Heidi Beth

I was an every day skater by 7 years old.
It started as many extreme life changes, with little knowledge of what we were getting into. I was 5. A neighbor gave me her daughters old ice skates. I was smaller than all other 5 year olds so blessed with a closet full of hand-me-downs and now this pair of wonderfulness I carried right home. Once in the door, likely in the third word, I asked to go skating. A phone call informed us we could go the following day. Unfortunately for my parents I was not a mild child, accepting things as they are. This has served me and others well over the years but that day it was screams, tears and useless pleading as if by sheer will I could get my parents to make the rink redo their schedule for me. Life goes on and even whiny children quiet down when waiting is all there is to do.
The next day, my mom, dad, a neighbor, her son and I adventured to Robert Crown Recreation Center. At this point my mother jumps in to tell it at the potluck, but she’s not here tonight (she’s wisely in her bed asleep, I have no excuse). My memory will have to suffice. Our friends Marie and Johnah and my dad, the same people who had PROMISED my mom they could help her skate, were all clutching the wall, waddling and slipping carefully around the edge of the rink. Irritated but undeterred my mom was also managing along the wall, bit by bit, looking down or no more than 1 foot ahead. I have no idea what I did.
This worked 3/4 of the way around. Fortunately, one side of the ice was sectioned off by orange cones, therefore no wall. When my mom reached this terrifying place she froze. She could get on all fours and crawl to the other wall. She could turn around and go back (breaking the rules). She could scream and yell much like I had the day before. She could stay there and do nothing and pretend it was a dream.
My brave mother did finally let go of the wall and carefuly wobble, surely whispering a desparate prayer, and in great concentration, upright, all the long way to the other side.
So great was her exhultation of triumph over what she had believed to be a doomed situation that she went around again! and again! until she had developed a firm belief that if she came back another day (soon), she could learn to glide first on one foot then on the next, no hands. This is how we came to live at the rink for the next 8 years.
I don’t know the details of her story or my dad’s, other than they took lessons, and could get around real fast. Eventually they both learned to jump and spin! I do know my story, at least an outline of it. The whole story is a book. Until it’s written, here’s what I’ve put down for posterity.
I started in group lessons, quickly tested up the patches of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and into the freestyle levels where I had the advantage of a private coach. The fruits of this labor?
My first group performance I hid under an enormous hoop skirt with 15 other 1st graders in from the beginner class, emerging to delighted spueels as a spotlight tried to follow the equivalant of human cats. By 8 I had solo parts in both the annual Nutcracker and Spring shows and group performances that involved more skill than toddling out from under a dress. At different times and in no order I was the sugar plum fairy, a snowflake, a tiny furry mouse being chased by the housekeeper (my mom) and in one act, my friend and I did cartwheels and front walkovers on ice.
Every day after school I put on white leather boots with sharp blades attached. I pulled the laces as tight as I could despite the necessary discomfort of snug fiiting skates. I giggled and raced with the other daily kids. Much of our practice time was unstructured when we were expected to practice waltz jumps, spirals, lunges and eventually axels, back spins, flips and loops. This we did, but in our own loose jointed kid way, except for one girl (I’ll call her Sara) who was always with her mom. Her mom skated behind her every day, pushing her constantly, to the point of tears. Sara was better than the rest of us but we didn’t envy her. We reached out to her in friendship careful never to mention the obvious.
I was always aware of the concession stand. I’d trot off the ice with a skip as my blade hopped onto the foamy floor and dash to the high red ledge, asking for another hot dog, bag of orange salty popcorn and a coke…my parents complained that I spent too much time there and not enough time on the ice they were paying for me to practice on. Maybe, maybe not. Half the joy of those years was in memorizing friends. Sharing a bag of pretzels reveals a different aspect of their personality. And I love hotdogs.
During anybody ice hours, hockey skaters took over public sessions and figure skaters tried to take over the center, marked off with orange cones. Most rinks still do this. I figure rinks that support a non college level hockey team still have mini padded, helmeted figures, swinging arms, cutting through the middle of the rink aggravating daintily dressed figures in white leather skates.
