The Seder and the Little Things

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Granted, there are a few parts of the Passover Seder that could be considered boring, but Chris was asleep during the Plagues part! That’s good stuff. Frogs! Lice! Pestilence! Boils! etc.

It’s times like these I try to focus on my 7 rules. I reminded myself of Rule #2 — Escape through Literature. I buried my nose in the Seder guidebook, the Haggadah.

I’ve been more worried about Chris’s Parkinson’s lately. Like last night at the neighbor’s Seder, Chris’s chronic illness was visible, difficult, and anti-social. And it persisted. After the party, instead of getting the kids ready for bed, he sat in front of the computer and fixated on his on-line bridge game. I know I should be grateful for all he does and is. And mostly, I am. But still. I laid awake at night worried. And then I moved on to worry about the little things.

Like the possibility that the mouse we caught on Sunday was not the only mouse in the house. Honestly, my worry about the mouse in the kitchen surpassed my worry about Chris’s Parkinson’s decline. It’s the little things that slay me. That feel insurmountable as I lay awake in the middle of the night.

You somehow learn to live with cancer or chronic illness, but the mouse situation? That’s the last straw! I’m ready to toss it all in and ask for a redo. This must be why something as small as lice made it to the Top 10 list of unbearable plagues that smite mankind in Egypt. The Ancient God of the Seder knew it was the little things that get you, not the big ones. Still, it doesn’t make it any easier.

New Yorkers and the Rain

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New York is for walking.  Yes, the buses and subways are fine. Yes, a bike sails through traffic. Yes, you can find parking if you drive. And yes, cabs are ubiquitous.

But New York City is scaled for the walker. When tourists visit New York, they’re always surprised by how much walking they do. A New Yorker wouldn’t mind walking 10 blocks. But you can tell the tourists — they’re the ones beginning to flag.

New Yorkers are more physically fit than people in other parts of the country. All the walking is good for kids. Within a few blocks, you’ll find our grammar school, our doctor, our grocery store, our church, our gym, and our park. What more could you ask for?

Okay, the downside of all of this walking? When it rains, which it’s been doing a lot lately, there’s no way to avoid the elements. Maybe in the suburbs, you can duck into your car right from your garage, but in New York, you can’t avoid the weather.

I hate umbrellas. They slow you down. And they take up too much public space — especially in the stairwells leading into the subway. Also, an umbrella takes up too much hand space. I suppose you could wear one of those umbrella hats, but they’ve never really caught on and I’m not going to be the first.

The best way to dress for NYC in the rain is to wear a baseball cap. Pull it low. You might want to keep on that silver sticker. You might want to keep the bill wide. (Although I still like to scrunch up the bill.)

Baseball season is only a couple of weeks away. So you can choose — a Mets or Yankees cap? So many places sell them. But beware — there’s a fashion trend in baseball caps that I’ve been noticing in NYC. The Chicago Cubs cap. How did that get here? New Yorkers are funny.

Sacred Chow

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At lunch time, the author and pastor Donna Schaper spoke about creating community and communion through food. She was awesome.

The discussion reminded me of last summer when I taught the the adult spiritual study, “Food & Faith” in the schools of mission at Western Connecticut State University and at Dillard University in New Orleans. I loved hearing people’s rich stories of food memories.

One older woman remembered being on the farm, sitting at a picnic table with relatives of many ages after a barn raising. Food was definitely both a fueling and a feasting. Donna wrote about this kind of communion in her book, “Sacred Chow.”

Food has the capacity to bring us together. But there is also, as Donna mentioned, a divisiveness or a righteousness when we discuss food. We’re right about the way we eat and others aren’t.

There are small, good, spiritual things we can do with food, including writing about food, teaching about food and faith, saying grace, opting out of corporate food manufacturers’ offerings, choosing farmstand foods. We can also remember our childhood dinner tables.

When I was a kid, we took the phone off the hook. All seven of us ate dinner together in the dining room every night. We argued, we discussed the day, we ate. I’m going home to get that party started right now.

Donna Schaper spoke as part of Raising Women’s Voices, workshops on women and health offered by the Interchurch Center. Interesting that the event came on the heels of the healthcare legislation.

Schools of Christian Mission are dynamic adult learning opportunities offered in thousands of venues usually in the summer for United Methodist Women and their friends.

Walking in New Jersey with Babies

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I know I should be running. There’s really nothing like running. The only thing remotely like running is walking.

Yesterday Barbara and I drove with my sleepy daughters to visit Mandy and her baby in Summit, New Jersey. We sat in the sunny suburbs. We  pored over the school auction catalog.  (Last night was the big fundraiser. Spent too much).

Then we walked in a public park. Morris County Park. Maybe it was half a mile there and back — past a stream, past dog walkers and curled-up caterpillars. We had to step off the path when little tyke bike riders rode by.  The girls bickered. Then held my hand. Mandy’s funny husband, KC, pushed the stroller. Baby Nathaniel wore a baseball cap.

