Summer Kitchen, 1956

An email from Conn. College yesterday which included a link to 6 essays written by young women in a gender studies class caused my small stone moment. The first essay I read focused on the woman's relationship with her grandmother and in her very fine essay, she retold some of her grandmother's stories. In the process of writing, she discovered the important relationship between her grandmother's stories and her own identity. It made me wish for the millionth time, that I had paid more attention to my mother's many stories, instead of rolling my eyes and tuning out. I spent my writing time revising a poem which captures one of my memories of working with my mom when I was about ten years old.

Summer Kitchen, 1956

The knife slips
inside the jar edge
forcing amethyst plum halves
against the tempered glass.
Bubbles rise through sugar syrup
past stained glass plums
to meet air and merge.

In the womankitchen,
my mother executes
this summer ritual
teaching me the art
of compression, importance
of preservation,
the secret code of womanwork
behind glass, steam, and bubbles
bursting into invisibility.

My Ukraine

I am torn between writing about the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and writing about the current violent turn of events in Ukraine. Ukraine wins out. Most of the time it's easy to feel that what's going on across the globe is too bad, but since we can't really do anything about it, it's somehow not our problem. Tonight when I saw the police in Kiev banging their riot shields together as they stood shoulder to shoulder and the protestors setting tires on fire and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police, my heart sank. This is how the horrible strife in Syria started, I thought. If it grows, I have no doubt that Viktor Yanukovich will move to ever harsher methods to put down the protests. Two people were killed today, and the escalation of violence on both sides scares me.

Eight years ago I arrived in Kiev to start three weeks as a State Department sponsored "Teacher-Ambassador." I lived with a very dear family in Southwest Ukraine, near the Carpathian Mountains, in an area geographically much like New Hampshire. I was the first American that people in the small town of Kelmentsi had ever seen. In my short stay there, I became another member of the family and a member of the teaching staff at the local high school. It was a life-changing experience for me, and I have followed any news from Ukraine with great interest. Now I follow it with great dread.

When I arrived, a year had passed since the non-violent Orange Revolution had taken place, bringing Viktor Yushchenko to power. He had managed to survive Dioxin poisoning that nearly killed him in the lead-up to the election. The overnight train ride from Kiev to Kelmentsi gave me the chance to talk (through the interpretive ability of my host teacher) with others in our train car, and it became apparent right away that people were disillusioned with Yushchenko because he hadn't been able to spur the economy in his first year of power. Given all that had transpired since the break-up of the Soviet Union, my opinion was that they would be lucky to turn things around in ten years. When the Soviets left, they took all their heavy farming equipment with them, and the system of collective farms had completely collapsed. What I remembered of Ukraine from my grade school education, was that it was known as the bread basket of the USSR. No more. Massive unemployment and no clear idea of what it meant to suddenly be a democracy had led to a difficult situation by the time of my visit.

It is probably too simplistic to say this, but my observation of the educational system which emphasized rote memory and offered no chance for critical thinking was not preparing younger people for citizenship in a democracy, and older people were used to being told what to think and how to carry out their daily lives. Couple that with the fact that the country seemed divided down the middle, with residents on the eastern side favoring ties to Russia and those where I was on the western side leaning much more toward Europe. In my family, the oldest child had found employment in Austria, and I met many people whose spouse or child had found work in Italy.

Yushchenko lasted about one more year before he was unseated by his former running mate, Yulia Tymoshenko. She survived about two more years, when Yanukovich, who had originally been the Russian puppet leader before the Revolution was voted back in and Tymoshenko was thrown in jail for alleged corruption. The pro-Russian faction was too entrenched, and from this far away, and not knowing much, I never thought he would go along with joining the European Union. I'm sure he is under terrific pressure from Putin, but he has apparently turned a completely deaf ear on his people. I've been wondering how the leader of a country (namely Assad in Syria) could deliberately kill his own countrymen rather indiscriminately, it seems to me. I fear the same outcome in Ukraine. Will my host family, who were pro-European be forced to flee? Will the protests spill out into the countryside? Will Russia send in tanks to help put down this new "Revolution?"

I am sick in my heart as I think of how proudly I was shown Independence Square in Kiev (spelled in Ukrainian Kyiv) and how it has become a place of violence and bloodshed. This is not a small stone moment, but a large boulder moment for me.

The watcher and the watched

Small stone moment for today. Photo does not do justice to what I saw!

