Author: jenion

Clarity

In the night, the sickle moon shines over my shoulder.  Fingers stiff with cold, I thrust the shovel under new snow. Bend and lift with my knees. Throw the shovelful aside.

Thrust. Bend. Lift. Throw… Thrust. Bend. Lift. Throw.

The night, the cold, the moon, the repetition. Muscles tire, grow sore, slow.  Just before I finish, I straighten from my labor.  Moon and starlight sparkle across the backyard snowfield; something unseen drops with a rustle to the ground.

In my soul an unrecognized clenching releases.  I breathe deep, taking the cold down into my lungs.  For one crisp, clear moment everything pauses in the crystalline silence.

On the street, a car careens around the bend and the moment passes.  Suddenly I am freezing, thinking only of the warmth which waits inside.

For the love…

Once, in my early thirties, a friend told me that if she knew she would never get married, she would prefer to just die right then and save herself the effort of more lonely years.  I was shocked, since it had not once occurred to me to think such a thought about my own life.  But there was something tickling at the back of my brain, trying to help me remember that I had felt that way, once.  About…what?

When I moved into this house that I love, I wanted to surround myself with only those things that were meaningful to me.  This necessitated a gigantic purge of stuff that I had held onto long past the time to let go.  Thankfully, my friend Sue came with her large truck.  We sorted and hauled an unbelievable amount away — two full truckloads of books, for example.

There was one storage tub I refused to open until Sue had driven away.  In 1973 I was given my first diary.  Since then, I have been a regular, if episodic, journal keeper.  I have never had the discipline to write daily, so there are few journals which are full cover to cover.  Also, I’ve experimented with a variety of styles, both in my journal writing and in the physical journals themselves.  The one thing they had in common was their place inside a large storage tub which had been unopened (except when I tossed another one inside) for years.  Once the rest of the house was in tip-top shape, I had an overwhelming urge to open the tub and start reading.

And there it was, in a hardcover bookkeepers account log.  An entry from my sophomore year in high school (1977):  “The only thing I want to do with my life is write.  If I knew I couldn’t be a writer, what would be the point?  I would just lay down and die right now.”

So now you know: the heart of why publishing jenion has been such a joy.  And what lies behind the decision to take on the postaday 2011 challenge.  I am doing it for the love…of writing.

(Gentle reader:  If you have something you love this much, I would genuinely like to hear from you about it — please share by posting a comment.)

Spinach Salad with Chicken and Crispy Potatoes

This salad is so delicious, I was genuinely happy to be eating it!  The recipe originally came from Everyday Food.  I followed the recipe except that I didn’t wish to make four servings since I was having dinner by myself.  I found it impossible to cut the dressing recipe down to one serving, so I measured and divided accordingly AFTER the dressing was complete.  I saved the extra dressing.  While it is not impossible to cook just one half of one chicken breast, it is damn inconvenient to do so.  Therefore, I made a different salad (good but not as good) the following day with the remainder of the chicken and the dressing.  Two more notes about the chicken: I don’t bother with bone-in, skin-on breasts.  Also, rather than drizzle so much oil on the chicken, I gave it a healthy spray with my trusty spray olive oil.  It was so delicious, I doubt it would have been much improved by slavishly sticking to the recipe directions!

The full recipe can be found on the recipe tab, above.

This is my first foray into food photography, and I am clearly no food stylist (notice the shadow I created by leaning over the plate to get the shot!).  Don’t let the inferior quality of the photos prevent you from trying the salad.

I may be crazy, but…

…Wordpress has issued a challenge for bloggers to try posting daily this year.  I’ve decided to take the challenge on, beginning today!

If you’ve been a regular reader of Jenion, you know I typically post weekly (each Thursday).  I will continue to post on Thursdays with my weekly weigh-in and a more in-depth reflection piece.

The daily posts will, on the other hand, be typically short, quick thoughts, photos or recipes.  I hope you will enjoy reading them — I hope I will enjoy writing them (and be able to keep up!)

That’s all for now…I’ll be back tomorrow!

Let’s Call It “Experience”

“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

When I was a kid, I wanted an Easy Bake Oven.  Think about it: a toy in which a lightbulb provides the heat source to bake all kinds of delectable confections and a kid obsessed with delicious goodies.  Why wouldn’t the two be destined for one another?  But, I never got one.  Turns out, I wasn’t alone in my disappointment.  The other day I was talking with friends, and someone said, in the stilted tones of a disgruntled 10-year-old,  “I never got one either. My mom thought they were stupid.”  My own mother’s sentiments exactly.

The Christmas orgy of gift-giving affords many opportunities to think about what to do, or what it means, when you don’t get what you want.  Disappointment in the gifts received is only the tip of that iceberg.  We hang so many hopes and expectations on the holiday — we want someone to stick a bow on us and say, “You’re my present this year” like in the coffee commercial.  We want that moment when we are completely aware that our life is rich and full of meaning (resulting in our buddy Clarence getting his wings).  We want to sing in four-part harmony about the white Christmas of our dreams while wearing gorgeous red-velvet dresses…ok, maybe that one is just me!  You get the picture, though.

I, personally, have been lucky in two ways.  First, growing up in a family with six children and a limited income, I had many opportunities to learn that I might not get everything I wanted.  I learned many coping mechanisms for this, from swallowing my disappointment with a 2000 calorie chaser of fudge to learning to be happy with what I did have.  Admittedly, some mechanisms were more helpful than others.

The second way in which I have been lucky is that, in the past year or so, I’ve gotten more than I ever expected on so many levels. I won a cruise, for crying out loud, not to mention healing relationships and recovering self-esteem along with some pretty amazing bike rides.  And I’ve been learning healthier coping mechanisms too.

