Author: Judy Hanawalt (Page 6 of 23)

I’m a city girl, but I relish the country life.  I love making my own–whether it’s growing tomatoes, baking bread, brewing kombucha or sprouting seeds. Using what I have at home to provide for family needs brings a sense of simplicity and independence. It’s satisfying to assemble good ingredients or materials and combine them to create something wholesome and nourishing.

As a kid, I loved going to visit my cousins who lived in a tiny town in Michigan, closer to farm than city. My aunt sewed and canned and gardened. She is my mother’s sister, and the two of them called themselves the Country Mouse and the City Mouse. My mom was a good cook and created a lovely, inviting home, but she was a shopper rather than a do-it-herselfer; she was not a gardener or a seamstress, unless it was to decorate.

One summer when I went to visit my cousins, my mom wanted me to have nice new clothes for my Barbie doll because she knew I would be playing dolls with my cousins–two girls,  one a little older and one a little younger. I arrived proud of the plastic-sealed packages of fashions and accessories for Barbie that I had picked out, and excited to play with my cousins.

My aunt, who had a dry sense of humor, looked at them and teased me about how fancy my city Barbie would be among her country cousins, who wore homemade Barbie clothes made from fabric scraps. I was embarrassed then about my flimsy, trendy doll clothes, feeling as out-of-place as Barbie surely would, the city cousin who didn’t know how to fit into the country life.

My cousins loved the new, fresh additions to the collection, though; they were happy to trade their sturdy but boring practical items for my impractical, exciting ones, at least for a little while.

Their way of life was different and appealing to me. I loved ranging through the small town where my cousins seemed to know everyone, playing outside much of the day. I was fascinated that my aunt would make their milk–using powered milk and water–and everything else from scratch.

I think now that the teasing about being a Country Mouse and a City Mouse may have come from comparisons and insecurities that I didn’t understand as a child; maybe they meant Poor Mouse and Rich Mouse, although it was personality more than actual income driving the differences. More accurate titles might have been Thrifty Mouse and Sophisticated Mouse.

I still feel somewhere between the two, loving the different kinds of simplicity and complexity in both city and country life.

Kombucha and sprouts are two projects that appeal to both the country mouse and the city mouse in me. Kombucha is fermented tea, made by brewing  a gallon of black tea, adding a cup of sugar, and letting it sit for 3 or 4 weeks with a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, a fleshy blob that looks like a slimy mushroom, but grosser)–or “mother”–bubbling away on top. The SCOBY consumes the sugar, turning the sweet tea into a tangy, probiotic drink. People love it or hate it; it tastes like apple cider vinegar.

Sprouts are easy to grow. A few tablespoons of alfalfa or radish seeds in a jar with a mesh lid grows into a jar full of fresh sprouts in a week. They just need to be rinsed twice a day under the faucet to water them and keep them growing. I recently bought an Easy Sprouter to make it even simpler.

I can’t get seem to keep them going, though. I start a batch of kombucha and bottle it, then I either start a new one right away and end up with too much, or I wait and don’t get around to it. There has been a SCOBY floating  in a jar in the back of my fridge for a long time; I just looked it up and found out they can last a year that way, so I still have a little more time.

Sprouts are the same way. I make a batch, bag it and put it the fridge, start a new one, and end up with too many, or I wait until we’ve finished eating one crop and forget to start another, and we run out. Before I know it, time has passed and my seeds aren’t fresh. It’s not as rewarding because only half of them sprout, and my crop is peppered with hard, dead seeds.

When I’m making kombucha and sprouts, I have to keep brewing and rinsing and drinking and eating so I don’t run out and I don’t waste. I can get all the processes humming along for a little while until something distracts me or throws me off–a weekend away, a cold, a good book–and it’s over. It’s not a matter of busyness, because these endeavors only require a few minutes a day, if that. It’s more a matter of concentration, of organization and focus. Maybe it’s a lack of necessity. I don’t have to make them, because it’s easy to go to the grocery store–even the main-stream, non-health-food stores–and buy products that are good.

I love the satisfaction of doing it myself, the independence and thriftiness, but often,  I find that I am my  mother’s daughter after all, and I buy them, content to know that I could make them if I wanted to.

It’s been a wet year so far in the Bay Area. Rain, rain, rain–and the drought is officially over.

Drought has been a way of life for as long and I can remember. Usually state officials and experts say, yes, it’s been a lot of rain, but we are still in a drought pattern and the rain may not carry over to next year. We have to wait until we have enough. We have to wait until we’ve had enough for several years in a row. 

Now, suddenly, it’s over in our part of California. Reservoirs are full and overflowing, snowpack is at record levels, and it’s only January.

I don’t know how to live without being in a drought. Do we take longer showers and put in pools and fountains? Do we plant water-loving plants instead of succulents and hose down our porch and steps? Do we wash our cars in the street without a bucket? Do we flush every time and let the water run when we brush our teeth?

Maybe I  have Post Drought Syndrome. I feel like the depression-era people who continued to live frugally after living through the depression. It’s hard to feel comfortable with abundance after living with scarcity.