When it was my turn to perform solo in any show, when all was dark save for a ring of light following the preceding skater as they executed their much practiced routine of jumps and spins to a familiar tune, I stood shivering behind an enormous wall that reminded me of a giant Hefty bag, nervous, ready to launch onto the ice the moment their music faded, just before mine began to play. Out there on the ice, a million miles from anyone, engulfed in a bubble of terror, I couldn’t hear the cheering section of my peers in the far right corner 2nd floor seating. I heard my blades scratch the ice. I was aware that a million people with 2 million eyes followed me, a lone figure in a vast emptiness. It really was that scary. I wish I’d enjoyed those brief moments more, been present, or at least not petrified. If anyone had asked me what I was afraid of I wouldn’t have told them. Too embarrassing. I was afraid of what my friends thought of me. I was afraid they were high in the stands secretly laughing, talking about how pathetic I looked. Back in the changing room, surrounded by encouraging chatter I was over it, until next time.
Every December Naomi B. made white chocolate candies before the Nutcracker. She made them in blue, red and yellow, as horses, hearts and stars. I love white chocolate. She passed them out to her fellow skaters as we entered the ice for dress rehersal. Naomi was part magic.
My feet hurt in stiff white boots that left red dents in my legs and squinched my toes. Taking them off at the end of practice was a high point. But I LOVED everything about skating! I loved flying for hours every day, spinning fast and jumping in full circles. I loved time with friends having spelling contests as we laced our skates or maneuvering through quick changes in crowded co-ed locker rooms. I loved eating snacks at tables that remind me of Volkswagen Bugs because of their chunkiness in solid bright colors where our mothers also sat hours later waiting for us to finish practice. I loved listening to the mothers talk. I liked the rhythm of their speech, the way their mouths formed words, the way they leaned in to each other listening intently.
There’s more to Robert Crown than the ice rink. When I was 6, the same year I started ice skating, on Friday nights, in another wing, CPC gymnastics set up an open gym for all kids who wanted to fly in circles around little bars and fling themselves off the end of runways into a foam pit. I was there EVERY Friday I possibly could the year that program lasted.
In that wing there was an arts and crafts studio with potters wheel, kiln, sewing machines and big half circle windows at the top of south facing red brick walls. This is where Nutcracker and Spring Show costumes were sewn by a volunteer staff of overwhelmed but dedicated mothers. This is where I took my first pottery class. This is where I would sometimes wander to if I got bored in the ice rink area.
As far as latch key children go, I was lucky. If Iwasn’t skating Iwas at gymnastics practice (another story or, how I became a competitive gymnast) for 3 hours after school most days. I had somewhere to go regularly where I exercised, made friends, ate expensive junk food and learned skills that still live in my muscles, ready to show off whenever I enter an ice arena, gymnasium, backyard with friends or anywhere with a semi soft floor.
I have photos to prove it. Last Friday I was upside down in a friends hallway standing on my head while creatively swinging my legs around until I nearly crashed into my niece who was wide eyed and too close.

In November 1998 I had two pieces published in a small book put out by a writers group I was a part of. One has the same name as this post. Since joining OS exactly a week ago, I have been thinking in possible posts, leaving myself email messages with ideas. Today I knew it was time to meditate again on who I am in the same manner I did 12 years ago. I have just spent the last hour doing this. What I’m posting here is first the piece I wrote in 98, followed by the one I wrote this evening. Therefore it is very long but hopefully worth a few minutes time.
1998
“My name is Heidi Beth. My favorite color is purple and I like green too. I like to sing ’cause it stirs my soul and it’s fun. I like to draw flowers and gentle designs with the thin felt tip pens my dad gave me four years ago. My hair is brown and curly. My eyes are green and I’m pretty short. This was all given to me. But I like to draw with colors and I try to be kind.
I learned how to waitress the day after I turned seventeen and I still do it. I wrote a story about a monster named

I cried all the way home from Earn and Learn’s work site back in the city where our camp bus dropped us off, some 30 kids who had spent 10 days outside of time in a Wisconsin woods as family, learning from experience that their peers matter as much as themselves and that they each matter as much as anybody. I curled up in a ball in the hatchback of my parents car. My heart ached like I had never known. I remember a light sky, my wet face, that I rocked as I cried and physical pain in the center of my body, pain of home sickness for a place I would never return to. As I write this, I cry. I know that little girl holding tight to her knees. I know her sincere heart, her intense desire to grow, to shine out. She has company all over the world. O God, let us reach the children while they still know they can sing. That’s the thing. Rick Weiland believed in each of us. He gave his heart and soul to Earn and Learn. Ease is not the way to happiness, nor is discouragement. Challenge, loving mentors, accountability and loving encouragement grow a child. Love and respect are key. We had all that. Going back to the life that had begun to break my spirit knocked the wind out of me. Thankfully, my parents didn’t try to change my sadness. They drove in silence.
