Tiananmen Square

I have blurry memories of watching the protests in Tiananmen Square on television.  My mom is coded into these memories somehow.  The voices are muffled with age, but I can remember being told what was unfolding on the screen before me.   I understood that history was being made.  And then there is nothing.  It goes blank.  I know now that the nothing marked the Chinese government's crackdown and then their whitewashing campaign.  That kind of stuff works really well on an eight year old American.

It's surprising the break it affords me to look at the big picture and remember what happened in that Square twenty-five years ago in a country so far away.  What a relief it is to step outside myself and to consider what life was like for those students.  It's easy to get caught up in the rat race that life can be when you do it next to so many other people.  The questions I ask myself seem weighty at times.  Do I have enough children?  Do I have too many children?  Am I teaching them enough?  Am I doing enough?  But when I remember these people I never met, whose lives were so short, the same questions seem so lighthearted and also insulated.

Springtime in Tiananmen Square, 1989 is the article I read yesterday.  So aptly named.  So much can happen while the sun shines down on you.  This June will mark the passing of seven years since my mother was alive.  I don't know if that is a short or a long time.  There are still a few items I have of hers that carry her smell.  I still have a number of the things she gave me over the years.  My watercolors.  An old swimsuit I can't throw away.  And there are things I have that should still be hers.  Her jewelry box.  Her china.  I know that Naomi's "naturally curly hair" was for her alone.  And Verity.  Well, at least she would be trying to pull up all the plantings in Marmie's garden instead of mine.

The years that have passed have brought great and slow change.  It's taken many years to begin to see her again without the backdrop of what took her from us.  It's taken me this many years plus a few more to look forward to seeing her again.  It's all taking a really long time.  Maybe longer than I expected.  Certainly longer that the world allows you.  On my good days I can see how blessed I am.  And on my bad days it goes downhill really fast.  I'm still learning from her and learning about her, I know.  On most occasions when I'm going crazy about one thing or another I know she would tell me not to worry about it.  I'm trying awfully hard not to.   

The Meal Plan | 05.19.14 | No Big Deal

Monday:  Cauliflower Fritters

Tuesday:  Baked Beans with Cornbread 

Wednesday:  Curried Split Pea Dahl over Rice.  Again.

Thursday:  Kusheri -Egyptian Lentils and Rice topped with a Red Sauce and Sauteed Onions

Friday:  High hopes for burritos made by somebody else.  

Eric will probably call to check in before he boards his plane to come back home.  I'm hoping for a text.  Because I have nothing to say.  I've envisioned answering the presumed call sounding upbeat and entirely positive, like it's been no big deal doing a weekend plus a Monday on my own.  But I can't do that because I'm tired and I'm really bad at pretending otherwise.  It's in part a tribute to how helpful he is.  It's in part a tribute to the age and stage N and V are currently at.  I will never be the person that says motherhood is the hardest job in the world.  But it is an endless job, and most of the time a thankless job.  I don't mean that I want more flowers on Mother's Day.  I mean that practically speaking when your daughter is crying at 4:30 in the morning because she is sleeping in a puddle of pee and she wakes up her roommate and by the time you get back in bed you realize the birds have begun to sing, no one is going to thank you for doing such great work.  This is why God gave us coffee.  To reward us for doing such great work.  

Regardless of all that, today is a great day because this afternoon we are planting our garden!  Tomatoes, basil and flowers in abundance.  And for experimentation, I'm also scattering a mix of mesclun seeds!  I'm most excited about that.  

Destination Unknown

I buckled the girls in this morning not knowing exactly were we were headed.  My cup holder needed a coffee -that much I knew.  It splashed on my jeans, it splashed all around.  We gave a new tune and a new verse to our bike song.  And with them in front and me behind I was left to my thoughts.  

p.s.  I didn't think that was worthy of a post, but Verity did.  I'll go with it. :)

The Meal Plan | 05.11.14

Monday:  leftovers -I'm stretching the tikka masala from Friday with diced potatoes.  

Tuesday:  Curried Split Peas over rice.  A mainstay.  

Wednesday:  Chilaquiles Cassarole -a new bean recipe from Moosewood Restaurant Favorites

Thursday:  Savory Crepes.  A new mainstay.

Friday:  The Weekly Lentil -back to the soup I believe.  

Against all odds I executed my meal plan last week.  The crepes were a hit.  The idea came from a friend who reminded me that sweet potatoes are not the only vegetable I could put in them.  She fills them with whatever she has on hand and now we do too.  I will not again try to cut one egg from my crepe batter -it made them flimsy.  But I will fill the last four with nutella again.
And he pizza dough was great -Van Boven's measurements are spot on.  I need to share that one with you.

