Newborn

New babies are popping up in the periphery of my days.  I like them there where they feel comfortable in my mid-life:  on the edges being observed, not in the middle growing round and needing me in the middle of the night!  A good friend spent her Thanksgiving holiday with an infant niece and shared the joy of the snuggling.  A new baby girl just arrived into a family parented by fabulous friends of mine.  As I perused photos sent out by the proud father, I felt a flood of memories of my own babies.  I remember details of the births and first days of my children with great clarity despite being a person not particularly gifted with strong memory skills.  One thing I see in my mind’s eye as one might see a distinct path marked by deep tire grooves on a much traveled mud road is the squishy little baby’s searching for food.  So carnal.  So basic.  So fascinating to hold a hungry newborn.

Merriam-Webster.com offers two entries for newborn.
 1. recently born
2.  born anew

In closer proximity, I recently watched a mother and her new child in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.  The baby was teeny-small, peachy-headed and exhibiting signs of hunger.  Not fussing or crying but seeking.  It made me remember vividly the single minded focus a newborn has in the quest for food.  Incessant and searching, moving its head like a bitty bird pecking through leaves in search of a snack.  And who smells like lunch?  Mommy.  Scented in some pre-dawn plan for existence the mother can be detected by her baby.  The newborn will peck and poke its little face on any shoulder it happens to be upon in search of milk but put the kid in mommy’s arms and the search becomes frantic, often accompanied by little gasping breaths that escalate quickly into crying if the baby is not satisfied soon enough.  I consider motherhood one of the most sacred experiences of my life, but I recall with some residue of trepidation the relentlessness of a hungry newborn and the work of keeping it fed.  Perhaps its frantic longing was accompanied by my own as I was a newborn of sorts as well.  A born anew mother also questing for my food.     

           Newborn

          Remember the pecking:  baby’s feeble fuzzy head bobbing, neonate
          neck weak wobbling to support a cumbersome cranium filled full
          of prerequisite human brain, possessing no skills for survival alone
          helpless.  Spinal strain lifts the fresh face, puckered pink wrinkly lips.
          Eyes without lashes offer watery spherical glasses, convey no clarity
          imprecise sight splashes in the skull still soft in the middle, fontanel
          for tremendous year one growth projected, but today’s tiny nose
          tic-tocking left and right in the place above a beating heart seeking
          mother.  Knowing where life resides.  Sustenance can be offered.
          Being so wee, emergent, soft soap smelling body cradled in arms
          sharp with small increasing strength, hoping nourishment will flow.

Drippin's

My grandmother made me do it.  This morning, from across the divide of death, she compelled me to fry a pair of eggs in drippin’s.  Unsurprisingly, the noun drippin’s is not in the dictionary.  I offer instead an entry from Wikipedia listed under “bacon” and subheading “bacon fat.”

Bacon fat liquefies and becomes bacon drippings when it is heated. Once cool, it firms into lard if from uncured meat or rendered bacon fat if from cured meat. Bacon fat is flavorful and is used for various cooking purposes. Traditionally, bacon grease is saved in British and southern U.S. cuisine and used as a base for cooking and as an all-purpose flavoring for everything from gravy to cornbread to salad dressing.  One teaspoon (4 g, 0.14 oz) of bacon grease has 38 calories (160 kJ). It is composed almost completely of fat with very little additional nutritional value. Bacon fat is roughly 40% saturated.  Despite the potential health risks of excessive bacon grease consumption, it remains popular in the cuisine of the American South.

I especially love the last sentence of explanation.  We know bacon is no health food.  Nonetheless, every now and again I get a hankering for it.  And whilst I fry it up my children swarm through the kitchen declaring me the most fabulous, wonderful, superb mother in the world!  Why?  Because I am serving bacon.  Never mind the miles I clock each week in the van or the laundry or the trickle of two dollars here and five dollars there.  These elicit no honor.  But if I slap one slab of salt cured pork on a griddle the praise piles on! 

This morning, my family reaped the benefits of bacon cooked weeks ago.  You might wonder how my beloved deceased grandmother came to be responsible for these bacon-laced eggs.  Well, she had a repurposed lidded coffee can on the bottom shelf of her icebox door in which she routinely poured bacon grease after it cooled.  Drippin’s.  She did not waste a lick of it.  She used it to fry potatoes with onions or toss a cabbage salad with hot bacon dressing (she wasn’t much for cornbread or she would have had the sense to use it there, too).  Because I saw her save the smoky liquid so many times I, too, at the end of a family bacon feast, pour my grease into a container, albeit a small ceramic bowl, and store it tightly covered on my fridge door.  Then, several months later when the bacon craving comes again I throw it away and replace it with a new quarter cup or so of fresh fat.  And the cycle continues.  I have routinely never used a speck of the grease, yet I am driven to save it. 