I’d decided earlier that I would work at the after school work site over the remaining days of summer. Extra money and more time around these new friends was appealing. Day one, 8 hours stuffing envelopes in a cement room with hard cold floors easily changed my mind. I lost all enchantment with Earn and Learn by days end. The way a child does, I decided I was done. I would not be returning to the worksite in the summer or over the school year. I had fun at camp but no thank you to whatever this other boring, non recreational aspect was. It wasn’t the joy of nature. It wasn’t full of laughter, feeling dawn’s light breeze on my skin. I quit.
Instead of returning to the work site the next day as I’d said I would (remember the statement of commitment?), I went to Allison’s house. My parents showed up there after a while, said it was time to go. This was not unusual, so okay, whatever. Then I noticed we weren’t going home. Where to then? The Work site??! NO! Not back to that place. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be there!
They responded with silence. They ignored my tantrum, ignored me kicking the inside of the car, calling them liars, saying they couldn’t make me! They were helping me honor my commitment to see this program through for a year. I was huddled up crying in the car again, this time desparately angry.
When we pulled into the Earn and Learn driveway Rick came out to greet me. He wasn’t tough or stern. He saw me. He smiled so kindly. He joked around and made me laugh the tiniest bit. No hurry. With a trace of willingness, I left the car, still clearly tender and scared. Speaking gently and as always, respectfully, he led me into the work site. There were 3 other kids inside already working.
I wiped the tears from my face, punched my time card, walked over to a long brown table, looked at my new peers and sat down to work. We stuffed envelopes for hours. How long was it? I sat across from someone named John. He was funny and sweet. We laughed all afternoon, tears running down our cheeks, the kind of laughter that makes every sad thing fade for a time and happiness seem everlasting. I knew we were friends. Happily resinged to my new life, I was in.
Once school started, each Earn and Learn student took a slip of paper to school every day. After each class, the teacher marked the appropriate box with a 1 or 0. Categories included getting to class on time, doing class work, homework, and participating in class discussions. The more 1’s in a day the longer one could work at the site that afternoon, the bigger one’s paycheck. I liked school so this was fun. Being on time became a game.
Once at the work site, we were divided into stations. These included envelope stuffing, small parts assembly, collating and many other simple repetitive jobs. A short time into the school year I was allowed to work in the office which was more fun to me than being on the work floor. I remember the office as a privilege for those who showed themselves to be reliable and a welcome change of scene.
Earn and Learn was considered a dork program by the general student body at my school. I knew I was seen as defective. I disliked it a bit, but in a way a 14 year old knows things, I knew I was lucky. I remember 8th grade better than any year of school. My closest friends went to two other Evanston middle schools. I was part of a tight knit group of 5 kids from the program. Their names I remember and 4 of us are still in touch. I wish I remembered the names of others I worked and grew with. I see their faces surrounded by plain walls and metal framed windows. I remember their smiles when bonuses were passed out. That’s when we all sat facing front, heads up, listening for our name and amount awarded.
I worked voluntary overtime on weekends putting advertisements on door handles and in the lobbies of 3 flat apartment buildings. Street by street, house by house all day. Mary and Ray drove the bus. We assembled each packet before hand so when the bus stopped and I’d recived my orders, I’d jump off the bus and make sure to put a long plastic bag on every door knob on my route. The work was hard, often tiring, but I usually signed up. Purpose (and extra $) has that effect.
Friday was payday. We were a sight. A line of talkative 7th and 8th graders shuffling on the lobby carpet of a bank, waiting to change white paper into money. Cash in hand we’d stroll into the sunlight. We spent our money on cokes and fries, pizza and music albums. I see 4 us in a booth, merrily conversing, full of antics and laughter. One day I pretended I was going to spray coke from my straw onto…oh, which one was it…Leslie I think, but since she didn’t know I wasn’t going to really, she hit the straw toward John. He received a lovely blessing that afternoon. Or was it the opposite?? Either way, I was amazed that friendship could be so independent…money, time, a common bond and harmless mischeif all under our own watch.
