Schmoopy

have your cake

The night before my birthday, I was lying in bed with Jimmy. We had just put Isabella to sleep, and as she lay peacefully between us, I whispered to him, "I'm not ready to be forty-one yet." Looking back, I do this every eve of my birthday. I try and hold on to that last bit of what was rather than see what is. Then of course, the day of my birthday comes and I accept my new status and do it all again the next year. It's a fleeting moment, this vicious circle, that I have every year, but I do have it.

That is why I realize that what I am about to say contradicts all that -- such is the constant debate taking place inside my mind.

Recently I was futzing around on Facebook, which is all too common these days, and I noticed one of my sweet friends (she will know who she is when she reads this and I send her big love) had updated her status with her new number. I also noticed that she said this year that she was "skipping the cake."

I could be completely off on this, but I took this to mean that she wasn't exactly celebrating her new number and it got me thinking about why we (women especially) place so much resistance on getting older.

I know we all have those birthdays that are more rough than others. For me, it was turning twenty-six and then thirty-five. When I turned 26, I remember feeling that all those things I should have accomplished before I reached 25 were still sitting there untouched. I had yet to obtain a college degree, I was nowhere close to having a career, was dating all the wrong guys, and I didn't even have my own apartment. I was feeling like a bit of a loser you could say.

What I was failing to see was that I was living in Alaska, one of the most majestic states in America, spending time with my new baby sister and experiencing the accomplishment of painting a large public wall mural for a local business. I was collecting experiences such as hiking during the midnight sun, driving around at 2:00 am with my father searching for the northern lights, fishing for halibut, tasting what it's like to sled with a pack of dogs and connecting with my truest self away from certain life pressures. All things that I now look back on as having significantly shaped who I am today.

Turning 35 was scary for me only because I was feeling sort of old, I suppose, and since then I haven't really put much effort into celebrating my own birthday; I spent many years "skipping the cake" as well. Of course now I look back and just want to smack embrace those girls and to help her at each stage try to clearly see the beauty of the moment.

Nowadays, I tend to see most things from the perspective of myself as an 80 year-old woman. I picture who I might be at that stage in my life and in those situations when I am seeking an answer to something, the question goes directly to her. I do this because I had one of my grandmothers die peacefully in her nineties, having lived a very rich life filled with love, laughter and friends right up until her last day and another grandmother die a somewhat traumatizing and not-so-peaceful death way too young. Before she went, she told me she was leaving with some regrets about her life ~ how she wished she had traveled more and taken more risks. I loved my grandmother very much, but the lesson I took from that experience is that I don't want to leave this life with those types of regrets. I choose to see my 80 year-old self as healthy, vibrant and still dancing, with the knowledge that I have truly lived.

I know she (myself as an 80-year old woman) would have much to say to the innocent 26 year-old me who thought she was supposed to already have the world figured out at such a tender age and I suspect she would also have much to offer the 35 year-old me who no longer saw the point in celebrating her own birthday.

So, even though I was resisting my  new number this year, as I am conditioned to do each year on my birthday, I also looked to my 80 year-old self and realize that I am still very much a fledgling at 41. I am only now feeling as if I am discovering who *I* truly am and know this is just the beginning of opening up myself to so much more. I am taking all my life experiences I have collected until this point and using them to write the next chapter of my life. I know that when I turn 51, 61, and 71, the story will continue to get more interesting and I will see what I truly have in this moment, at this tender age. And while I am not exactly running to have printed tees made that say "41! Hells Yeah!", I am recognizing that I am happiest where I am right now, in this moment, at this age, and that is a beautiful thing to acknowledge.

Someone very dear to me once told me that life gets better the better we get at it, and each year I find that his words ring more and more true. Getting older is an amazing gift, not the enemy as society would have us believe. I believe it is a gift because as we move closer to the end of our lives, we begin to truly live our lives with abandon. It becomes easier to give ourselves permission to soar and we become free.