The Watcher and the Watched

A Sharp-shinned hawk holds me in thrall,
rapt with disgust, awe, love. He meets my gaze,
as he tears bleeding flesh from his prey,
hapless bird or rodent, indistinguishable now
no hint of feathers or fur, I cannot look away.
Judge, jury, executioner, he is magnificent
as a robed tyrant is magnificent. He is Thomas Cromwell,
in the court of Henry the VIII, rusty orange striped vest,
dull gray hooded cloak perfect for lurking in shadows.
I, Anne Boleyn watch his every move. An invisible chain
holds us all afternoon, as he picks at the carcass
draped over the branch, a spot of blood on his chest,
yellow talons piercing the ravaged flesh. He stares at me,
I tear my eyes away, and released from bondage, he flies.

Tending the fire

Trying to coax the flames brighter and hotter in the fireplace, reminded me of how hard it is for me to tend the passions in my life. Today was a perfect case of how the minutiae, necessary though it may be, can sap the creative juice/motivation/time right out of me. The vocabulary of today included "Squamous cell," "plastic surgery," "leaky valve stem" and "broken oil gauge," Where was the time or energy to write? If I made the same effort to write that I make to build and tend the fire each night, I would have several novels written by now. Thank goodness for the idea of the small stone of mindful writing. Thank goodness for the fire, which, when tended, brings not only warmth, but also good cheer. May the flames of creativity burn brighter tomorrow than they did today.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

I don't own any diamonds. I did own two and I have given them both away. Today, I was sitting in the kitchen reading through a print-out of my 30 page transcription of my great, great, great Uncle Cyrus Stone's letters, when all of a sudden, the the sun brightened the room and I looked up to see the willow tree festooned with snow crystals. The whole landscape sparkled with millions of diamonds, and they were all mine for a moment.

Mindful Writing Day 2

The snow today came down in flakes the size of a quarter. It didn't take long for all the branches and every available surface to be covered with the large sticky flakes. My "small stone moment" came as I stood looking at the birdfeeder through the curtain of snow and realized that a red-bellied woodpecker was hanging on to a feeder, occasionally opening his beak to catch a snowflake. I grabbed my camera and caught him in all different positions. It was as if we were playing hide and go seek, as he hid behind the snow-covered iron prong of the feeder.

On Being a Parent

I admit that I have been naive about parenting from the get-go. For some reason I thought babies stopped crying when they reached the 3 month mark. (That was akin to thinking that nausea stopped after the first 3 months of pregnancy). That was just the first of many things I thought I knew, and after 41 years, I’m still learning.

Aside from the millions of things I learned about parenting during the kids’ growing-up years, my next big educational moment came when they left for college. I expected to miss them, and I did. I didn’t expect to have to still discipline them, but an episode of driving (a very short distance, admittedly) after having too much to drink prompted the removal of car privileges at night for part of one summer.

On the other hand, there were plenty of demonstrations of adulthood at that point, such as barring me from attending appointments at the cardiologist, and finding jobs, roommates and places to live. These latter things I took for granted, something that parents of college graduates in recent years have not been able to do.

Thinking the kids safely launched, I believed my active parenting days were over. Oh sure, the phone still rang asking for a recipe or advice on cooking a turkey. Sometimes there were questions about a (grand)child’s developmental stage. When marriage difficulties occurred and a divorce ensued, my parenting became more active again.

Over the years, I have tried, and definitely not always successfully, to keep my mouth shut unless asked; to help think through the pros and cons of a situation; to be involved but not interfering and to be there to offer support, no matter what situation arose. Occasionally I have been able to offer financial support, usually in the form of a loan.

Nothing has reminded me more of my status as a continuing parent, than my daughter’s second pregnancy. I would rather be going through pregnancy again myself, than to witness her struggle in the last few weeks, particularly, when hip pain has become acute, labor pains have come and gone, worrisome data came out of one ultrasound (proved later to be unfounded), and in general, life has become much harder for her.

I am so delighted to be able to help out, and wish there was more I could do. She is now 5 days past her due date, and completely sleep deprived. She can barely walk, and bravely soldiers on. I can’t decide whether it’s harder to be at her house to witness all of it first hand, or harder to be at my house, not helping. Regardless of my location, I worry and lie awake myself in the wee hours. And I guess that trait will mark me for life as a parent. Or anyway as a mom.