Heidi Beth

Awake beneath snug bedding, small arm stretched across my shoulders, sleepy child sighs on either side (beds grew cold in dark morning), auntie bear eyes me, upside down, bent between pillows.
Strong Costa Rica decaf, decorated with heavy whipping cream, first hot sip, I bow to frigid autumn morning.
Native American flutes, paper swans, circle. Notebook on comfort laden legs, morning thoughts skitter, water bugs on blue ink river.
Dreams spoken by first child awake, to himself. Three rooms away, I listen. He reveals Barney plays swords against Little Foot. Gradually covers fall away. He carries his tender frame closer, kitty held tight. I free my lap for miracles.
Young boy curled like a fetus, head on my chest, safe under violet covers I’ve wrapped around his small frame, pulled over soft corners, knobby knees, makes shelter in mom’s arms.
Beyond finger smudged frames, I witness swiftly changing leaves, brilliant golden, auburn. Our baby, “Don’t climb on her child, she’s too young” six feet from yard’s edge, her hands faded to sunshine yellow, still framed in summer green, barely dances.
Gently rocking, lips kiss soft round cheek, my head rests on wayward blond hair. I sing, “O God, guide me, protect me, make of me a shining lamp and a brilliant star. Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful,”* slower than grandma taught us, a prayer for small hands. He’s sound asleep.
No wistful sigh slows falling sand.

Every other Saturday, as part of our Children’s Theater Company, I teach a virtues class for five to eight year old children. They’ll be performing The Ugly Duckling, a musical, in February. Between now and then, every Saturday, from 1-5pm they study a virtue found in the play, eat snack, rehearse with professional theater teachers/directors, then gather with the nine to twelve year old class (who will be performing Henry Box Brown, also a musical), producers and parent volunteers in a special room for an appreciation circle. Each afternoon closes with a spontaneous activity, like a romping game of huggy bear, one class singing a song they’ve mastered or a mini Hokey Pokey.
A few weeks back, after I read, “The Giving Tree,” Shel Silverstein, “Stone Soup,” Jon J. Muth and “Hedgehog Bakes a Cake,” Maryann MacDonald, five children, each cross legged on a carpet rectangle, tried to figure out the virtue of the week by seeking virtues common to all three stories.
“Love!” guesses M. “Hospitality” offers T. “Um…not telling people, like, when they’re wrong and giving them things anyway” ventures A.
“Grace,” says I.
I don’t consider grace much (though I ought), being generally socially clumsy. While I verbally stumbled around, hoping to give these kids, who were leaning in trying to solve this puzzle with me, a definition of grace through meditating on the “living” examples from our stories, the children offered keen insight. J noticed Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree loved even though the boy only took once he began to grow. Referring to “Stone Soup,” T told us the monks gave the townspeople back their joy.
The third book prompted excellent questions.
In “Hedgehog Bakes a Cake,” Hedgehog, in his forest kitchen, begins to make a yellow cake following a recipe. One friend after another comes over, unexpected, and “helps.” Bunny abruptly dumps an entire bag of flour, then sugar and finally milk into the mixing bowl. The batter is lumpy and hard to stir. In a well meaning gesture intended to make right the chunky batter, Squirrel adds eggs (and shells). Owl greases the pan with his wing before using his oily appendage to turn the oven as high as it will go. Seeing nothing else to do but clean, Hedgehog’s friends leave for vague reasons, assuring him they’ll be back soon to enjoy fresh baked yellow cake.
Relieved to be alone, Hedgehog locks the front door, dumps the lumpy “batter” in the trash and goes on to make a lovely cake, by the recipe.
Hedgehog is graceful in spirit and body. Kitchen clean, he sets out tea and cake. When his friends return, all enjoy an afternoon together. Bunny, Squirrel and Owl take turns praising themselves in appreciation of obvious culinary skill. Hedgehog smiles and says next time, he’ll be able make the cake all by himself. – The end.
Here’s what we tried to figure out: Was it kind of Hedgehog to not tell the whole story? Is there a way he could have gracefully thanked his friends for their enthusiastic effort while speaking in facts? Or was it best to let them learn of their ignorance in the privacy of their own kitchens, unnecessarily wasting good edible materials?
None of us could decide for sure. If I received such ineffective help, I would probably speak bluntly then promptly wish I’d kept quiet and end up eating cake alone. Well, not really, but I would have pouted.
What do you think? Should Hedgehog have told all he knew of midday cake baking misadventures and success? If so, what should he have said?
In honor of Hedgehog’s many virtues, I offer you a modified recipe based on his fellowship cake.
Gluten Free Yellow Cake with a touch of holiday spice (I’m open to suggestions for a better name)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3/4 cup sucanat
1 tsp gluten-free vanilla extract
3 eggs
1/4 cup rice milk
1 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose gluten free flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp potato flour
In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sucanat. Stir in the vanilla, eggs, and rice milk. In a separate bowl, blend the dry ingredients.
Add the dry mixture to the wet, mixing thoroughly. Pour the batter into an oiled 8 inch round pan.
Bake for 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
I top it with homemade buttercream frosting.
Enjoy!