Perhaps it's because we no longer give a damn what others might think or perhaps it is because we no longer believe we are invincible as we did, say when we were 18, and the precious gift of life takes on new and significant meaning. Saying no when we need to becomes easier, as does saying Yes.

My 80 year-old self is thrilled that I want to live in France for a year and claps like a little girl when she sees me taking risks that go against the norm of all the "shoulds" in this life.  She loves to see me dance each day with my daughter and reminds me that what we create and celebrate today is what builds our tomorrow.

Part of my motivation is to keep her smiling because when she and I do come face-to-face one day, I want to bring her a life spilling over with memorable stories, colorful experiences, real-life dreams, happiness, laughter and love above all.

I have been celebrating with cake for the past three days.

~~~~~~~~~

**A heartfelt Thank You so much for all the birthday wishes here and over on Facebook. Feeling all squishy over here.**

41

side dishes

1. White, 2. Table, 3. Saturday evening, 4. Pastel Dining Room

It's been nice taking a bit of a blogging break (both reading and writing) to focus on Isabella (more on her soon), try to get her on a new sleeping schedule (more on that soon), unravel, be quiet, do some laundry, kiss my husband, love on our kitty cat, visit some family and to work on breathing some life into some of my creative ideas. But I have missed being here and am ready to come back.

I am working on about five different projects simultaneously that I will talk about as soon as they are ready to be talked about. And while that might seem like a lot, I am so completely passionate about and in love with each one that it truly feels more like play than work.

Recently while working on one of these projects, I discovered that I needed a space to house the visual bits of inspiration I am collecting as part of my research. A file on my computer would have worked just fine, but I quickly decided that I was having so much fun collecting images that it was too good not to share with you all.

So a few days ago, the visual blog for the Heartfull Kitchen was created for a bit of kitchen therapy. I hope to be announcing more of what this is all about in the coming months as it comes together but for now it's all about daily doses of delicious eye candy that focuses on the kitchen: the creative studio for culinary artists. The only text involved will be to credit the source and the focus will be mainly on artful kitchen spaces.

Head on over and let me know what you think. For those who have kitchen lust as much as I do, may you enjoy.

today:: breathe

in Maezen's garden

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."

~  Siddhartha Buddha

a father's words

You may have noticed that I've been taking a mini-break of sorts on my blog for the past couple weeks. I'm posting my images, but borrowing the words of prolific writers and poets to pair them with. My thoughts have been somewhat incohesive and I find myself turning more to my private journal in recent days to see if I can decipher all the random bits taking place within. I trust that once we work out the sleeping situation around here things will run a bit more smoothly, but for now, a bit of a blogging break is working for me and is what I need currently.

If you could hear me speak in my talking voice right now, you would probably just laugh as the sentences coming out of my mouth lately consist of stringing words together such as, "I've seen her does it." and "I'll has the soup."

Charming.

While I realize that writing gives us a chance to edit the gems which fall from our mouths and allows us to build a more architecturally aesthetic wall of words that support our thoughts so to speak, I thought it best to give my mind (and body) a bit of a rest and use the words of those much wiser for a bit.

Today, Fathers' Day, is no exception.

I thought it might be fun and insightful to read some thoughts from some father's themselves (and one father-to-be), since it's something I could never write about. So I asked a few very special men in my life if they would consider writing about fatherhood from their perspective. To my sweet surprise, I heard back from a few.

Both Brandon and Jason mean the world to Jimmy and me, and in my perfect world we would all be next door neighbors. I have known them both as long as I have known Jimmy which is going on twelve years now. Brandon was our wedding officiant and he and Jimmy played in a band together while they were both living in Austin, TX. Jason is someone I consider a kindred and I am pretty confident that if he were to ask anything of Jimmy and me, we would do it, no questions asked.

Rama is someone I am just getting to know more. He makes it easy with his giving spirit and gentle heart. He and his lovely wife (who I am also a gushing fan of) are expecting their first child in August. I look forward to spending more time with the three of them.

