas tank to get to work, no way to take advantage of that incredible laptop offer I saw on craigslist, no way to purchase airplane tickets for a holiday trip to Michigan, no way to go out to dinner with the girls, no way to do anything except – outrageous thought – live within my means. I decided to try to do exactly that. I am still sitting with the feelings this condition generates. Rebellion. A sickly kind of panic. Some childish anger. Fear (don’t a lot of us worry we are destined to be bag ladies?). And, grudgingly, liberation. The tire of my Honda had a nail in it and this afternoon, I took it to my mechanic to be repaired. The bill was $10. I didn’t have $10. I wrote a post-dated check. And I couldn’t help but think, this is how so many people in the world live, hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck – but also so much better than many people in the world live. At least I have that paycheck coming next week. At least I have someone who would readily help me if I asked. I’m still trying to decide if I will even apply for another credit card later. Perhaps absurdly, the image of a backpacker comes to mind. Though I have only backpacked once, I love the metaphor of it – carrying everything one needs on one’s own back. Maybe, finally, I can learn to do that with money.

Meeting Fatuma

She was standing alone at a temporary bus stop on Hazen Drive in Concord, N.H., waiting for the shuttle that would take her downtown for a rally featuring President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton. She looked very young, very black and very beautiful and she stood shivering in jeans, stylish boots, a shirt and blazer, in weather only in the 40s. I describe myself as an independent voter, but with a rare chance to see two presidents at once, I had come to the same bus stop with a group of friends to attend the rally and we struck up a conversation with the shivering young woman. My friend Miriam offered to lend her a spare down coat, which she gratefully accepted, donned and pulled tight around her body. Her name was Fatuma, she said, in perfect but accented English, and she was originally from Uganda. Only as we stood together in the interminable line to get in to the rally did I learn the rest of her story. She had been in the country for five years, and had been a citizen for one. She was 27. She had come from a small village in Uganda that was so insular some people never left it, but she had gone on to university and had graduated with a degree in communications and journalism. She went to work for a publication where she had done a major story on corruption in Uganda and the aftermath had forced her to leave the country – and everyone she knew, including all of her family. Supporters had provided her with some money and, along with some of her own savings, she took it and headed for America, alone, with only the name of a friend of a friend who might be willing to provide her a place to stay. The friend of the friend did provide a place, but along with it came travails she was reluctant to discuss, and she ended up having to leave. She was now living on her own in an apartment in Lowell, working for Visiting Nurses and hoping to go back to school to become a nurse. She was also working her heart out as a volunteer for people she believed in, like Obama and Democratic Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. She wanted to support people who believed in women’s rights, she said. She stood slightly in front of us at the rally, which turned out to be so large (14,000 people, the largest political rally ever held in New Hampshire) that none of us ever actually saw the two speakers. But we could see her – all five feet or so of her – and how she held her smart phone above the crowd to capture the scene and the important words coming through the speakers and how she jumped with enthusiasm at a phrase that captured her hopes and how she held up her small arms and waved her support across the masses of people between her and the speakers. After the rally, when a shuttle dropped us off at the same parking lot, we all hugged her goodbye, smitten with her youth, her courage and her conviction. I plugged her cell phone and email address into my phone and told her we would have her for dinner. She said she’d love that. But not as much, I think, as we will love having her.

After the storm

Four or five huge trees in our side yard came down during Sandy and one grazed the house but caused no damage. The electricity was out for less than 24 hours and our small generator kept food in the refrigerator from spoiling. We used camp lanterns to see and cooked leftovers on a one-burner butane stove. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the ice storm that knocked out our power for a week one recent year, or the Nor’Easter that took it down for five days. And of course, it was nothing, nothing, like what people in New York and New Jersey had to face. If anything, the storm taught me gratitude. It taught me how much I take for granted every day – like being able to flush a toilet, or flick a switch and have a room fill with light – and even about things I don’t take for granted, like having a newly chain-sawed stack of wood, thanks to Mother Nature’s pruning. And when I heard what had happened to one of Rick’s customers, it taught me something even bigger. The customer is middle-aged, owner of a large car dealership, well-off and, by Rick’s account, a good human being. During the storm, he was riding in the back seat of his SUV, with his two grown sons in the front, when a 20-inch pine came slamming down and crushed the back of the vehicle. He is now in intensive care at a Boston hospital, in an induced coma. I can’t stop thinking about him or his family, or about the thing that most of us take for granted every day – being alive.