Our group of troubled 30 to 40 7th and 8th graders spent 4 seasons together in circumstances foreign to most of our day time classmates. Back then I knew something special was happening though I had no need to name or meditate on what it was. Years later, grown and floundering again, after 9 months attending the same 12 step meeting where I always faced a large undressed window, I realized the wonder of seeing the same honest faces framed first by autumn’s blazing colors, then by winter’s black skeletal branches and finally by the light of lengthening light in evening and small buds where nothing grew the week before. That was it.
All was not perfect. We did dumb things I won’t print. We weren’t always kind to each other and I was still shy and quiet at school. Home life hadn’t changed. It was worse. Most nights after spending all afternoon with my friends on site, we spent a good portion of the evening on 3 way calls discussing…I have no idea what. I still enjoyed school, now earning top grades. Honestly life was difficult. I constantly worried about the state of the world and whether we’d explode in nuclear war any minute. I constantly worried about the state of my family wondering when the next storm would come and drive us just a little farther apart.
But a seed had been planted. Beneath the soil of my anxiety, a tiny flower began to grow. I took in that wonderful year with Earn and Learn like a fish back in water after flailing in the open air even for a moment. It needs the water to live, but hasn’t a name for the air.

I don’t remember much from 7th grade. One memory only stands out in an otherwise colorless landscape. I got into my first and last physical fight. An odd scenario. One boy who I usually ignored asked me if I could beat up friend A. I didn’t answer. He asked me again. No answer. Third time, no answer. Soon, friend A is angry, telling me I said I could beat her up. Friend A challenges me to a fight. Did I answer? I remember calling her over winter break, making arrangements the way two people choose a place to have tea. I didn’t see another way out. First day back, lunch recess, behind the building behind the playground. I met anxiety like a roaring engine in my nerves between that call and the day we returned to school. We fought. No one was hurt. Mercifully, it was done. All agreed she won. I walked away at first opportunity, tears falling easily. I was sad to be involved in something mean and angry. I didn’t mind losing. No teachers were aware of our senseless well planned conversation with fists. It was never mentioned again.
I know I was sad because my parents were changing. Instead of inviting friends over for potlucks and generally being social, a lovely way to live I had grown used to, they spent nearly every night at home alone reading, glued to the screen to which all living room chairs faced or asleep. Tempers were shorter (understatement), laughter less frequent. I was older before I realized our good life of easy fellowship with a house full of smiles had shifted to what was for me a pathetic nothingness of watching my parents turn outside in.
I loved my school, an experimental place where teachers wrote their own curriculum, children were treated as the reason for the building and I loved to learn. Regardless, in 7th grade, I often showed up late and I was quieter than usual within school walls (if that was possible). I did my work. I didn’t talk back to any teacher. I just didn’t take notice enough to remember nearly everything. Fortunately a group of teachers did and as was the style of the place, they took loving action.
Toward years end, two things happened. First, I was called to a conference with all my teachers. Just me and them. They told me that if I continued to be late I would miss the end of year picnic. Egg tosses, water balloon tosses, outdoor silliness, that I looked forward to. Done then, I was on time after that. But an impression had been made. An impression of a sad quiet child lacking motivation to perform certain expected tasks. Second, I was recommended for a work study program called Earn and Learn for my 8th grade year.
Though I was well behaved (aside from that ridiculous “fight”) and academically present, I wasn’t personally present. I was also lucky enough to be growing up in Evanston Il in the 1980’s where Rick Weiland lived and cared for children in a program he was passionate about, Earn and Learn.
Earn and Learn started every year with an intense 10 day mini behavioral, emotionally cleansing boot camp. It set the stage for what would be, hopefully, a positive turning point for students heading the way of a problem. I wouldn’t call us “at risk” because I don’t know what’s really meant by that, but also because it’s difficult to see oneself as an at risk youth. So I told myself we were the ones in the middle. Not too problematic, showing promise, heading astray, therefore steered this way, to Rick and Earn and Learn’s guiding care.
First of all, I had to make a commitment. Yes, I would see the year through, being part of a work program where I could make money. Yes, I would show up. Easy to say to a piece of paper asking for my signature. Easy to enjoy at camp. Camp was the first activity. Camp where the main lesson I learned was that the individual is accountable to the group, but the group is also accountable to the individual, that we were one entity when gathered, that one could hinder progress for all. While I don’t like to think that life is this way, it is. The upside is respect, the downside consists of many character building moments when patience must be called on, courtesy, honesty, where walls tumble and we are all in one room, vulnerable, waiting. We waited when one person was not cooperating, therefore keeping the group from moving to the next activity. We knew it going in. No less annoying, no less frustrating, especially the day our group missed lunch.
