A Place at the Table for Peace

Setting a Place at the Table for Peace
Rachel '18

Good morning.  For nearly a month (if you include pondering, pickling, and perambulating about it), I have been working on a new piece.  It's evolved slowly, as do most of the larger art I do, but the slowness gives me both leisure and pleasure to pursue (and accept and appreciate) the visions that create themselves.

Art isn't about explaining, so I won't.  I will give you a little tour, however.  The base is linen, cut and edged to be a table runner, on which five places are set, each with a place card centered on a mat.  Each place card is a book, with a collaged cover, a handmade paper title page, and a printed poem inside which the image inspires. 

So that you can see at least some detail...cover, title page, poem...I've photographed each book.  I'd love to know, as always, what comes to your mind, too.

Book i:  Inspiration

Watch for the moment

when wings open and soar

above prisons above

calumny and misdirection

(the winds howl, the winter's bite)

above the hiss

of fiery tongues who blister

what we hold from harm

Remember where we

come from

the pure spontaneous

AH!

Rise!

to the occasion

to compassion

to care

Book ii:  Song

An old melody floats

above our drone

we reach into the notes

and entwine one another

in harmony

Here is music to encompass

the music of the sphere

the symphony of time

of far thoughts riding

a beam that carries across

land and sensibility

Sing!

our voices carry more than words

Book iii: Insight

There is dark

there is light

not only on the first morn

but every breath

which ignites

(and extinguishes)

life

We draw awake in

the dawn each

soul brings

What brilliance!

and see in its glass who

we are

Book iv: Hope

My sister sees it first

the silver bird aloft

above wisps

of something

we have yet to name

Yes! we call

Yes!

Oh carry us

wise spirit

to 

peace

Book v:  Generation

Our seed springs forth, sets

birds flying crawling things

afoot swimmers awash

Leaves sprout at our touch

fall not in peril

but protect us from

the grief of dying unclaimed

Is the earth

remembers our names

nurture

our return...listen

we grow again

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(Cathy Burnham, bless her, came with her more professional eye and equipment 

to photograph the whole piece at the top of this page...many thanks!)

Lunch on a pretty summer day

After an hour's relaxing on the porch, my uncle is having a light lunch here in the dining room...half an egg-and-spinach sandwich and a salad of strawberries on butter lettuce, cranberry juice and maybe a cookie afterwards.  It's one of those early afternoons when the sun is flickering equally lightly through the trees all around us, its buoyancy peaceful, hopeful.  Goodness knows we could use all of those spirits these days.  I've already told Julie, our caregiver, who has just come in, that today needs forthwith to be low-impact.

It's been quite busy this morning...the nurse coming at 10 while he was only half awake, breakfast punctuated with questions like "do you know where we are?" and "how are you feeling?" (hard to answer any time!); the physical therapist drove in right after that, a wonderful woman named Valerie who keeps him moving gently and firmly and with whom he has the most patience of all those who cross his path bothering him about something or other; then a caregiver who, though not new to his care, is unfamiliar.

This week, after a three-day stay in the hospital geriatrics clinic that severely tested his mental status (not to mention his tolerance, of which he has very little for such intervention, anyway) there have been more people in and out, night and day, than he can keep count of, much less put names and faces to.  Every one is concerned for his welfare, of course, but very old age is tired of concern...it simply wants to live out a routine, have a little company, take a shot at humor, fall asleep unimpeded in a chair or rocker, certainly not be bothered with what day it is.  I can sympathize.

Things will even out very soon, though, with more predictable, uncomplicated attention; it took me a day or two to iron out a feasible schedule of caregivers, but thanks to his previous illnesses, few as they have been, I've gathered a useful network to call on.

We're so lucky that we can give him that, that he can afford it.  We are not, as a country, set up to really care for people--the old, the young, the ill and distempered.  Always there is a sticky web of bureaucracy, a crude dismissal of the poor and soon-to-be-poor, to struggle through even for basic support.  Something as simple as the height of a bedside table, or as complicated as the prejudicial assumptions made to distinguish each medical necessity...all of them spell our irresponsibility for one another.  We don't, to put it bluntly, get it...even, amazingly, while we are living it ourselves.  And yet because of rules, regulations, and presumptions, and care facilities that seem to care more for themselves than for their inmates, conditions that can often be addressed simply and cleanly with a good dose of common sense, take on herculean proportions.  Unfortunately, common sense seems to be missing in huge doses.