Which, it turns out I’ve needed recently.  I got so accustomed to getting whatever it seemed I wanted, that I started to forget that life doesn’t work that way 100% of the time.  And BLAM! I ran smack up against it: not getting something I really wanted. Had this been something material, like an iPhone or a Nook, I think I would have taken it in stride.  But in the realm of emotional desires, I’ve discovered it can be much harder to find a way to manage extreme disappointment.  Here’s how I’m proceeding:

1.  I remind myself of the Randy Pausch quote, above.  Experience, as he refers to it, is just another name for living life as fully as possible.  And that is, deep down, what I truly want.

2.  I remind myself to be grateful for all I do have.  The list is long, and astounds me when I really think about it.

3.  I surround myself with people who make me laugh, to balance the private moments when, sometimes, I cry.

4.  I take action in other aspects of my life in order to feel positive momentum:  craft room clean, check; menu planned for the week, check; Tupperware organized, check. (If you know me, you’d better be laughing at this last one – when have I EVER been the kind of person who has orderly Tupperware?)

In these ways, even the awful feeling of not getting your heart’s desire can be transformed. Not what you expected, but not at all shabby.  And you’re able to remember that gifts come in their own time.  I believe that hope and patience are excellent qualities to cultivate because they contribute to resilience in the face of disappointment. And because, despite what you feel today, you can never know what the future holds.

Which brings me back to the Easy Bake Oven.  I received a Christmas gift on which there was a tag which read, “From Santa:  Sorry!  I’m a few years late with this. ENJOY!”  I’m sure you know what was waiting under the wrapping paper. Sometimes, if not always, you do get the things you want. Maybe in a slightly delayed time frame, or from a source you never anticipated.  Being ready for either outcome is, perhaps, what experience is meant to teach us.

“A King is dead; long live the King!”

The final week of any year contains many retrospectives.  Top Ten lists, persons of the year, 50 Greatest Country Music videos (as if).  Over the years, you will find many such entries in my journals, waxing eloquent…or dramatic at least…about the past twelve months as if they can be viewed as discrete, a block of time encapsulated unto itself.

Not this year.

Which is actually kind of funny, since I can easily say 2010 has been the best year of my adult life.  For this reason, anyone would forgive me for indulging in a little rearview gazing.  Perhaps the greatest boon of 2010, though, has been that I am reminded each day of the gift that is the present.  As one year ends, and a new one begins, I feel a seamless joy radiating from my heart.  Dramatic?  Probably.  But true nonetheless.

A few years ago, my sister Gwen started me on a tradition of making a vision (or dream) board for the coming year.  If you have never made one, the idea is to create a collage of all the things you hope to accomplish or receive in the coming year…as a means of setting your intent, of putting out into the world your wishes and desires. No matter whether you believe in the power of intention, there is something to be said for “going public” with what you want — it makes it concrete in a way that thinking alone does not.  As I sat to create my vision board for 2011, I realized that this year it might be difficult to do — very few magazine photos (used to create the collage) capture what my heart currently desires.  A few of these items:

  • To be brave enough to keep feeling, to be open (and yes, vulnerable) even though it hurts sometimes;
  • To be unashamed of tears;
  • A truly heavenly breakfast sandwich;
  • That the people I love find their paths converging on inner peace and true happiness;
  • Lots of time holding babies;
  • That those I love who are “remaining fluid” (you know who you are) find or rediscover a few things in their lives that are stable and solid and worthy of trust (fluid is good, but you deserve steadfast too);
  • Enough music, poetry, and laughter to make each day resonate;
  • That I remember to be grateful for the ordinary, as well as the extraordinary; for the sorrows as well as the joys; for trials as well as abundance.

2010, with all the beauty and wonder it brought to my life, is at an end.  It would be ok to feel a pang at its passing, but I can’t seem to feel anything but excitement to keep moving forward.  So, with a nod to the British tradition of seamless succession (at least that’s how they do it in movies!), I say:  one year is gone, and a new begins.  Rejoice!  Amen.

Christmas Memories

My first memory of Christmas must have taken place when I was around three years old. We were living in a duplex on Lincoln Street in Dubuque, Iowa.  It was Christmas Eve, and my sister Chris, my Dad and I were lying on a bed and Dad said, “What was that?”  I will never forget hearing the pawing of reindeer feet on our roof that night — never mind that we lived in the downstairs half of the duplex…our neighbors lived upstairs and we could not have distinguished a roof noise from their footsteps over our heads.

And so it is with the magic of Christmas.  We believe in things that would not make sense at other times.  We hold moments in our hearts and our imaginations with a tenacity unseen in other life experiences.  I can barely remember what I did on my birthday this year, but I will always remember the thrill of receiving the Hanson Kids Puppet Theater one Christmas morning when I was perhaps 8 or 9.

In my family, we ritualized every little activity which occurred on Christmas Eve or Day, until we could barely function normally — from noon on the 24th every moment was spoken for by one “tradition” or another.  Eventually, this collapsed under its own weight, not without a lot of tears and angst.

Now, we celebrate in warm ways that hearken to the old traditions, but are no longer bound by them.  This year, I will marvel at my grown up nieces and nephews, coo at my first great-niece, try to maintain some control over my food choices.  I will hold my parents and siblings close, filled with wonder at the grace that has allowed us all to still be here on the this earth together.  And while I will be grateful for the 49 years of Christmas memories, the ones I will hold most dear are the ones we will be making together at that moment.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

–Christina Rossetti