Witnessing my own husband become a father has opened my heart wider. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what kind of daddy he would be, but I had truly had no idea until she arrived. I truly think she is the luckiest little girl in the world to have Jimmy for her daddy. I am pretty lucky too.

I loved reading their thoughts so much about being father's and I am so excited to share their soulful wisdom here. Thank you so much Brandon, Jason, Rama & Jimmy. You dudes seriously rock.

Happy Father's Day. Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Brandon

Brandon, Gabriel and Rowan ~  San Francisco, CA

I've known that I wanted to be a dad since I was ten years old.
That's when my family adopted the older of my two sisters. I was
hooked. Ironically, I had to wait 25 years after that until I
actually became a father. The experience has been everything I
expected and a lot more that I didn't.

Being a father has forced me to confront myself, my actions, and my
goals. I've always had a complicated mix of deep-rooted insecurities
and supreme self-confidence, and fatherhood has shown me that I
don't have the time, and don't want to spend the energy, on being
insecure. Part of that is wanting to demonstrate for my sons a
confidence that they can emulate so that they don't let self-doubt
stop them from pursuing their dreams. Part of it is that I have a
different perspective that has liberated me from some of those
insecurities. I should also add that my wife has done a lot of the
same thing for me.

I used to have horrible panic attacks during which I thought I was
about to die. I haven't had any since my first child was born.

I'm in a band, race a car with my friends, remodeled my kitchen and
bathroom, and have finally started exercising again, in large part
because I believe that our children follow our examples more than
our words, and I want them to see that life is all about
possibilities, and they should pursue whatever they dream about.
Even if it's baseball or musical theater. (For those who don't know
me, I should clarify that watching either is my own little hell on
earth.)

My boys have also galvanized my beliefs. I have become wholly
intolerant of intolerance because I now see it as poisoning the
world that my sons will inherit. But, I also realize that my
experience of the world will not be theirs, and I don't want them to
put themselves on guard for negative experiences that may never
come. So, I intend to wait until they experience life's ugliness
rather than fill them up preemptively with the lessons I've learned.
One of my most fervent hopes for them is that they will be open-
hearted men, ready to let the world in and experience as much of it
as possible.

They have shown me how complicated our relationships with our
parents are and given me insight into why this is so. One of my sons
is much more like his mother than me, and the other much more like
me. Each finds his own way of exasperating me, but each has
captivated me, too. My biggest challenge as a parent will be
resisting the urge to recognize and categorize their traits and let
that affect how I respond to them.

I look forward to seeing who they will become and what they'll do.

Brandon lives with his wife, Jenn, and their two sons, Gabriel and Rowan in San Francisco, CA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jason

Sweet Magnolia ~ Austin, TX

I'll be the first to admit that lately I haven't always been the most patient parent. Magnolia, our almost-two year old daughter,  is barreling into toddlerhood with all the small but often grating assertions of separateness that accompany that stage. Where she was once pliant and susceptible to our suggestions she has become strong-willed and independent-minded. Which I am all for, in general principle.

But practically it means that where I was once able to quickly move us through a morning of diaper changes, fresh clothes, and then breakfast and the all-important coffee, it now takes an hour just to get her diaper changed. I suggest that we change it, then we have to read a book of her choosing a dozen times, play a couple of kissing and tickling games, talk about the dogs walking down the street, and get a drink of water. And still, after all that, the only place I can get her to change her diaper and clothes is our front porch, where mysteriously different rules seem to apply.

We had a now-typical middle-of-the-night conversation a couple of weeks ago that went something like this.

Magnolia: "Goat milk!"
Me: "You want some goat milk?"
Magnolia: "No goat milk!"
Me: "Grrrr. Just drink the milk."

At which point I hand her the glass and she promptly drains it.

Add in a dash of job stress and a pinch of life and you've got a recipe for some yummy grumpy daddy. It's not like I'm always exploding or anything, more like I just find it really hard to be emotionally available to my daughter in those moments when she clearly needs me the most. I can feel the resentment welling up -- why won't she just do what I want her to do right now?!?