Anyway, our newest chapter here at home is that, despite fortunate stability of care, each day now will be a different reality, evening out one way or another as the hours go by, certainly, but needing to be carefully negotiated each morning.  Unless one understands that continuously varying state of mind which is at work in the aged mind, it can be confusing, both for caregiver and cared-for.  We are grateful for the stability of environment that allows it plenty of room to wander safely, in place where, as the nurse today put it, there are plenty of clues to hook on to.

Lunch being finished now, it's well-deserved naptime for my uncle.  I'm off to the grocery to stock up on tomorrow's fare.  The young ones are coming to visit...quite a different energy in the house, and like the airy afternoon most welcome.

  

A Fourth

Independence day dawned brightly this morning, and with  the exception of a few clouds filtering through (maybe rain later today, we can always hope) brought heat and quiet to our street. 

We wish there were someone here to celebrate with us today, but it's only my uncle and me.  Though he is healing spectacularly well (the nurse and physical therapist shake their heads, amazed at the speed), he's not quite up for my niece's pool picnic with the rest of the family, and most of the neighbors seem to be out somewhere.  Still, I woke this morning in a mood to cook.  It's a holiday, after all, and holidays mean food...I don't feel justified in letting this one pass unnoticed at the table.  Especially one so purely centered on picnic.

Until last year, for him and my aunt, and before that for other family, the summer holidays...Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day...meant hamburgers and hot dogs foremost, one each, with trimmings like baked beans, corn, tomatoes and ice cream. This year he voted for a hamburger again, dropping the dog.   In case you are wondering, my uncle's recovery has made no dent in his appetite.   I'm not a meat-eater, but protein, everyone who knows insists, is what makes healing possible.  (Would that we could use so simple a remedy for the larger sphere on which we live.)  So he will have his burger.  Leading up to it, I've been working all morning at the half dozen or so dishes that spell the Fourth for us.

 Beginning with Summer Squash Casserole, the ultimate Southern covered dish, which was inspired by a yellow monster our helper Julie brought in yesterday from her landlady's garden.  Clearly it had lain unnoticed under its wide leaves for a month before somebody thought to pick it.  "I figured you'd know what to do with this," she laughed.  And I did.  I borrowed a recipe from that belle of Southern cooking, Paula Deen, and set to work seeding and slicing it.  All morning the smell of baked onion and Parmesan cheese permeated the house.  We won't miss the sour cream I forgot to throw in.

The next up was Zucchini Relish, which had been an experiment for our neighbor Steve's birthday drinks last weekend.  It was, I decided, good to have around any day.  Zucchini, the other summer squash, is on the table here all during the year...sauteed with a little onion, chopped raw in salad, folded into quiche, stuffed with herbed rice...but now the small, dark green ones are at their best.  This time I added to the relish some fresh peas, just for fun, a dose of lemon pepper, and some herbs.  Most of the work is dicing a lot of zucchini and a couple of shallots small enough, then watching carefully as they cook down over forty minutes or so.  Don't shudder!  The end result is worth the misgivings of sauteing such a delicate vegetable for so long...it caramelizes them to a rich sweetness, still shapely but spreadable.  With wheat or rice thins, it could be a whole meal on a hot day when you don't want anything else but to dip into something cool and slippery.

Hard-boiled eggs! Though I'm risking a whole tradition of picnic necessities by not deviling them, I'm just not in the mood today to fuss.  A little fresh parsley and lemon juice over the shelled halves is good enough.  My mother would tell you so, too.

Corn on the cob.  Tomato with basil.  I thought about combining them into a cold salad, but they are so much better whole and on their own.  I can taste the plain, unadorned kernels already. I wish Alexander were here...it's become his favorite just in time for summer bounty.

I was still deciding on whether today is too hot for baked beans, but those clouds sheltering our midday nudged me toward them.  I love baked beans.  They are good protein, too.  I got up from this blog post and baked some, with mustard and beer.

After that, a bowl of berries is just enough to sign off with.  We'll be set for the day, and probably a few days thereafter...don't be surprised if I call a few of you up to share leftovers.

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On this Fourth, may you enjoy not only fine fare and fanfare,
but hold close the freedoms we celebrate today, even in fragile times like these.