I, a newlywed, alone in our 2nd floor apartment one afternoon, felt adventurous (though sadly uninformed) and domestic. Catfish couldn’t be that too hard to prepare…right?
Pan on burner, add fish, a bit of oil, heat, all set.
In no time, a sea of smoke rose up in a dancing swirl. In a second flash, flames engulfed my fish and spread through out the pan.
I did not know about grease fires.
I did not know to cover it.
I doused it with water.
I was a DORK!
The flames grew.
I panicked, rushed the blazing pan to our bathtub where it would have more room to be a fire while I continued to freak. Flames licked up a foot over my head (the currently useless mass attached atop my kneeling form), casting an ominous glow on yellow tile, and nearly attached themselves to a plastic curtain decorated with unsuspecting, chillin’ on lily pad frogs.
There was no audible chorus of angels but I know they were there, rummaging through my mental attic praying for a helpful shred of information to hurl at my frantic thoughts on the off chance I’d notice and (please!) pay attention.
And lo! A little voice, the one that heard Mr. Fireman when he came to my elementary school 15 years earlier, suggested that covering the flames was my only hope. What did I covered it with? No idea.
Fire out, safe and alive, I was a quivering puddle of cold sweat sharing space with a thunderously loud, racing heart.
I felt like an idiot.
I would not be using stainless steel frying pans EVER AGAIN!
This moment is so embarrassing I have only told a few people, maybe only my husband. Now I’m telling you.
Years later, I asked a friend, an older woman we liked to visit, how to cook fish. She didn’t even know how to word such an obvious answer. Pan, medium heat, oil or water, cover, let it cook all the way through, put on plate.
I see where I went wrong. I liked high heat…cooks left overs faster you know? I’ve become acquainted with lids as well.
Thank you for listening…

Can you feel that first wave of tired, the point when rest would come easily, sweetly, where you’d sleep through the night, and wake wonderfully refreshed, ready to take on a new day?
Is no one else needing your attention? Does your husband have bedtime under control, smoothly transitioning tired kiddos from day clothes to pj’s, through teeth brushing and face washing, on to a couple stories and lights out?
This is the time!
Seize your chance!
Go brush your own teeth, ease quietly into bed, keep prayer and meditation simple, let your body relax, drift into pleasant dreams.
Or…
Knowing the satisfaction of accomplishment, reveling in undisturbed quiet, you take care a few no big deal chores you’d rather not leave for tomorrow; folding laundry, straightening papers on the end table, unloading the dishwasher.
During a little this and that, you realize what changes would make your gluten free chocolate cake recipe perfect and out come the mixing bowls. You’re now “blessed” with a second wind, a wave of clarity, a desire to balance the check book, write a letter to Sally in Idaho (it’s been your turn for weeks), finish a movie from last night that wasn’t so great but you’re curious to know how it ends.
Oh, this is indeed sad.
It’s shortly after midnight. Your mind is going full steam ahead. “Goody for you,” thinks your body, looking at the clock, periodically counting the number of hours you’ll sleep if you go to bed by 12:30am, 1:30am, 2:00am??!, which won’t allow for enough rest (even if you could get your mind to hush up), though you’ll be alright.
Alas, you do not rise refreshed from a good night’s sleep. In fact you’re in a haze and more than a bit wobbly.
Chocolate cake for breakfast anyone?

1 – When baking, especially in a group, if you have to sneeze, turn to your sleeve. Do NOT aim for the ceiling.
2 – Don’t use big words at school. Class mates may accuse you of showing off.
3 – Glass shower doors are best opened with your hand. Feet go through glass if moving fast enough.
3a – 911 dispatch operators don’t always want to believe children who sound too young to be left alone.
4 – If you throw up on the way to the pencil sharpener, your third grade teacher will finally believe your stomach hurts.
5 – Walking a dog on icy rocks around lake Michigan at dawn in January is risky business but loads of fun.
6 – Shirley McLean knows how to put on a stunning live stage show that can transform what a young girl wants to be when she grows up.
7 – Only children don’t have to worry about a sibling trying to unscrew their foot from their leg.
8 – The best teachers make respectful eye contact when you ask for help.
9 – The anticipation of a slumber party is usually more fun than the real thing.
10 – If you earnestly believe in another person’s potential they will often believe in themselves.