Camp was like most others, tucked into nature, surrounded by tall trees. The dining hall was large, there were cabins for sleeping, cabins for activities. Worn dirt paths, grassy earth.
I learned about deliberate meditation at Earn and Learn camp. Mats on the floor, we were to lay quietly, let ourselves relax…quietly. I loved the idea, It felt cool. It wasn’t easy to do as a group. The meditation cabin was dark on a bright afternoon.
Besides meditation, other character building at camp included a points or “bucks” system (wish I could think of the exact name). There were many ways to earn points through service or accomplishment. At camps end, we would all go to the Wisconsin Dells, a supposed reward. There we would convert our “bucks” into real money. I was so completely unimpressed by the Dells that I didn’t enjoy being there. It was a man made bunch of nothing compared to the time I’d just spent expanding as a human being.
The only way to earn these points that I remember for sure was to swim across a small lake as many times as possible. I think I went across twice, though maybe only once. A boy named Andrew, a scrawny kid with a funny voice, surprised us all by going back and forth more than anyone, many times more. I say the lake was small. Standing on the shore at 5am, cold, tired, determined, I did not think small. I tried not to think, just dive in and go. I would have thought “huge”, but that would have stopped me at the start. I wonder what I said aloud?
During camp we went on an all day bike ride, 48 miles?, with 3 or 4 stops along the way for cheese sandwiches, juice and fruit. At the first stop, I glided in ahead of the front pack I’d been riding with, all boys but me. After a bit, one of them realized this and alerted all the rest that a girl had just “beat” them. So this pack, all boys and me, stayed ahead. At each following stop and the end, a great race set up, incredibly intense. Those boys were so upset at the idea a girl might win (win a race that wasn’t intended as more than a day on the trail). They stayed upset because I “won” every time, though they gave a great effort, with lots of hollering to encourage whoever was at the very front with me. I held onto that triumph for years, proof that being a girl was not a disadvantage in a competition with boys.
We repelled from a small cliff too. I was so ready for this to be exciting. It was a lot of waiting at the top of a bit of rocky wall where each of us was securely wrapped in straps and buckles. In the sunshine, I see a swarm of wasps tucked in to the side of the rock. That was the excitement, listening to the concerned confusion that followed discovery of the nest. Going down the side of a rock in what felt like a diaper was not. I enjoyed talking to Ernie, my favorite counselor, as he guided me down that little wall. In memory, Ernie and excitement over wasps are all that made an otherwise incredibly boring afternoon in the hot sun tolerable.
Every moment from the time we woke until lights out usually after 10pm was structured. We knew they were growing us. We knew they were serious…usually…until, one evening, outside the dining hall which was near the lake, a fantastic ketchup and mustard fight fought with yellow and red restaurant style squeeze bottles was loudly, messily enjoyed. That night, other than streaks of bright condiments whizzing by, I remember looking out over the lake at a soft darkening blue gray sky. I remember seeing a single building, where we ate 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, among a quiet scene of countless tall gorgeous leafy tree. I don’t hear the night song of the woods when I look back in time but I know such a symphony surrounded my serenity. All was well.
I thrived there. I grew there. I did not miss the city with it’s hot cement, sunlight reflecting in slicing glares off tall buildings, the incessant roll of rubber tires, synthetic reality. Camp was simple but hard. The staff sincere and loving. I was home.
Camp set the stage for the year ahead, which is another story, the test of commitment.

I was the 15 year old telling my mother how to improve her driving though I had never been behind the wheel. I studied her feet, how she balanced the needs of the gas pedal and the clutch with each shift. I told her with great and annoying authority how she could master a smooth transition from 1st to 2nd. I couldn’t seem to shut up because I KNEW her driving could improve and since I was now in the know (my dad had been giving me pointers and descriptions of how to), well, good thing she was open and patient.
In Drivers Ed we spent long boring periods reading glossy paged books, sitting in sterile simulators with bad audio in a cold class room, listening to the teacher go on and on and on. From my classroom I could see the parking lot across the street, full of orange cones, ready for the new young driver to practice before braving the streets.