It was absolutely idyllic. We stopped near a playground. We chatted at a picnic table.

The thing about walking that’s better than running is you can talk to several people at once. When you run, you can only talk to one person. But when you walk you can spread yourself around. Or you can talk to no one. You can stare at the teeny tiny shoots of green emerging from the dead leaves. And you can marvel at the miracle of it all.

The miracle of growth. Of that new baby growing into some big kid. Impossible to arrest the march of growth (in March!). My little kid was once that little baby in the stroller.

I miss the baby days. I love babies. Their silliness, chubbiness, simplicity. The way they have no subtext. They feel something, even gas, they express it. They do not censor themselves. I love my grown-up kids. Their witty remarks, their athleticism. But I miss their snuggly baby days. I try to hang on to them as long as possible. I still baby them.

I was a bit depressed  on Friday, having to write about Haiti —  the incredible sadness of losing my coworkers in Haiti. And then worries over Chris’s inevitable decline with Parkinson’s. But then, I see a baby, or feel the sun, or one of my kids hugs me tight, or I walk or ride my bike, or yes, I  run. Or like on Friday, I ducked into a NYC museum and see great art. And I feel better.

These fixes are non-pharmaceutical cures for whatever ails me. Take two walks in the park and call me in the morning. Tell me if you don’t feel the same way. Feel some inevitable March of growth.

Irish Cousins

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The last time I went to Ireland, I was pretty pregnant with my first child, 13 years ago. I went to Ireland to celebrate my godfather’s 50th birthday with my aunts and uncles and cousins. Highlights from Dublin were  the visits to the Abbey Theatre and the the Writer’s Museum. So awesome — a museum dedicated to the Irish writer. My husband and I had adapted a novel, “The Unsocial Socialist” by George Bernard Shaw. We loved the cafe in the museum.

I’d been to Ireland four or five times. The first time I visited Kerry and Dublin as part of a whirlwind European tour with my aunts and mom. I was 12. Then in college I went to Belfast to visit my pen pal from junior high. We went to the Giant’s Causeway, hung out in pubs, talked politics like about the Iran Contra affair.

Later that year, my boyfriend (who became my husband) and I rented a car and drove the perimeter of the island. We especially loved West Ireland and the city of Cork. I loved the singing in the pubs. It was summer, my hair was bleached blonde, dyed blue so it looked green. We had tons of sunshine (like today’s St. Patty’s Day). We swam in the cold water off of rocky beaches nearly every day!

But the highlight of all of my trips to Ireland was on that last pregant trip when I visited the ancestral home in Kinsale (?). The thatched roof home still stands — sturdy, beige, beautiful. A couple lived there with a newborn babe. The teley was on. The house looked too small to hold the brothers (and sisters?) of the Mahoney family who would immigrate to Chicago to become police officers and salesmen. The ancestral home touched me in a way that surprised me. I got choked up standing on the footpath leading to the thatched house. It might’ve been my pregnancy hormones.

But I had a sense of the new world and the old world converging in me. At that one axis. Just as Colum McCan writes about in the book “While the Great World Spins.” (We read this for book club, met last night.)

Characters drift into one another, rooted in a place,  rooted in a time. We intersect, like a man on a wire, between two world trade centers — our past, our future. We are spinning as if on a globe on some invisible axis. Caught in the here and now, infused with memories and with dreams. Caught in the present on a wire.

These are my thoughts on St. Patrick’s Day, 2010.

Artist in Residence, anyone?

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So I applied a few weeks ago to be an Artist in Residence at the Henderson Hunt Farm in New Milford, Conn. I heard from them yesterday.

See, last year I was wait-listed to be a writer at Breadloaf. I really wanted to go there. It’s the penultimate of writers’ colonies. I could be so prolific. Sipping tea on a porch, rewriting my brilliant prose, laughing with the famous published authors — Annie LaMott, Ted Conover, they would all love me if they knew me. (I am exceedingly likable!)

Sure, Breadloaf costs an arm and a leg. Like maybe four thousand dollars for a few weeks. I should be saving for my three kids to go to college. And not spend my money yucking it up with fellow writers. I could do that at any Starbucks in the city. I suppose I could’ve applied for a scholarship, but I’d missed the deadline. Any way, I didn’t get in. So, quit bringing Breadloaf up. On to Henderson Hunt Farm.

I found this little Artist in Residence program nearby, in a really pretty area, at the home of the late, great jazz artists Skitch Henderson. That sounded possible. After all, it wasn’t Breadloaf, hardly anyone knew about it. Just right for me. I stood a chance.

Sadly, the handwritten note informed me yesterday that due to the economy, the Board of Directors at the Hunt Hill Farm have discontinued the Artist in Residence program. There has to be some Artist in Residence program for me somewhere. Somewhere between Breadloaf and non-existent. I don’t know what it is. But I will research, get back to you, apply, and be one of those erudite authors sipping tea, gabbing about my genius, working ever so hard on all my works in progress. Soon. Maybe this summer. If not this summer, then next. For sure.

so psyched

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I ran 16 minutes without stopping this morning.