My grandparents were in their young-adult years in the Great Depression in the United States. Their stories were fascinating to me as a child: how they had to stretch small amounts of canned corn beef or tuna into casseroles for the whole family and make fake apple pie with Ritz crackers and spices when apples were scarce, and search through the cushions of every chair and couch hoping to find a few coins dropped there by careless visitors so they could treat themselves to an ice cream cone.

It wasn’t a specific story or action that I remember most, it was a mindset: There might not be more, so we have to be careful with what we have. Throwing things away or wasting food made them uncomfortable, like the sound of a neighbor’s water gushing unattended makes me.

Last summer I heard that sound and traced it to water pouring down the next-door driveway. I opened the side-yard gate and followed the stream into the backyard to investigate. I found the hose on the back patio running full-blast.

“What the hell?!?” I yelled as I cranked the faucet closed. The words had just burst out of my mouth when I saw the precious drops being squandered in what I assumed was my neighbor’s absence.

Once the water was off, I calmed down and looked around, noticing for the first time the open sliding door. I ran back out to the street. The renters who were living there were from another country, perhaps one without water problems. Maybe it was on for the small children to play in, or maybe the kids had turned it on and left. Embarrassed by my reaction to wasted water, I crept back into my house, hoping they hadn’t seen me, but pretty sure they had heard me.

That same summer, driving to the house of some friends, we noticed that everyone in their neighborhood had brown grass; they had stopped watering because of the water shortage. We were playing Petanque after dinner in their water-friendly backyard, and while I waited for my turn, I stood on tiptoes to peek over the fence into their neighbor’s backyard, curious about the size or layout–or just nosey. I was shocked to see lush, green grass covering their yard, thick and moist, in stark contrast to the dead front lawn.

I gestured for my friend to come see; she was shocked, but we kept our voices to a whisper, in case they were outside. I’m not sure if she has forgiven the duplicity of her neighbor’s public austerity and private indulgence yet. We were all supposed to be sharing what little there was.

Today, I stood in the running  shower for a long time, my mind drifting, feeling a little guilty about the water flowing down the drain, but letting it go anyway, tired of worrying about it. The drought is over, just like that.

I rejoice that there is no longer a shortage, but I almost wish they hadn’t told us. It’s a little too easy to go back to my wasting ways. I hope it makes me a less judgmental neighbor, though.

Tonight I will be watching election returns. This presidential election season has been painful and long, with angry, ugly rhetoric within parties, between candidates, on social media–and even between family and friends. Everyone is afraid; fearful of losing something or not having enough, or of someone else having too much, convinced that disaster is looming.

I can’t wait for it to be over, but I’m also worried.

I have liked watching our political process unfold on election night for as long as I can remember. I enjoy making a festive fall meal and gathering ’round the television to see the drama of precincts reporting and races being called when enough votes are counted, electoral votes tipping toward one candidate or the other, and California numbers finally coming in as closing time at the polls moves across the time zones. It is important; it matters who our president is.

As a child, I walked with my parents to the polling place near our house, the wobbly voting booths set up in a neighbor’s garage. It felt like a holiday, the whole family participating in this national event. An air of secrecy surrounded the little curtained cubbies; no one asked or told how they had voted. My mom was never much interested in politics, so my dad would study the issues and she would vote just like he did, trusting that he knew best.

The first time I voted in Berkeley, my husband and I had been married only five months, and we walked down the street from our little apartment near Cal to our polling place in a fraternity house. We stood in line and took our turn marking the ballot in the cardboard voting stations. Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale were the candidates. We walked back to our apartment, adjusted the rabbit ears on our little TV, and ate stuffed green peppers as we watched the returns come in.

It always feels like a contest, but I have been certain in the past that whoever wins, we will ultimately remember that we are all in this together, and in January, we will rise above the differences and disappointments to inaugurate the new president. I am proud of the way the system works. This year, it feels different. There is a desperate and mean spirit that threatens the peaceful transfer of power.

I’ve been feeling anxious, not just about the outcome, but about the deep divide in our country, and the way we’ve been talking to and about each other.  How can we recover? There are rumors of violence if it goes one way and not another. It seems almost impossible to go back to normal life after this bitter fight.

Sunday I was feeling sick, literally.

I wanted to stay home from church and sleep, but I sensed that my headache and malaise was at least partly emotional, and decided to get up and go in hopes of finding some encouragement there. The service was fine, but there was no obvious fix for my funk. I can’t remember exactly what stirred this thought, but as the last song was being sung, a little bit of hope broke through at this simple realization: No matter who wins this election, I can keep doing what’s important to me.

Later that afternoon, I sat down to mark my sample ballot–I needed to review what is up for a vote besides the presidency and try to make sense of all the propaganda that has been crammed into my mailbox the last several weeks. It felt good to sit down with all the information–ah, the wonders of the internet!–and choose what I believe to be best.

I voted, and if my candidate wins, we’ll pop the champagne; if not, shots will be more in keeping with the mood, but I don’t even want to think about that.

The work of building community, bringing light and hope to the hurting, feeding the hungry and seeking justice for the oppressed can continue regardless of what happens in this election. I can turn off the news and keep doing what comes my way, responding to the people I meet.