Recently, that changed.  Today I served up a batch of the most delectable scrambled eggs ever known, sizzled to savory perfection in a 38 calorie, 40% saturated fat teaspoon of drippin’s.  Grandma smiled with me over ever bite. 

Holiday

Time from Halloween through January feels full of festivity.  Outward indications of celebration include candy, cakes, cookies, and special treats of all kinds plus special clothes, children’s’ plays, scented greenery, parades, banners, candles, enormous meals and the tiniest writing imaginable on every white inch of calendar space allowing for the myriad of activities to be recorded.  It is difficult to miss outward signs; I’m wondering about inward signs of holiday. 

The noun holiday is defined at dictionary.com.

1.  a day fixed by law or custom on which ordinary business is suspended in commemoration of some event or in honor of some person

2.  any day of exemption from work

3.  a time or period of exemption from any requirement, duty, assessment, etc.

4.  a religious feast day; holy day

5.  (chiefly British) a period of cessation from work or one of recreation; vacation.

I find that definition lacking what I am musing about.  Luckily a scroll down the page offered an entry from the 2008 Encyclopedia Britannica.

"Holiday.   (from "holy day"), originally, a day of dedication to religious observance; in modern times, a day of either religious or secular commemoration. Many holidays of the major world religions tend to occur at the approximate dates of more ancient, pagan festivals. In the case of Christianity, this is sometimes owing to the policy of the early church of scheduling Christian observances at dates when they would eclipse pagan ones - a practice that proved more efficacious than merely prohibiting the earlier celebrations. In other cases, the similarity of the date is due to the tendency to celebrate turning points of the seasons, or to a combination of the two factors." 

The roots of holiday are holy.  Holy is not limited to affiliation with religion or a religious leader.  Holy belongs to everybody.  Holy resides in everybody.  Holy days began at the beginning of human existence when people created festivals around seasons and celestial happenings.  Awesome stuff.  Over time humans put new names and meanings on ancient dates and added a few days related to human accomplishments worthy of commemoration.  Still awesome.

The cessation of work, the suspension of ordinary business is a good idea.  Exemption from ordinary opens opportunity for extraordinary.  People make a holiday special with treasured heirloom recipes, philanthropy, family gatherings, new clothes, gifts given and received.  Simultaneously, we hunger for articles offering ways to handle the holidays, throw a stress-free party, buy presents on a budget, dress for fabulous holiday style. 

I am not writing one of those articles.  I head into the holiday season knowing it will at times be stressful.   There is much to do.  What I’m wondering is how not to let stress snuff out the holy.  I don’t have defined steps but I believe we can breathe life into our own inner holy while still wiping icing off of a kid’s face with a saliva-wet finger, checking for the pop-up turkey timer and smiling continuously for photos.

Homecoming

Twenty years ago I finished my undergraduate degree.  I had some top notch, excellent friends in college.  A posse came together as new arrivals in a wonderful land – the University of Georgia Redcoat marching band.  Our first year we may have collectively practiced more than any other set of mallet players ever because none of us knew what caliber of musician anyone else was, being that we were all strangers, so no one wanted to suck lemons. 

Years of unfettered fun ensued.  We went to class.  We studied.  We became friends.  We stopped obsessively practicing.  We threw parties.  We rode buses to away games.  We scrounged our collective cash to buy peanut butter and beer.  We learned limits.  We ate love-pat cookies for breakfast.  We grew up.  We got married.  We got more degrees.  We moved around the country but ultimately ended up in various states all over the southeast.  We never stopped feeling connected even though we got busy and forty-something and such.  This year we decided that we have been away too long and we simply must, against odds of kids and work and travel details, get together for homecoming. 

Merriam-Webster online defines homecoming.
1.  a return home
2.  the return of a group of people usually on a special occasion to a place formerly frequented or regarded as home especially an annual celebration for alumni at a college or university.

Homecoming

Companions arrive the only way we know – linear time

a line drawn upon which we inscribe tests and dates

mates and misses, late arrivals and dark spots scribbled

show sorrow, little hearts dot days with snuggle kisses

kept secret except from those whose lips were there

and girls who giggle when they later share tales of love

yes, love, or losses sparkle in blue brown green eyes.

Age proffers a dish of divine reflection on all the love,

yes, love, shared over years and still alive in stories

silly and serene, notes we can no longer see to read

a melody intended but we make our own if we can

folks in the stands may not but we hear each other

pretending the sounds arise from old places touched

mimicking movements of the past.

If you heard what was said, get down on your knees

bow your head in thanksgiving for rhythms, percussive

hearts opened freely, danced spunked up chorography

together in the narrow pit defined by sidelines, music

marched between evergreen hedges protecting each other

laughing, guffawing tears at the antics of us as college love,

yes, love, passed classes, books, days into nights.