In the meantime

So much has happened in the month since I have written that I wonder where to begin, or indeed if to begin at all.

Our shore stay turned into a hospital stay and convalescence; my uncle, on his very first early morning there, mistook the stairwell for the bathroom door, and down he went, injuring pieces of his right side from head to foot.  The best laid plans of mice, men, and shore goers gang oft aglay, as a countryman of his once penned, mostly.  Thank goodness for the rescue of children, family, and friends who, scrapping their own vacations, took over nursing, watching, shopping, cooking, running errands while I braved the parking deck at the community hospital for a week and then, realizing that rehab centers were not suitable for nonagenarians (or vice versa), brought our invalid back to the ocean breezes and sunned deck to recuperate.

My college friend Pat wrote, Nothing like dear friends to hold your pieces together.  Yes.

We're home now, and still recovering slowly, wounds healing quickly, pain continuing to dog him.

There.  That's said and done.  What next?

Ah.  The gift of rain.  We came home to a dry, dry landscape...no rain but a drop or two the whole half month we were away.  My kind neighbor Anna and a caregiver took turns watering for us, but the yard greeted us sadly, especially my hydrangeas, which this year bloomed a spectacular pink, and were shrunken  until, two days later, the rain came, pitying, and drenched us for a whole day and night, and they revived.   It was a gift I was grateful for and said so, frequently.

So you see, there was quite a bit I could have written this past month.  About making assumptions.  About life changes.  About hopeful moments and jarring wakings.  About meeting challenges head-on.  About resilience and about rain.

Though blog inspirations floated to me from the wind and waves, alas, the internet connection was out, as it often is there.  Frankly, part of me saw that as a gift, too, though I was sorry to leave you all behind, verbally.

Instead, I put my thoughts as best I could into pictures; on the days when I could steal a walk, I took my camera to illustrate what the shore is about, even when catastrophe strikes.  (Indeed, it has stricken before, so we are practiced at it, and even so remain grateful to be ocean-side to heal us.)

 On the last day, we closed the umbrella against rain, welcome even there.

AT THE SHORE II

In case you're wondering...

The Memorial Day party at Cathy and Steve's was perfect, of course.

If I were giving a prize for the most delicious taste (difficult among the great foods the great neighborhood cooks assembled), my first would go to this dessert, which Yvonne Ng brought.  She kindly sent me her recipe, which I had practically demanded, and thought I'd share the treasure with you.  (I'm sorry...I don't have a picture, because I and others, apparently, ate it up too fast.)

Flourless Nut Roll

The cake is so simple, if you have an automatic beater.  

Nine (9) eggs total (you can vary the number of whites and yolks)

No more than one cup of sugar (I used half at most)

One (1) cup of nut flour (I do not like the store bought nut meat, so I grind my own, making sure it's not ground into powder, so you can still taste the nut)

On high beat the egg and sugar for 20 mins, until a huge rise.  Stir in nutmeats, slowly...you can mix it by hand if you want to.  Try not to disturb the volume much.

Line a 12 x 18 pan, or smaller, depending on your volume, with parchment paper that has been greased.

[Pour in mixture gently.]

Bake at 350 F oven for 10 minutes to start, and keep testing with a knife tip.

When done, flip it over onto a towel/cloth lined with powdered sugar.  While still very warm, roll the towel/cloth to make a roll cake.  The trick is rolling the cake.  Please read "roll cake" online.  Mine is very random.  I find that using towel or fabric to roll is the easiest.

When cooled, unroll to put in a filling of whipped cream and jam or preserves or fresh fruit, like peaches.  I used peach preserve and peach.

For easy slicing, freeze the cake first.

You can also just do a sheet cake by cutting in half and sandwiching the filling in between.

Yvonne served it by cutting into slices and putting each slice in a fluted cupcake paper, easier to pick up and eat.

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Now that I'm thinking about those other desserts, I'd also have to give a prize to the Berry Tart that Artie Dixon made.  I don't have the recipe, but I know the secret ingredient:  she went to a farm and handpicked the strawberries, at least two quarts, it looked like.

Or maybe I shouldn't bother with prizes...there were way too many other dishes I prized, too.  I should just get the recipes for all of them.

