Coupling

This is how trains do it. 

Loving Family Food

Overweight and morbidly obese are defining words for me. My 76 year old mother came to visit last week along with Lisa, my baby sister, and two of her youngest.

One afternoon it was so warm that the batch of sourdough bread I was making for supper had to be baked early. The neighbor kid smelled it, as did Loverby as he arrived home from work.

Hot bread doesn't have a chance. We all hovered in the kitchen where we demolished a large pan of buns slathered with butter and peach freezer jam. Appetizer course before supper. We were breadless for supper, no apologies.

The next night, mom was delighted to discover the freezer full of blackberries. She is famous for her pie.

She baked two lovely, flaky berry pies. Dessert was a french vanilla ice cream dollop on the side melting away from the warmth of the crust.......

Food feels like eating love. Swallowing, chewing, drooling love.

Fast food, prepackaged food, Costco crap, processed and refined foods don't tempt me.

Real food made with loving hands and passionate hearts, plated and served with joy; irresistable.

Family, friends and food just go together fantastically. Right? The last 'f' word is FAT. Unfortunately.

My chin has tripled and my stomach is splayed out across my thighs as I sit. I have no lap at the moment.

I am unable to walk, jog, or bend over, but perhaps I can waddle out to the garden and water?

Driftwood Day

The heat was nearly turned on today. Once again, I reclaimed my practical nature and put on socks and a cozy sweater instead. One more sunless day.

Our lawn looks like a pasture that needs cut and baled. The peas are leggy. Two rows of spinach bolted before they became edible. A rhubarb bed collapsed in on itself with rotten pithy stalks. A bed of peppers and basil haven't grown an inch since I planted them long ago. Pretty midget garden.

We have a generous crop of fungus popping up everywhere. It is equivalent to cancer for the garden and yard. I have no ideas for chemo or radiation treatments. They don't resemble anything you buy in the store, so I believe they are poisonous. Why can't they be $15.00 a lb portablellos?

All of our walls inside are either red, dark green, or a rich butter yellow. As I sat cross legged on the couch feeling like I was in a dark cave, I considered painting everything white before next winter. A crying jag erupted at the thought of sterile walls. White walls make me itch.

Craig came home during this breakdown. When he figured out there weren't any hopeful dinner smells  coming from the kitchen, he quickly went to plan Q. Plan B, C, or D weren't even considered.

Plan Q includes many things. First, he dries my tears as he leads me to the bedroom. The door is locked. I get tucked gently under warm down quilts. We snuggle skin on skin until life starts flowing in. Endorphins start flooding. Love blooms. Relief and release of real and imagined worries fly away.

The afternoon seemed brighter somehow, even though the sky was dripping still.

We got a wild hair to go out to a local beach and look for driftwood for a project we're working on. Maggie and I climbed around on heaped up, beached driftwood of all shapes and sizes. I filled a few bags and the back of the pick-up bed with treasures.

I recovered my equilibrium somewhere between the sheets of our marriage bed, balancing on piles of castaway wood, and take out pizza. Grey is never nice, but it does sometimes have delicious texture.

Spent

After blossom is gone, 

  delicate bones remain. 

Evergreen clematis blooms early. 

Empty pods reminding

me at a glance ~

 what once was 

 might be possible again. 

Fragile skeleton memory.

Mother Things

Here is a valuable piece sifted from Ruth Riechl's book, Not Becoming My Mother...and Other Things She Taught Me.  

She is the editor of 'Gourmet' cookbook.

The following excerpt from the book is a letter from a man who wrote to the author's mother after spending time with her one evening. It seems like he was older and wiser, nothing romantic. He saw so much potential in her that he couldn't help but write her a note and encourage her.

Go ahead into life, full-blooded, courageous and leap for the adventure. But you must do it soon---before the summer of your youth has cooled into caution. You are magnificently charming--and you come like a torrent. But you will be spent on the futility of little things. You are not a watercolor. you are carved out of life--and there can be no petty hesitancies about you. 

(This was passed on to me via my friend Emily. She reads cookbooks for fun. Marcella Hazan easily trumps Jamie Oliver and Julia Child both; when Emily has her apron on.) 

Gently Used

Quilts are pieced together with with forethought and love. The more they are used, the softer and more puckered they become. 

I'm sure if they had a say in it, they would choose to be cuddled until the colors blended and wore through. Tight hand stitching keeps it together even when the fabric gives way.

I love scrapbag antique quilts best. Re-purposed fabric from clothes. It seems like they whisper a better traveler's story. 

Someone said, 'we should be completely used up, poured out and worn to a nubbins when we die'. Or something like that. 

I concur. :)  

Spoonin'

These are called love spoons. I found them in Wales. It was impossible to pick only one. I was smitten with the handcrafted artistry.  

Traditionally, when a young man started courting a girl, he began the process of carving his first gift to her. Maybe he was admired for his craftsmanship and his choice of wife? Perhaps she was admired for being worth so much effort and symbolic care? 

Girls? We still want wooed. Pursued. Won. Courted with creative words and actions of love. 

Loverby still makes me feel like this, after 21 years. It doesn't look like a spoon ~ one bursting gift of creative inspiration to seal the getting part. 

It looks more like tender hearted loving kindness in action. Whenever it is now. He decides ~ day after grueling day to generously and continuously help me feel chosen, like Johnny Lingo's Eight Cow Wife. 

Some days it must be a most difficult task. Carving a spoon with only your fingernails would seem easier, I'm almost certain. 

Thanks for your steadfast, forebearing, never failing, stout heart, Loverby. 

iLike. iDo.