Onward we go.  I'm behind the ball already with more than one forgotten appointment that now fills my week.  I made myself go to the grocery store this morning so we are ready in one small way.

   

On Nicknames And The Machine

I have never been one to name a vehicle.  My first car, a grey Volvo lives on as my forever password -a password so good that my sister who co-owned the car with me now uses it too.  (We are aware that this is a negligent security situation.)  Subsequent vehicles were either too red or too blue.  It all seemed so forced.  There was a time in life when your friends asked you, "Does it have a name?"  And it seemed to matter.  I'm glad those days are over.  The peer-pressure to name your vehicle.  Was that a point of anxiety for anybody else?  Someone cooler who had thought up the perfect name for his or her car was usually in your company and suddenly your car was so boring.  And there you stood as its owner too boring, too careless to bother.  How could you?

But really, the pressure's off.  Nicknames are to be stumbled upon.  They are handed down to you.  It can't happen any other way, as far as I'm concerned.

I always wanted a nickname growing up.  Didn't we all?  There is something wonderful about terms of endearment.  I remember, how could I forget, when my favorite summer camp counselor rustled my hair while I stood in the canteen line and called me "buddy."  Actually it was "Hey, buddy."  With an intonation somewhere between an exclamation point and the solidarity of a period.  Like we'd been friends forever but he was still really excited to see me.  After I begrudgingly moved ahead in line, out of his jurisdiction, the girl next to me who witnessed the whole thing looked at me with mouth wide open.  I met her with a dropped jaw.  Did that really just happen to me?

Inconsequential attempts were made in high school to assign me a nickname.  A few would stick on the soccer field, but mostly I was just "the twins."  I do not have a problem with this.  These days Eric calls me Melis which I like, but he is pretty sparing with its use.   That is a subject for another day -how speaking a person's name in greeting or in general conversation is falling out of fashion in this country.

I take you on this meandering trail to make an announcement.  I finally own a vehicle that has a nickname!  Even better, it's a bakfiets -a cargo bike and it's red.  The machine.  The nickname is courtesy of a friend of Eric's, an extremely likable Irish gentleman who happened by it one day.  "Is this your machine?" he asked.

It was previously owned by a young lady in Roxbury.  A single-mom, minding her own business, unschooling her son, cruising around Boston's rough patches on her bakfiets.  We exchanged stories, handed her a check and drove it off the lot.  Or rather Eric biked it home.  We installed some harnesses and bought some WD40.  We brought it to Bicycle Belle for a new back break and rear tire and she sails again.

I am beaming.  I am grunting up hills I didn't know were there.  We ring the bell.  We are waving.  People are staring.  They are smiling.  We have a bike song.  We are having so much fun.

It does come with challenges.   Although steering is not one of them.  You wouldn't believe how easy it is to drive.  It is heavy and the center of gravity is low, so tipping isn't an option.  Pedaling is another story.  It's less of a recreational ride than I envisioned and more like a work horse and I'm the horse.  I tried to explain to Naomi while I was pedaling how hard I am working to get us home and it silenced whatever request she was making.  Also, everything is taking longer that I estimate.  Loading Naomi and Verity into the bucket takes some time.  Helmets need adjusting, harnesses need tightening.  We go slower than I estimate.  Which leads me to my next challenge.  It's becoming Verity's new favorite place to nap.  I need to get a water-gun, for real.  But I'm not sure that would work.

One thing is for sure:  Our radius just got a lot bigger.  

I'd like to thank those individuals who encouraged me to follow my dream of owning a bakfiets on the outskirts of Amsterdam.  ;)

The Meal Plan | 05.05.14 | Eat Local-er

Monday:  Black Bean Salad over Quinoa.  A Trader Joe's recipe.  Satisfying and pretty.  

Tuesday:  Pizza.  Recipe from Homemade Winter.    

Wednesday:  The Weekly Lentil. 

Thursday:  Crepes filled with roasted vegetables. 

Friday:  Vegetarian Tikka Masala.  My sister turned this into a vegetarian dish with cauliflower and chickpeas and it was delicious.

I thought of my grandfather today while I sliced corn off the cob.  In May.  He once watched me score an avocado and feed it to Verity in little cubes.  He seemed a little impressed and a little appalled.  Growing up in west Texas they didn't have avocados.  West Texas is a whole lot closer to avocado trees than where I live.  He went on to tell me that when corn was harvested, they ate corn every day.  Of course they preserved what they could and when that ran out, they cooked with cornmeal and when that ran out, they ate something else, I'm not sure what.
So last week when I bought corn on sale at Whole Foods I was glad he wasn't there to see me do it.  It didn't sit well with me.  They are harvesting corn somewhere very far away from where I sit.  I'm going to wait till August to buy it again.