A Memorial Day

On my way to swim this morning, later than usual because of the pool’s holiday hours, the first drops fell on this Memorial Day, and have fallen pretty much since.  I’m watching it as I write, and noting that the soft, soaking rain may not quite get everywhere.  Now that the trees have ripened with leaves, even a hard rain doesn’t reach under some plots, including the far slope (my gardening nemesis) where I’ve newly transplanted some variegated vinca I found sprouting in a back corner of my lot that I rarely bother with.  You can imagine how contrary it felt to be out in my raincoat watering the newcomers while it rained.

The birds, sans rain gear, are busy, darting from tree to tree, nesting and feeding.  Last night, I saw the first fireflies, so both the weekend and nature are in sync for once.

Rain or not, we’re looking forward to this evening’s neighborhood picnic at Cathy and Steve’s.  My shrimp salad is in the frig, as is the iced tea I promised.  C and S are as ready as you can be in such weather…a tarp hung across the back deck and stations for drinks and food (there are a lot of really good cooks among us) set safely in their great room, through the screen door. The thing about their open houses is that details matter...the lighting adjusted, the garden clipped and spruced, the weather considered...even the color of the forks in a particular holder.

Since Christmas, tiny lights have been strung across the ceiling, and at five o’clock exactly will reflect on the windows as if they’ve simply crawled outside and draped themselves across the yard, too.  The neighborhood children will have to make do with muddy clothes; they won’t want to stay in when there are climbing forts, slide and zip line to entertain them...Steve's idea of the perfect back yard for the young.  I doubt that any of the neighbors will think the rain a deterrent.  Cathy and Steve know how to do a party.

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Memorial weekend means summer has arrived, so I’m making lists for what's become our annual June trip to the shore, gathering things for a few weeks there.  ETD is still 10 days away, but at least three times a day, my uncle will ask, So we’ll be leaving soon for the shore?  Partly because he’s a closer by nature (events once spoken need to happen now), and partly because the shore is the one place he still has left of his life with my aunt, he’s anxious to be on our way.  Just before lunch today, in fact, he asked, as if to confirm a certainty, whether we’d leave this evening.  I reminded him of tonight’s picnic, but instead of being puzzled, he simply nodded, accepting the overlay his memory routinely performs these days.  We are going to walk across the street for the picnic, but in his mind we might as well be on our way to the shore.  Memorial Day, indeed.

I can’t blame him; I’m looking forward to it, too.  As usual, the whole time we’re in residence, people will be dropping in to visit or stay.  It’s the way the house has always been.  The thing about the shore is:  you arrive, and everyone else piles in, by invitation or spontaneity.  Let’s take a ride down to Lavallette, someone says, and soon they are at the door, often with a box of our favorite pastries or a basket of corn or tomatoes.  It’s one of the pleasures of settling in to that place of gathering, no one on a schedule, everyone there for the pleasure of it and the chance to relax together.  

The other pleasures?  You’ve heard them before, and not only from me:  the sound of the ocean at night, and the sun rising up into the window in the morning.  An early (or late) walk along the boardwalk or sand, the ease of everything one needs pretty much in walking distance...and needs there are few.  The voices of people passing on their way to the beach, of children shouting, of the lifeguards' whistles.  A house where the sameness of life over the last 70 years, whatever other change generations (or hurricanes) bring, is a deep breath.  It’s what my mother used to call Easy in, Easy out.  It's no different than others' pleasures at a beach home, a mountain home, a lakeside or desert retreat.  But this one is ours.  

People are kind to wish us good weather, but, frankly, it hardly matters.  I’m taking a pile of things to read (there’s always the library a few blocks down), some needlework, and my paints, this year for me and for Alexander.  And my raincoat.  You can walk in the rain there.  Take the kids to the 5 & 10 for a new game or puzzle.  Go for ice cream.  Play ten games of ace-picks-all or gin rummy.

Or sit at the window and imagine the churn of the waves speaking poems to you.

If this sounds a bit too ideal to be true, you’re right to cast some salt on it…the truth is, it’s mostly like that in reality, given an entanglement or two, but since we haven’t actually arrived there yet, my anticipation of the truth of summer is doing the talking. You know how that goes...or if you don't, perhaps you'd like to meet us there and find out for yourself.

A word about the nothing of something

It's been raining for three days now, on and off, a drizzle here and there during the day, a downpour late at night or early in the morning.  The reports gloomily predict the same for the next week, and hold up as the bright spot the mid-seventies temperature, cooler and lighter than the eighties we'd otherwise bear.