I saw my mom head out the back door of our garden apartment carrying a full laundry basket and a box of Tide. In a brilliant flash of mischievous genius, I darted to the back door, pulled the security bar across it’s knob and waited with high pitched delight.
My mom, having found her way back in to her apartment which contained her five year old daughter and sleeping husband, blocked, was not entertained. She banged on the door, calling my name and instructions to “Open the door right now.” I jumped up and down, enjoying my triumph.
I soon tired of our game and reached up to undo the U shaped latch from it’s hard metal knob. My mother was, by this point, not thinking clearly, knowing me to be stubborn and often playful to excess. She shoved the door open at the same time.
The middle finger of my right hand, still being involved in the act of freeing her from temporary exile, got caught between knob and latch. My finger tip hung to one side like a beer stein lid. No longer considering my mother, I ran back and forth across our apartment in hysterics, screaming, crying, writhing in fear. Dad’s nap ended abruptly. He and I leaned over the bathtub inspecting the nearly severed mess my finger had become.
At some point mother’s knocking could be heard and she was finally let into her home.
In the emergency room, I was surrounded by blue curtains, mysterious machinery and strangers with uneven smiles. I wouldn’t let the nice doctor touch my wound…with anything. Memory tells me he tried to touch my finger with the ink end of a bic pen. Is that possible?? My mom’s ghostly, nauseous presence was less than helpful. A nurse escorted her out.
What follows is my version of her story about why we acquired a television soon after this fiasco.
Here’s a woman who’s been through the surreal experience of being abandoned on the wrong side of a locked door, unable to help her frantic daughter who she could see was in danger of losing the top of her finger, realizing her haste probably caused the injury in the first place…and what was that child thinking anyway! Now that her daughter was being tended to she’d been mercifully taken to the waiting room. There she sat, unable to concentrate enough to read, staring at a high screen at prime time, relaxing the slightest bit.
She saw Bill Bixby, one of her favorite actors, in a new show. That’s nice…briefly, until Bill, in a manner she had never witnessed on screen or off, magically expanded, turned a sickening green, shredded his clothes to rags and flexed his newly gained mass while bellowing like a slightly wounded animal ready to charge. Huh? Is that Lou Ferrigno?! My mother quickly looked from left to right wondering if anyone else was sufficiently alarmed. Her waiting room companions were not impressed, or even interested. I can think of gentler times a grown woman could be introduced to special affects. Still, I’m tickled by an image of my mother desperately wanting to “oh me” and “oh my” with someone, anyone, and being left to feel, for a split second, that everyone around her had missed a miracle.
Stitches were out of the question. I ended up with a well wrapped finger in a splint, a television and a funny story, that is, if you’d seen my mother’s face on the other side of the back door (and you were me).

Dear Mom and Dad,
I am
your sunshine
hope
light
I am
your trigger
anger
plight
I need
your acceptance
respect
delight
I hide from
your backhand
flat hand
fight
Love,
Abused child
Dear A Kind/Strong Adult,
Can you
help me
see me
free me
Ignore
my contradictions
destructive shame
survival game
Look closer
at my life
needs
potential
Take a chance
try to help me see
extend your hand
believe in me
Love,
Hurting Youth
Dear God,
If they love too strong
are they sick too
do they feel
like me
When I was small
I knew
how a grown up
should be
I’ve lost my footing
I can not live
this way
I must breathe
hold my hand
renew my sight
guide my steps
aright
Love,
Adult Child
I’ve been reading many posts about all the ills we are facing as a society, especially at the hands of random everyday people who have no wide spread power but who make life difficult for those around them. They might be bullies, muggers, abusers or just plain difficult because they mainly complain about other people, their life as a whole or try to fix parts of your life you’re perfectly content with.
When I met my beautiful, innocent, helpless first born in the hospital one bright summer morning, I realized all people, no matter how wonderful or awful, were, at one time, blameless children and have a life story.