Then one day, we were allowed behind the wheel. First of course, we had to spend just a bit less boring class times weaving cones. But soon enough I flipped the turn signal, looked both ways, looked again, then turned onto the real road! with a tense and sighing instructor at my right.
Two events stand out in my learning to drive experience. One of them is a brief and terrifying moment in the car with my instructor as I merged onto a busy I-94West. After signaling, I looked behind in to the lane I was merging onto, as well as the rear view mirror, then I merged successfully. BUT, my instructor, who I had heard didn’t even drive himself but rode his bike everywhere, screamed at me that I hadn’t looked behind me! and what was I thinking! and that is so dangerous! and blah!!!!!!! It didn’t take much reflection for me to conclude this was a dangerous reaction! So, that was that. One practice merge per class.
The second involves my patient mother who believed my intelligence about smooth driving with a manual transmission existed in my body as well as my mind. Once I had permit in hand, down we go to the car, ready to set out on some errand and with a proud and happy smile, my mom tosses me the keys. I don’t remember whether my inability to drive a stick shift in actuality showed itself when I jerked down Greenleaf Ave a couple blocks or if I admitted my ignorance right off. Surely she remembers and will let me know after reading this.
It all worked out soon. My dad took me to a large parking lot after hours, suffered through a series of jerks, stalls and fancy noises and eventually felt I was knowledgeable enough to drive around the block.
I got my drivers license at the first possible moment after my 16th birthday, having to go to two facilities in one day because I forgot to put my seat belt on so failed my first test. The second tester tapped out a happy tune on the roof of the car. Very nice :).
I definitely preferred manual to automatic and still do. The challenge of shifting smoothly was fun and engaging. As a young friend said when I took her out one afternoon to learn to drive a stick, “It feels like I’m driving a race car!”
And I never have stopped telling my mother how to drive.

I wrote this the day after he died. When his name surfaced today, I remembered and wanted to share.
Everyone has a comment about Michael Jackson. I’m no different. So far I haven’t reflected on his career, his talent, his amazing contributions to the world.
I’ve been thinking about the person who had to live in his skin. The person who seemed to want to do right, regardless of the small or large mistakes he made. My first thoughts were so sad. I cried for his soul.
I see him as the poster child for the most damaged adult child of a dysfunctional family/society(though I don’t know anything about his family…guess I could read up on it pretty easily now). He’s also the poster child to give us an image of cancerous materialism. I watched a slide show of his career on yahoo news last night. I cried that he is human yet seemed so uncomfortable in his own skin, so desperate to get out. I cried because someone so potentially beautiful had become such a horrible image.
I don’t know what we think we’re doing in our society. We each have an idea of why we’re here, what we’re supposed to accomplish and give in our life time. For some it’s simply a not knowing. A going along in the wave of energy that engulfs a soul and hides reason. Could this be it, riding waves of just going along and anything to mask the pain?
I was just like the rest, obsessed with Michael Jackson for several years. I probably wanted to marry him. I don’t remember. I memorized Thriller, the song and the video. But remembering that and thinking that his talent is gone from this world are not what bring tears.
It’s that this spiritual being suffered in a way most of us can not imagine because he shared his talent, did what he had a passion for, made his livelihood in front of us all and we judged him constantly. You are so great! You are so deformed! You are so sick! You are brilliant!
Can he rest now, ignore the criticism and praise that have flared up after his unexpected death and be answerable only to a loving God? That’s the way it’s always been anyway.

Acquired yesterday…25lbs gluten free all-purpose flour, over 50lbs fresh picked apples.
Yesterday I chose to go to the apple orchard with my family and a few friends. Emily spent much time behind the lens, photo documenting the afternoon, capturing Aaron and the black kitten, boys stretching small arms to tree limbs, magic stretching apple bags that fit every apple our 6yr old brought to daddy, mothers, fathers and sons in midstep through a leafy lane and silly faces. I hadn’t slept much the night before so when we got home, though I wanted to bake apple something! for a potluck last night, all I could do was lay down, then eat chocolate and look at Open Salon (a new playground I’m enjoying very much). So I brought a vegan cheesecake I’d made a few days ago. No one complained.
Last night, after the potluck, after the boys were in bed, after I was in bed, though tired I did not sleep. No profound or racing thoughts kept me awake. I suspect it was the chocolate.