Standing among (amiable) ghosts

They were barely more than an arm’s-length away – a primitive desk, a simple chair and an old, low-to-the-ground metal bed frame. But they were the very furnishings that Henry David Thoreau had used during his time at Walden Pond, where he wrote some of the most memorable lines in American literature. I had been a major admirer when I studied him in college – writing down his instructive observations (“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,” comes to mind) in a special notebook and even christening my first car, a used Volkswagen Beetle with a peace sign I applied to the side, “Henry David Car.” And here I was, standing before the desk where those lines had likely been written, and the bed – brought with his other furnishings back to his family home after he left Walden Pond – where my hero had actually died. It was my first visit to the Concord Museum in Concord, Mass., but the first of what I’m sure will be many. For not only were Thoreau’s belongings on display, but, in the very next chamber stood Ralph Waldo Emerson’s furniture, arranged exactly as the pieces had stood in his study in the Emerson House across the street – including the desk where he wrote. It is a special place, this museum, with more than 35,000 objects spanning the history of historic Concord, from the time of the Native Americans to the present. Even a lantern, taken from the steeple of the building where Paul Revere began his famous ride, is there. Thoreau and Emerson were great friends in life, of course, and I couldn’t help but wonder what conversations might still go on between those two great men after the visitors leave and the lights in the Concord Museum go out every night. I wish I could be there to listen.

The first (annual?) CissyFest

We could never have enough tributes for Cissy Taylor, the southern belle, longtime Union Leader crime reporter, former Eagle-Tribune New Hampshire editor, past press aide to the New Hampshire Speaker of the House, veteran board member of the Manchester Police Athletic League and – perhaps her proudest accomplishment – friend to many incredibly lucky people. Soon after her body was discovered in April, following an apparent heart attack in the condo where she lived alone, hundreds came to the funeral home service arranged by her brother Richard, who has faithfully and valiantly continued to execute the wishes she left in her will. On Saturday, we had another kind of celebration – a “CissyFest” hosted by her good friend and Union Leader compatriot Paul Tracy – this time on the shores of Squam Lake, where many of us, including Richard, gathered to share stories and testimonials, eat good food (essential at any Cissy party) and drink wine she had left behind, which Richard brought along to share. We shared her favorite Malbec, laughed at stories of her irreverence (belching in the newsroom?), recounted camping adventures and looked at old photos as the sun went down over that lovely lake. It felt like the beginning of a tradition. And I, for one, hope it will be.

Celebrating a crazy and wonderful 10 years

We met 17 years ago, when both of our hearts were broken. He was grieving the woman he thought might finally be the one, who had abruptly broken up with him after a months-long but intense romance. I was grieving the year-old death of my husband, who had died after a months-long but intense battle with pancreatic cancer. I wasn’t looking for a hot romance, just someone to see a movie with now and then, or maybe give me a hug occasionally. He was looking for – well, I won’t put words in his mouth. I answered his personal ad in The Boston Globe – which said he was single and 48, loved Cajun music (whatever that was), had a place in Maine (I loved Maine) and was self-employed. He sounded kind of interesting. I called the recorded message associated with the ad and heard his voice, which elaborated on his written words and included a phone number. It also included the intriguing line that he liked “unconventional travel.” I thought he sounded kind of scattered. His phone number also had an area code suggesting he lived on Cape Cod, a good two-hour drive from my New Hampshire condo. I hung up. But unconventional travel? I love to travel, especially unconventionally. I called back and left my number. We spoke on the phone several times over the course of, maybe, a month, and finally met for dinner at a restaurant on Route 128 in Woburn, Mass. No bells went off. No whistles sounded. He was kind of scattered, but also an incredibly sweet, sincere man. I thought we might become good friends. So… let’s flash forward. We married seven years later, on the same island in Maine that had been dear to both of us even before we met and on Friday, the 21st, we celebrated 10 years of marriage at a restaurant on that very island. In the meantime, we had traveled to Mexico, St. Croix, remote portions of the American Southwest, the Maritimes, Quebec City, the Pacific Northwest, Tennessee and Georgia and several other places, most of the time in a tent. I cherish the times we have sat someplace (like on the lowered tailgate of a rented SUV, in the pouring rain, in an empty campground in the mountains of northern New Mexico), clinked our plastic wine glasses together, laughed and repeated the phrase, “unconventional travel!” The thing is, we did become good friends. And so much more. I really do love that man.

Looking up an old love

     He was probably the first guy who broke my heart.

     He came to mind the other day and I looked for him online – not to reconnect, but to see what had become of him, and to learn what might have become of me had we stayed together.

     We met when I was in college and drove a Good Humor ice cream truck during the summer to make money for the fall.

     One day, I stopped for lunch in my truck at a drive-in restaurant and next to me happened to be a good-lucking guy in his Corvette convertible.

     We started talking and I told him his car was beautiful and we ended up exchanging phone numbers.

     I was maybe 19.

     We started dating.

     He lived in Dearborn, in one of those modest, two-story homes you see everywhere in Michigan and his bedroom was on the top floor -- a little room with slanted ceilings -- and I always hoped his parents would never walk up to visit us and discover what we were doing.

     We fell in love. He even introduced his friends to some of my friends and some of them started dating. He took me to the cottage his parents owned on Lake Ontario and introduced me to French fries with vinegar.