Distracted, spacey and almost content. Uninteresting but talkative.
I’m learning how to write while young boys scatter legos, flip through glossy instruction booklets, sing the repetitive songs dancing in their thoughts.
Learning as in haven’t learned it yet but I’m working at developing this valuable skill.
To assist today I opened a window to Pandora.com “Blackbird” station. I used to rely on powerful lyrics with acoustic guitar to train my scattered imaginings to form understandable sentences then march through my pen and line up in neat rows from left to right. I love singing along, but my creative juices aren’t listening just now.
I really want a few hours sitting alone on a wooden rocking chair at dawn (yes, I’d have to stop time), sipping a steaming decaf cappuccino, enjoying a breakfast of butter drenched English muffins, crisp turkey bacon and warm liquid chocolate with marshmallows, watching fog lift off the Smoky mountains. I watched a lot of Folgers commercials growing up.
I wouldn’t want to stay in that scene too long. I’d get bored. I’d miss a particular brand of relaxed chaos.
In reality, at this moment a seven year old neighbor boy plants his tennis shoes and tosses his scooter in our flower (weed) bed and stares in to our front window. He and my son (who stands on our couch) are in a serious conversation through the grey mesh. My son’s telling him how mom won’t let neighbor boy play on son’s Gameboy Advance until son drinks his nutrition shake. They lament this in half sentences. Son goes outside and gently kicks a fruitless squash plant, a low jungle of large leaves growing from the rotting remains of last Halloween’s black painted pumpkins that threatens to take over our front walk.
Not sure why I’m inside on a beautiful sunny autumn afternoon. But I’m content to sit on a soft white chair in our living room, interact with my children when they need to show me how their lego structure looks now, look up every so often at reminders of winters inevitability, bright red and yellow leaves high up in a far yard and do my best to ignore sibling squabbles that will right themselves much better without my assistance.
I can’t claim any great productivity today, unless you count working a few minutes each on a couple writing projects, reading to boys in the morning, making lunch, giving hubby a shoulder rub, sipping decaf, eating chocolate, making plans to go to the apple orchard tomorrow or reflectively listening to Tracy Chapman, John Denver, James Taylor, The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel.
Some days are meant for pajamas…

and dancing!

sad
content with changes
hopeful
ready for long afternoons quietly waiting
for take off
lyrics ignored for a song’s sound
feeling on my skin
in my jaw
now small boys know
(the first part)
held back tears
leaped into his arms
remembering
how life used to be
unaware
we’ve moved forward
thankfully unable to return
to not knowing
properly
one another

When I scroll down my email contact list, I see “Jessica Harries”. She took her own life a year ago. From a distance I watched her become a beautiful adult. I wish I’d tried to spend more time with her (I tell myself I was too busy). Soon after her death she whispered a promise in my thoughts, “I’ll help you learn how to love more.” She’s kept her word. Jessica was in such physical pain I understand why she had to go, and yet… At her funeral, my son, five and eager to understand, stretched himself on the gound, eyes fastened on her casket (overflowing with brilliant red, white, yellow, pink and orange carnations), chin in hand. Her death is still important to him.
Every time I see her name tears visit. I let an image of her form behind my eye lids. I’m listening. I can’t bring myself to remove a suggestion to reflect on her beauty.
This morning, sifting through the same digital log, I saw “Stephanie Urrea,” another lost friend. We met Stephanie and her son Gideon only twice during our family’s five week stay in Alabama. We kept in touch for three years, until her first lump. I received a letter from her mother earlier this week. As soon as I saw an unfamiliar name posting from Florida, I knew. She was writing me back on her daughter’s behalf, her daughter who, “On Feb 7 2009, lost her three year battle with inflammatory breast cancer.” When I sent Stephanie a note last month I had hoped to, but did not believe I would receive a reply in her own words. Too many emails never returned two years ago.
I’ll continue to scroll past her name, every letter left in place, allowing myself a second to feel a twinge of sadness and love.
Aunt Bea, my brother-in-law’s nanny (a large woman from the south) who he cared for in her later years, always greeted seven year old M with disbelief and joy, “Is that you?! You’re gettin’ so big! How you doin’ today?” The boy who shied away from almost every other adult lingered in her room, face upturned to this old woman who loved him, happy to answer the same questions every time. We stayed with her for uncounted quiet hours in her last earthly days. D, ten, wrote her a story. At her bedside, beside a vanishing silent form, he read aloud to his friend. A breath of a smile formed on her lips.
Now and then, especially at bed time, M wraps his arms around my neck and says, “I didn’t want Bea to die.

“Cause them to enter the garden of happiness, cleanse them with the most pure water, and grant them to behold Thy splendors on the loftiest mount.” – Abdu’l-Baha