This morning I planned on going to the Farmers Market to help with a table promoting a childrens theater company I’m part of. Morning required a pep talk about logical consequences and keeping ones word but I made it there. Funny thing about sunshine, smiling, promoting a service people want and get excited about…I wasn’t tired at the market, only happy.
When I came home I intended to make cinnamon cookies and apple something! but I only had enough energy to sit. I’d thought about split pea soup last night when all were asleep and I wasn’t. Soup with organic carrots and potatoes, Rapunzel broth cubes, split peas and greens over fresh cooked brown rice with a bit of earth balance margarine.
After a 2 hour nap, more sitting and a mug of apple cider I went to the store for carrots and cashews. Once home I rinsed peas, chopped carrots and the few potatoes we have on hand (only a few since we’d made a large batch of homemade ff 2 nights ago), dropped in broth cubes and now I’m waiting for my husband to return with more potatoes so I can add them and start the soup. The rice just finished.
While waiting I put almond butter and homemade chocolate frosting on a spoon, wondering why I haven’t eaten such yumminess in over a year, then going back for seconds, thirds and fourths.
Soon the soup will be done and I’ll savor every rich warm spoonfull. I have images of getting up from my perch after that, baking apple something!, soaking cashews, freezing chocolate mints, but I’ll probably (hopefully) be ready to sleep.
Apples and flour can wait til morning.

We lived just south of Memphis, in Walls Ms, when Hurricaine Katrina slammed New Orleans. I don’t watch the news and at that time rarely read it either, but my husband gave me the sad news of what was probably coming over night and no one could stop nature. My children were 1 and 4 at the time. I was living in a quiet meditaiton of active bodies, loving snuggles, smallness of people I couldn’t wrap my mind around even though I gave birth to them and hours alone with only the walls of our apartment and the sighs of sleeping boys. A few months after that night I blogged a writing practice that found it’s way to the anguish I experienced as I didn’t sleep, aware that countless families were literally and nearly drowning, terrified, and being torn apart and the much milder down pour that found us the next day, a reminder, as we read headlines of destruction, that it wasn’t us. Memphis kicked in to high gear along with much of the country to help any way we could and it wasn’t until we were on our way to Colorado a few days later that I saw footage. I explained it to our 4 year old as best I could. The following is a highly revised version of that writing practice which is really a wandering accross the page (screen).
All avoidance, some balance. I’m thinking things like…If I had a light lap top, I would spend time in odd places writing on this blog. I seem little pleased with the corner I sit in presently. Though happily listening to one of the radio stations on pandora. It’s after 5pm, the computer reports 6:16pm. The afternoon was long and sleepy. Today, Bahiyyih helped Devyn plant his first garden. It feels so human and regular, like I am a worthy mom now. We tried to plant in little clay pots in Mississippi, but it was too late in the year and too cold. Also, Devyn, in his speedy and amazing way, rushed out to water his flowers too much and in my inability to stop him and do all else that was then required of me, they did not grow more than an inch above soil.
I believe we are all more mature now and a good and beautiful garden will soon spring up in the square of ready soil we offered seeds to today.Water every third day. After it rains, start over. Bahiyyih down the street now can be called on for councel. The sun, so peaceful a presence pours into the front windows. I passed by it on the way to the computer and felt that just because of it’s light, here, now, everything will be all right.
Oh Lord, settling is quietly hard, the no running away part. How I have perfected it God, but pray still to learn to live with out the fear of angry men. How many of us, I wonder are conciously and unconciously afraid of angry men. The ones in our lives and the ones through history, and the ones now, who seem unable to think clearly and yet, are in charge of masses (reference to no one in particular, just fighting in the name of “fill in the blank” around the world in general).
I realized one day that I have failed to feel sad for anybody suffering far away. That I have failed mostly to think of them at all, let alone pray for them, hope for them, think of their children. I think of them now, sometimes. At times recently, I have prayed for them, even cried for them.