Last week we made the mistake of trying to have dinner at a restaurant, where it became very clear how much our situation has changed. Up to this point, we have been able to have dinner out on a regular basis. Not nice restaurants, mind you, but not fast food either. We had become regulars at several of our local diners.

But it was not meant to be this night. There was no getting her into the high chair. Not much eating. Zero peace.

What there was plenty of was running circles around the restaurant with me or Amy trying to catch her before she plowed into one of the waitresses carrying a tray of food. When we got ahold of her we tried to sit back down at our table, Magnolia in Amy's lap. But Maggie was having none of it -- squirm, kick, squirm, twist, squirm, WHACK! A porcelain bowl of strawberries went flying, landing on the floor and shattering into hundreds of pieces. The whole place went quiet as a dozen heads turned to look at us.

The anger was upon me, rising with my embarrassment. Just turn back around and mind your own goddamn business! I glared at Maggie, ready to make sure she knew how annoyed I was by all of this. But she had this look of shock on her face -- the noise, the sudden quiet, the sudden shift in mommy and daddy's energy. She rubbed her eyes as she squirmed, the sure sign that she is tired.

And suddenly I was back in my own childhood. I went through a young phase where I knocked over a glass pretty much every time we went out to dinner. Not intentionally of course, I would just get excited or tired or whatever and my attention would wander and the next thing I knew there was iced tea spreading across the table and my own dad glaring at me and demanding to know why I wasn't more careful. My mom would try and calm him down, and I would just sit there feeling ashamed and stupid. I didn't MEAN to.

And there in front of me was Maggie, rubbing her eyes and squirming and sending a pretty strong message that she was not able to deal with that environment at that moment. The situation snapped into focus. It had been a full day, she was tired already when we got there and she's just at an age when she has trouble sitting still. We had set up this situation and now here we were. And my daughter needed help with whatever was going on in her young mind. The anger disappeared.

We quietly agreed it was time to go and got our stuff together while the very nice staff cleaned up the shards of bowl.

As I'm writing this, looking back, I'm struck again by the transportive power of that moment. For me, it's one of the most unexpected parts of being a father. I so often find myself thrust back into the situations that were the scenes of my own childhood dramas, and in those moments when I can remember that I have a choice about how to react I find that I can do things differently. I don't have to blindly repeat the way I was parented. I can make a conscious decision to do it the way I wish my parents had been able to.  And in choosing I am healed.

As a father, I'm thrilled that we have father's day. What dad can pass up a chance to have a good beer and play with his new grilling utensils? But while we're celebrating fathers, I'd also like to take a moment to celebrate fatherhood, to quietly acknowledge the way that being a father can help us learn to just be. That, in and of itself, is one hell of a gift.

Jason lives with his wife, Amy, and their daughter, Magnolia, in Austin, TX.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rama

As an expectant father, I really don't feel qualified to speak about fatherhood itself. I am so excited to become a dad though and I can tell you about that.

My impending fatherhood didn't seem real until I found out that our baby would be a boy. That day was a whirlwind of emotion but my very first thought was "We are going to have so much fun!" Over the next few weeks, memories of my own boyhood came rushing back to me. I felt enormously grateful to my parents for the happy childhood that they gave me. I had the impossible feeling that I could even improve my childhood by being a better father than my father was. I know that's not true but I felt it. I still feel it. That I am about to relive my youth but in a different and much more powerful role.

It's really hard to explain but, when I think about fatherhood, I can't get this image out of my head: A spiral. I have traveled almost one full loop around the spiral and, as I zoom past the starting point, I suddenly realize that I have entered my father's role and my son is entering the spiral itself. Does that make sense? Like our lives are songs, sung in the round. As I complete my boyhood song, my son begins his, and I begin to sing my father's song. Someday, if my son becomes a dad, I will get to live life in my grandfather's shoes. And so on. Taking turns throughout history.