     I thought the relationship was really going somewhere. He was a high school teacher and I could see myself becoming a teacher and getting married and living happily ever after.

     And then... he broke up with me.
     I bawled my eyes out. My parents tried to minimize my distress, which only made it worse. I can remember screaming at them, "How would you feel if your spouse left you?" and storming into my room.

     I won't lie to you. It hurt for a long time. Really hurt.

     But then I met someone else, and moved away and traveled the world and the world started to feel bigger and he started to feel smaller.

     When I finally found the person I think is him through an Internet search, I discovered he hadn’t moved very far away from that community in Michigan where he grew up.

     I remember he really loved his junk food and I expect he's probably a little on the chunky side these days.

     And my guess is that, if he and I had stayed together, I'd be living in a modest, two-story house not too far from where I grew up, spending my nights sitting in front of the TV and eating Cheetos and never knowing what else life had to offer.

     From this vantage point, years later, I'm glad things worked out the way they did.

The Potato Eaters... or not

No doubt you’ve all been waiting for the sequel to my spring blog about our virgin effort to grow potatoes vertically.

     Instead of digging trenches, putting in seed potatoes and mounding them as the plants grew – the traditional method – we decided to build a large crate-like structure in the middle of the vegetable garden with the seed potatoes buried inside, then add dirt as the plants grew.

     We (mostly Rick, really) have tended the structure (we call it our redneck hot tub) for all these months, gradually adding soil as the potato plants grew taller.

     Today, I decided it was time to see if our experiment had worked.

     I got out a potato fork and started digging through the dirt. I got through about half of it then quit in discouragement because…

     THERE WASN’T ONE SINGLE POTATO!

     So, there you have it. A little time in the sun and a little aerobic activity were all we got for our efforts.

     But you know, one of Van Gogh’s first great paintings, The Potato Eaters, is considered one of his most intriguing because he had not yet mastered the techniques that would later make him famous. The painting is considered imperfect. But it helped in the development of those techniques that would one day make him a master.

     Maybe next year we can say the same about our potato-growing efforts.

     In the meantime, there’s always the farmers market.

Wearing a burqa

Today I did something that might have gotten me arrested had I done it publicly in France.

     I wore a burqa, “an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic traditions to cover their bodies when in public,” as Wikipedia defines it.

     It was only for a while and entirely in the privacy of my home, but it stirred many thoughts about women and religion and liberties and plain old comfort.

     It wasn’t what I expected.

     It was tight-fitting at the top of the head – to secure it, I suppose – and so flowing and unusual that my dogs circled and barked when I first put it on.

     And it was dark. I had trouble seeing through the mesh in front of the eyes, even with the kitchen lights on, so much so that I had to lift it to read the mail.

     It was also hot inside, even on this coolish September night.

     But it is what many Muslim women around the world wear, in keeping with ancient religious tradition, and what many of them fight to continue wearing, even as some other European nations considering joining France in banning burqas in the name of national security.

     I’m not Muslim and I didn’t wear the burqa (borrowed from a friend) for religious reasons, but to try to understand another culture and religion (wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all did more of that?).

     A small part of me found it appealing – the anonymity it granted, the cocoon-like security – but not so much that I’d consider wearing one again.

     The better part of me found it unfamiliar and uncomfortable, which is why I won’t.

     But ban it?

     It occurred to me only after I tried on the burqa that I was doing so on 9-11, the anniversary of the worst terrorism attack in U.S. history, initiated by Muslim fanatics.

     They were attacking our freedoms – including freedom of religion, freedom of expression.

     Seems to me wearing a burqa is one of those freedoms.    

Partying in another language

Our little friend Nathan just turned 2, and his parents, our friends, were kind enough to include us on the guest list for his birthday party yesterday.
     It was a typical Brazilian party – one meant for adults as much as children, with a themed backdrop for the birthday cake table and artful little favors created by his talented mother, a trampoline and potato sack races for the kids, beer and wine for the adults and, of course, the usual spread of incredible Brazilian food. (Who barbecues better?)
     Most of those present speak at least some English, though one or two had arrived from Brazil within the week, and it was a chance for me to practice the Brazilian Portuguese I’ve been learning by listening to CDs on my way to work.
     I know only a few basic phrases – like “How are you,?” “pleased to meet you,” “I’d like red wine, please,” and “where is the bathroom?”
     But I haven’t had as much fun talking to people in a long time. We laughed at each other’s attempts to converse, provided the fill-in-the-blank word for the sentences the other couldn’t complete and shared our thoughts on the difficulties of learning a new language.
     They, of course, need to know English if they’re going to continue to work and live here for as long as their visas allow. I want to learn Portuguese because it’s fun to learn anything new, but mostly because I have grown to like and admire many of them and I want to meet them halfway in this effort to communicate.

     I’ve never partied in another language before but, based on my experience, it’s “muito divertido.”

     Now you, too, know at least two Portuguese words – “very fun.”