But mostly I have been stuck in my own life. I pray this continues to change. That hurricaine, so close to our home, but not close enough to touch us, that was the kick over into sanity as far as this goes. How I ached for those people Sunday night. All night. I ached like I did the night I looked into eternity, saw it was real and beat my fists into the carpet, a deep down scream in my soul, way down, where I couldn’t stop it, or quiet it, or be distracted from it by any thought. The next morning I saw Baha’u’llah. The next morning was sunshine and light everywhere, inside and out. Finally I could sit still, take in a deep breath, hear birds sing again (when did I stop listening?), see dust dance in a ray of sunshine like I used to many a bored afternoon after school before mom and dad came home from work. I could exhale, aware that an anxiety I carried around like a sick pet had vanished (I would find anxiety again another day, but not this one. It has never returned).
Monday after Katrina, when I woke up, knowing a storm had raged, I was not rewarded with spiritual light like before. Only the pain of the night had been similar. Instead I ached. Here are the tears now, again. Once it happened in America for all of us to see, the pain accross oceans began to seep into my belly.

Mrs. Rogers thick, rich accent came from growing up in the south. She sat perfectly straight, legs crossed ladylike proper in her teachers chair at the front of the room.
She wasn’t interested in our self esteem. She was interested in expanding our knowledge of the parts of a sentence, grammar, how to “sharpen the focus” of an idea until the reader could sit with your mind, be a part of the memory, because you were so clear. I can’t think of a time I ever saw her smile, but I never wondered if she cared. I knew she did. And she was focused!
I sat on the west wall, first row, windows at my back. She never turned the overhead lights on. I wanted an A on something in her class, but don’t remember if I ever managed to get one. Here’s how it went.
At the beginning of each year, she told us how many papers we were to write. Then she told us that she expected each one of us to rewrite each paper until it was finished. This meant working on more than one assignment at a time. After I turned in a paper, she would mark down her comments, expectations and corrections in red, then hand it back. Now my part was to rewrite the paper according to her notes. The challenge was that she would give us a new assignment before we were done with the previous one. I think I managed to only ever have 2 papers going at the same time, which was no small task.
I naively thought that what she meant by “sharpen the focus” was the same as describing what a camera sees when it zooms in on a single spot. One time I used many words to describe a drop of rain on a leaf. Then I described a world of fairies living in the drop. I was bound and determined to sharpen that focus, even if I had to make up a new world smaller than a dime!
But this isn’t what she wanted. To this day I don’t know how for sure what she meant by “sharpen the focus” but I have my own idea. Follow the focus could be it’s name. Follow the heat, when writing comes alive. Follow the heart, the energy. Follow it even if I’m a puddle of tears on the sofa with my little laptop lighting up my wet face. Be there again, wherever it is, hand it to the reader carefully, but remain open. Beyond this, just write. No editing(that is a later part of the process), no judge, no excuses, no critic. Practice in this way for years, as many days each year as possible.
In a way, Mrs. Rogers gave me a willingness to practice writing like one practices ballet or sketching. During the two years I was her student, her assignments were my main homework, the greatest challenge from the academic side of school. For her work, for her no-nonsense attitude, for the time she must have spent reading our countless drafts, I am incredibly thankful.

It’s dark at 8pm, crickets in full song.
Owning a house = someone has weeding to do.
Getting rid of unwanted stuff that is being given away involves a cluttered living room for a few days.
Some burned bits are harder to remove from the stove top than others.
I like making new friends.
Helping the boys clean their room is easier than gearing up to do it.
I want to make chocolate mints but need to finish cleaning the stove top first. Chocolate mints are proper motivation or at least effective.
It’s easy to over commit to activities that benefit other people.
I like books but I’m diggin’ the idea of having only what I get from the library and a few Baha’i books around the house.
When I finish filing the living room will grow, even though the “to file” box is under a desk.
We may only need one big desk in the house but the second one is pretty and holding a lot of stuff I’m not sure what to do with yet.
I like listening to audio books more than video games but since the boys earned the $ for their hand held game boys, I like the tinny song they make (for a while).
We have many pretty figurines that need homes. I’m not sure who would like which ones.
I like the way Bahiyyih’s kitchen smells. There’s always something yummy making or just made.
Kids rooms and chocolate mints are calling.
Since I wrote this a few days ago, we have cleaned off and given away the pretty desk as well as a book case. We’ve cleaned and organized the existing desk and filed 75% of our various possibly important papers. Today a special connecting cord arrived, one the boys have been patiently waiting for on the edge of their seats so the ting ting continues with an added element of cooperative conversation. I made that batch of chocolate mints and made 2 more as well as 2 vegan cheesecakes. Then the house dances!