Rama lives with his wife, Christine, and her currently swelling, baby-filled belly in Los Angeles, CA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jimmy

 

Fatherhood has shown me love. I not only love more now that I am a father than I ever have, but I love more than I thought I ever could.

Jimmy lives with me, lucky me, and our daughter, Isabella, in Los Angeles, CA

happiness

roses in bloom ~ four in a series of four

"You don't have to wait for happiness, because there's no time but now to be happy.
You don't have to go somewhere else, because there's no place but here to find it.
You don't have to do something else, because there's nothing more to it.
You don't have to get something else, because everything you already have is enough.
You just have to be happy"

~ Karen Maezen Miller

The Wild Rose

roses in bloom ~ three in a series of four

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart.

Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,

and once again I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.

-by Wendell Berry, for his wife

gentle release of a long time friend

roses in bloom ~ two in a series of four

When your friend speaks her mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when she is silent your heart ceases not to listen to her heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in her may be clearer in her absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

~ Kahlil Gibran (with all the he's changed to she's for the purpose of my story)

bloom

roses in bloom ~ one in a series of four

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

~ Anais Nin

road trip

I'm going to be away from this space for a bit, Isabella and I are heading on a week-long road trip to visit family. She gets to swim and be spoiled by her grandparents, I am going to try and get some work done and fill up on some home cooking.

This past week has been a pretty emotional one.  I was seeking a distraction and responded to Susannah's post offering five questions just for fun. If you would like five of your own, leave a comment here and I will try to dream up some juicy ones while sailing down the open road.

What part of your pregnancy did you enjoy the most?
Oh wow, this is actually a difficult question to answer for a few reasons. I truly did embrace my entire pregnancy, yes even the swollen legs and gestational diabetes. It's hard to isolate one part but I remember feeling giddy whenever she would move. To me it was her way of communicating with me, letting me know all was okay and she was on her way. I would be focusing on something, either at work or elsewhere, and all of a sudden she would start to wiggle and squirm and I would just stop and smile with my hand on my belly thinking equally how alien wild and beautiful that feeling was.

When you come to visit me in Bath, what would you like to do first (and what shall we make for dinner?)
There are so many things I can't wait to do when I visit you in Bath (peruse your book collection, lick the wallpaper at Jaime's, have you read me poetry while we sip wine) but in true Susannah fasion, the first thing I want to do is have you take a polaroid shot of our feet.

I rarely get a chance to do it, but I love cooking with friends. There is such a sense of accomplishment to working alongside someone, taking fresh ingredients and turning it into art that nourishes your body. Much more fun than a restaurant and the wine is as free-flowing as you wish it to be.

I love the idea of an indoor picnic. I am thinking we might keep it simple and make a huge pot of veggie curry and some quinoa, skip the table, curl up on pillows on the floor with plenty of wine and a good mix of music.

Madonna or Cyndi Lauper?
I adore Cyndi Lauper but I am a Madonna girl all the way. Love her.

Do you think there's life on other planets?
I do. I would have a hard time believing otherwise. The universe is too vast to even entertain the idea that there is only life on one planet out of the countless solar systems out there.

Tell us about your first ever smooch..... :)
Hmmmm...I'm afraid it's neither a sweet or romantic story. I was in junior high school, such an awkward time in general, and my friend at the time liked this boy whose name escapes me. One night I was spending the night at her house and this boy and his friend came over. In hindsight, I realize now I was her wingman. She took off with the boy she liked and I was stuck with his friend. His name was Bill (I think) and he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. It was dark but the moon was out and I could not have been less attracted to him. Not even a little. So we went for a walk. I was talking nervously and the next thing I knew he planted one on me... with tongue. It was disgusting. I thought for sure I would never kiss anyone again after that.

Luckily, I did decide to keep kissing and the stories become sweeter, romantic and juicier from there.

********
I have been listening to Sia's Beautiful Calm Driving all day... just in time for a road trip.