Meanwhile, I have been slowing down, sitting on the porch with my cup of hot water in the early mornings, after my swim, and then later after dinner until the dark comes, enjoying the sound of rain or almost rain and the light scent of the gardenia my kind sister-in-law Sue gave me for Mother's Day.  This morning I opened my eyes and didn't pull on my suit as usual...my swim, for once, didn't seem to matter; instead I pulled a book of Hawaiian stories down from the table behind me and began it over again, though the marker I'd left in it was already past the middle pages.  This time I read word by word, catching images my eyes hadn't taken in the first time.  When I got up an hour later, my side a bit pinched by the way I'd been holding the book, I thought of several errands I could do before I had to set out my uncle's breakfast, but my new mood talked me out of those for the moment.

It's not a bad thing to unload the requirements of one's life every now and then.  This minute I am hearing the yard-trash truck lumbering up the street below my house, and it's not bothering me too much that I haven't taken the bin full of tree debris out to meet them...nice people who greet me with a cheery good morning every week, and don't mind if I have forgotten to dump the rainwater out of the bin first.  It'll wait til next time.

So instead I've begun this post, for the first time without a title.  I'm usually centered about that, not always knowing what it will become but always with a phrase or word that seems to unlock my word-hoard, as the Beowulf translations call it.  It's not that I'm floundering here...in fact, only yesterday I had a perfectly good idea of what I wanted to impart this morning, and eventually I will get to it on this page, but first this rainy-weather wandering through the land of the slow riser.

My neighbor will appreciate particularly appreciate this, since she claims to enjoy taking the morning bit by bit, her robe tucked around her, her coffee in hand, hearing or reading the news, clearing her energies for the busier parts of the day.  My feet usually slide off the bed and onto the floor in one quick direction after another; morning is my get-things-done time of day.  Right now, on her wave length, it feels restorative.  In a minute I will go down to get my cup and sit on the porch, pondering whatever, and accepting whatever the day brings, without much guidance from me.

But back to what I originally had in mind to relate here.  Though it has nothing to do with slow mornings or letting go, I realize now that there is a sort of thin thread between them...perhaps you will see it, too?

I was going to call this post Cats and Boys.  Two days ago, coming back early from the pool, the ordinarily traffic-clogged road in front of the middle and elementary school was emptied by the state teacher's determined march on the capital, and with the lane to myself I passed a young mother on one side of the street, holding in her arms her boy child, who was intently watching a huge construction site rumbling into motion on the other side.  The mother was pointing across, and the boy...the baby boy, no more than a year at most...had his eyes fixed on the huge yellow machines rolling and crumbling and dumping and piling the (notorious) henna'd clay, in preparation for something not yet identifiable to be built.  I wish I'd had my camera ready to take a picture. 

And yet, I already have a picture, indelible. 

Are you grinning yet, those of you with boys raised on torn-up street-corners, in formerly vacant lots, along wire fences looking in at those mechanical creatures that, no matter how earthbound their jobs, fascinate small eyes for hours?  Can you feel the weight of the child in arms, held high enough to see the goings-on, to lean forward eager for the next lift of the crane or digger arm?  And who, though he might have few spoken words in his vocabulary beyond dada yet, can still manage to distinguish aloud between an excavator and a bulldozer?  That look on their faces, concentrating so hard on the slightest movement of wheel in muck, eyes roving back and forth to detect practically before it happens the next big dig.

It made me laugh out loud, remembering how many times, over two generations, we counted trucks on the road or managed to entertain a fussy boy by strolling him down to where the workmen had dug into their day.  The road pavers, cable and pipe layers, the yard trash people, the recycler, the garbage men, rolling down the street in front of the house...how, from East coast to West and in between, we'd race out in time to meet them, and once or twice even "help" the agreeable handler, no doubt a parent of a boy himself, push the button to pick up and dump the containers. 

https://youtu.be/MXhhXXsxSfE

If you need a jog of memory, here is the link to the Excavator Song, now conveniently on YouTube in case there is no construction site handy when one needs it.  It is guaranteed to stop children mid-fuss.

It's not, of course, as good as the real thing in motion.  But it has the advantage of a song which will fill your head for the rest of the day.