I saw a Red-Tailed hawk near the playground at 83rd in Riverside Park — the River Run Park. I had to stop running to take a picture of him (why is it a him? Why not a her?)

The day was so warm and I had been trailing this father and teenage daughter. He was sort of racewalking. Yes, that’s how slow I am — I run as fast as an old man racewalking.

I don’t care. At least I got out there.

I have to admit I was inspired last night to run today. I read the girls “The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food.” Sometimes I think the Berenstain Bears are so sexist. Why is Dad always the buffoon and mother so wise, as she darns his socks or whatever? But then again, there is a lot you can learn from children’s literature. If you’re open to the message and you can overlook the household gender stereotypes.

The City Just Keeps Getting Better

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Today, like a prelude to Spring, we had a sunny day, blue sky. All afternoon we spent in Riverside Park. Central Park is for tourists but Riverside Park is for New Yorkers.

First we were at the Elephant playground where I have spent more time on a bench outside of the playground than at any other city bench in the whole city. Or any city.

It’s called Elephant playground because there are elephants that spout water in the summer. There were no vendors selling water. The kids said they were thirsty and hungry.

We walked to the River Run playground via the Boat Basin Cafe (not yet open, but a man was attaching a boom box to a column, playing Salsa music).

Jolain and I talked about how our mothers followed Dr. Spock’s advice. Kids must have at least one hour of fresh air a day.

A vendor sold hot dogs and pretzels outside of River Run. One child among our six asked for ice cream. But they were not selling ice cream yet. Maybe it topped 50 degrees.

We moved to a bench that was full of light in the River Run playground. We call it that, but maybe it’s called the Hudson River park or something. The river runs through the playground. It’s a bigger, modern playground than Elephant park. A beautiful sandbox with a sculpted sun face. The kids like the depth of the sandbox, but they weren’t in it today.

The children rode the old-fashioned merry-go-round and bounced on the teeter totters for hours. Jolain and I talked of our siblings, books, art class. We whiled away the afternoon.

Writing My Way Home

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I don’t remember my Great Grandmother (Nana) ever standing. I only remember her seated. She was in a Lazy Boy chair, dressed in pastel — ancient and small. She lived with my Great Aunt Sue.

At Easter when I visited — along with a thousand brothers and cousins (okay, maybe a couple dozen) — Nana would unfold her one published poem and read it out loud.

I don’t remember Nana’s poem. I only remember that it rhymed and that we, her unruly descendents, were quiet for a few minutes. We shared a single focus. I remember that the grown ups, too, were quiet. Nana was my mother’s grandmother.

On my father’s side, there was my father. He left his job as a newspaper man to work at Young and Rubicam as a PR man. He was never the same. He never regained the status he had as the City Editor for the Chicago Daily Herald.

As a kid, I learned that writers commanded respect. Writers were awesome. Writers were men or women, young or old. And they should be listened to.

 My life is in fragments. It is nothing earth-shattering nor outside of the normal fragmented human predicament. At any given moment, I am replying to an email about one of my daughter’s clarinet lessons, while writing a press release about poverty in Haiti, while texting a girlfriend about book club, while phoning the neurologist for my husband’s Parkinson’s Disease appointment.

I don’t read or write nearly enough. I rarely listen to other people’s writing.

I need to go home. Or someplace like a home — like to my Great Aunt Sue’s living room at Eastertime — where I could sit at the foot of a Lazy Boy and listen to a very old woman read a poem.

I want to pay attention to my own voice. To read my words out loud to myself and not be interrupted by the everyday noise of my full time work and family.

Peacemaking and War

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Yesterday, I woke before the family and attended the 9:30 am class at Rutgers Church on War. Rather than looking at whether churches should support or resist war, the group thought about what we can do to make peace.

I love small-scale solutions. Thinking small is big right now. Small is hot!

Here was one of my ideas:

Offer classes for kids on conflict resolution. At our local public school, all three of my kids in fifth grade were trained as conflict mediators. They patrol the schoolyard to help the littler kids handle fights.

Conflict mediation totally works. When family members argue in our house, the kids remind us and each other to follow rules and help family members adhere to these rules during arguments. The rules include listening well during conflicts. Do not interrupt.

They’ve learned to restate each other’s opinions, to hear the other side, to work together to common ground. It is a beautiful thing. Of course, they’re not perfect angels, but they have mediation and diplomacy skills which will benefit them their whole lives.

Here’s another cool idea from the Rutgers Church class — allow a new structure to grow within an old structure. The new structure will take over like a flower sprouting up within a garden. Peace is like that too. Work within a church for peace and peace will bloom.

I want to write more about conflict resolutions, but I have to get to my exercise class. That is another way to peace – getting physical. Breathing.