That gives me something to hold onto when the future feels uncertain; it is a small way to move toward healing in my corner of the world when chaos threatens.

On a stormy weekend last spring, I walked through a labyrinth made of stones in the rain of the Santa Cruz mountains, pacing around and around, back and forth, closer and farther from the center. Giant redwoods stood all around me, silent and still except for a steady dripping of raindrops through their needles. I love labyrinths. I can’t get lost; as long as I keep moving, I will come to the center. It’s not trying to trick me or mislead me like a maze. The point is the path, staying on the path.

As I walked, a question kept pushing into my thoughts. What do I need to let go of? What do I need to release?

I collected some sticks that the storm had knocked down into the path from the trees overhead. They were covered in beautiful moss, lacy and green and curling. I chose one first, then another and another, holding them together in a beautiful moss bouquet. My collection grew, and I decided to keep them and bring them home to enjoy. As I was walking back, I crossed over a bridge with a stream below, moving fast and muddy from the rain. Water brings thoughts of time and life and the relentless forward movement of our path, our journey.

Suddenly, this thought came to me:  I don’t need to possess my moss bouquet to enjoy it. I dropped it into the stream, watched it fall, lost track of it in the current. This is what I needed to let go of: Possessing.

I try to hold on to my kids, my time, my relationships, my life. I want to freeze them, save them, preserve them. I want to avoid any change, but that is actually a state closer to death than life. I can journey through life with the people I love, but I can’t make life stop so I can hold on to them. Living is walking my path intentionally, experiencing it without wasting time trying to keep it.

I felt such a lightness letting those beautiful sticks fall, knowing that they were where they belonged, and I didn’t have to keep clutching them, crushing them muddy-handed. I took the path up and out of the woods, past several other mossy branches that caught my eye, but I left them where they were, welcoming the freedom that came from appreciating them without holding on to them .

Glacier ice is a deep, bright blue, like a giant gemstone encrusted with snow. The dense, compacted ice almost glows; there are no air bubbles trapped inside to dull the pure blue. When a large slab shears off and crashes down,  the gunshot sound of cracking ice hangs in that air as the pieces cascade in slow motion. It is breathtaking.

I was on a cruise ship in Glacier Bay National Park with two lifelong friends. We three have seen each other through junior high and high school, with its acne and Farrah Fawcett hair, crushes and breakups, fashion hits and misses, homework and dances, and assorted moments of angst and embarrassment.

We weren’t together when our huge cruise ship drew up beside the glacier for the passengers to snap pictures in the frigid air. Every railing on the glacier side was lined with tourists craning to see the huge river of ice. When the crack of the ice breaking off rang out, there was a collective gasp of wonder. After marveling at the sight of the calving alone, surrounded by the strangers I happened to be standing by, I ran to the spa to find my friends.

We had separated earlier; I wanted to sit in a chair on the deck with a lap robe and a coffee and read, one wanted to run on the treadmill in the ship gym, and another wanted to relax on one of the heated-tile spa beds. When I got there, they had already left.

I met up with them on the top deck, and was relieved that they had left the spa in time to see the calving; the runner saw the glacier from her treadmill by the window and grabbed the relaxer from her spa nap. I was also feeling guilty that I stayed by the railing to watch the glacier alone instead of racing to find them and make sure we saw it together. We were here to do everything together.

We were having a great time, sharing our little room with two twin beds and one bunk that pulled down from the wall at night. We drank wine around the table on our small balcony, we woke up to hot coffee delivered to our stateroom in the morning, served with a little pitcher of warmed milk, and we tried out all the dining rooms. When the boat docked, we took trips together to see whales bubble-net feeding, to whiz through trees full of bald eagles on a zip line, to take a gold-rush era train to the Klondike, to hike to a melt pond with clear chunks of glassy ice at the foot of a glacier, and to drink beer made from spruce tips at a local brewery. It  was beautiful and wild, the air clean and pure.

I needed a little space, though. My long time friends didn’t recognize this introverted side of their extroverted friend. It became a joke, the kind that covers a little irritation–I was trying to snatch a few minutes alone, and they wanted to hang together. We were on this cruise to celebrate our 50th birthdays, not to hide out alone.

This need to take some time alone to process and recharge, to catch up with my own thoughts, wasn’t a new thing, but I haven’t always recognized the need and acted on it. In the past, I ignored the crowded feeling inside and kept pushing to keep up with everyone until I was exhausted and cranky. It took until almost 50 to interpret the feelings and learn how to bow out of some activities in order to fully engage in the rest of the time together.

It was just one moment among many, many moments together that week, but I can’t shake the feeling that I was selfish, choosing to watch the glacier alone rather than making sure we all were included in the experience, waiting to find them until the show was over.

I do wish I had been standing beside my true-blue friends when the glacier gave birth to its bouncing baby ice bergs, turning to them in the excitement of the moment instead of the nice lady who thought I was lonely and invited me to eat dinner with her. The trick, I suppose, it to pick the right time to soothe my inner introvert.

Compression that leaves no space for air bubbles makes glacier ice brilliant. Even my closest relationships, though, benefit from some well-placed air pockets to keep them solid.