Beer goggles or not there was less vision looking forward

but now gazing back clearly young we women loomed

future fabric, being each one part of friendship, today’s

memories never let go of smart girls in homemade shirts

holding hands, making sure to look both ways and never

cross the street or leave a party on your own because love,

yes, love, lives in the gathering of Georgia girls.

Mean

College football is part of my life.  I attended a rocking-good SEC school and married a fan of football.  It was not novel to go to a game this weekend.  The new part was my kids.  Three young people that I love perched in the stands, faces painted with team insignia, sweatshirts proffering school support, noses pink from the cold air, pompoms clutched in fists, eyes wide to flashing lights and throngs of people.  All was well until a pair of unruly fans took seats to our left.   They brought a rude,  crude-mouthed element to the game as they chose to berate folks rooting for the opposition scattered among us home-team supporters.  Those two fans were mean.

The adjective mean is defined at dictionary.com as follows.
                1.  offensive, selfish, or unaccommodating; nasty; malicious
                2.  small-minded or ignoble
                3.  penurious, stingy, or miserly
                4.  inferior in grade, quality, or character
                5.  low in status, rank or dignity

Mean was already on my mind because I attended an education conference only the day before where we heard a heartrending presentation from a woman who had been bullied in school.  My mind was flooded with emotions during her moving talk.  I also had questions.  “How did those children who abused her at school get so mean?  What could possibly make them act so nasty and malicious?  I could scarcely believe any young humans could be capable of such constant harassment.  One might occasionally make a hurtful action in poor judgment but these kids were relentless and deliberate.

Nowhere in the definition is any indication of mean being synonymous with superior.  Quite the contrary, inferior is listed.  Yet supremacy is what appears to be in the minds of persons acting offensively.  How do people come to think that treating others poorly elevates them in power?  How does such lack of empathy exist?  I find it implausible that mean is something a person is born with. 

Is it because in many movies and television shows, often those aimed at kids, the mean girl or boy is rich, fabulous looking and popular?  Is it because magazines offer hateful things:  Whose big butt is this?  Who is getting a sordid divorce?  Who looks better in this dress?  Who flopped in an interview?  Is it because young people see adults acting heartlessly toward others?  Are we so base a culture we willingly create and consume mean over and over?  Are we promoting cruel teasing, extreme pranking, and embarrassing, berating, gossiping behavior as cool and fun - perhaps even a way to fit in with others?  If we step outside of ourselves to watch what we are doing would we be proud?  I think some mean behavior may be because people are moving without attention.

Fortunately the noise kept my youngest from learning new vocabulary in the stands and my older children recognized the small-mindedness and could process a blip in our family fun in a later conversation.  We concluded life is better when people are not mean. 

Jeans

The weather is getting beautifully colder and an attire change is required.  It feels a bit like getting new clothes when I pull out my fall/winter things.  This morning I’m revisiting and revising a piece of flash fiction I wrote some time ago that returned to my mind as I slid into some denim. 

Merriam-Webster online offered this definition of blue jeans:  pants usually made of blue denim.

        “Indigo blue workman’s pants.  How did they come to be wardrobe essentials worth so much money?” Angelica ruminated as she fingered and flicked away the price tag on a pair of jeans.  Yet she knew she might pay it – pay whatever the cost – to find just one pair of dungarees that fit.  Really, truly fit.  No cramming her stomach into submission to close a button.  No jumping and tugging to get the waistband past generous thighs.  Her body was not the primary problem, did not make her uncomfortable – the problem, the source of discomfort, is the pants.

        Selecting three dark blue possible contenders, Angelica weaved through gleaming stainless steel racks.  At the far end of the dressing room she shut the door of a closet like space near the all-seeing, multi-angled mirror.  Skirt shimmied to the floor, she guided one leg and then the other to descend into the denim – no jumping required.  As the buttons were a breeze, selection one held promise.  Oh.  Wait.  The gap.  The waistband above her butt was an open mouth sticking out a tongue of Victoria Secrets cotton briefs.  Angelica knew this would require extreme belting and the added bulk would only feel good while standing.  Pair one, rejected.  Removed.  Returned to the clamps of their hanger.

        Candidate number two shook to life.  A little hula wiggle got the jeans up smoothly but up and up they ascend.  High rise?  Angelica’s ribs and ankles cry for life as she realizes the waistband is only inches from her bra and the skinny cut decreed on the tag may be cutting off circulation.  No need to waste a gander in the mirror on this pair; they double as a corset and support hose.

        The last chance unfolds from the bench.  Stretching to their full length the slacks slide on like stiff cotton skin.  They don’t bind.  Angelica steps into the hall to confront the tall mirror.  Her investigation reveals a front that looks pretty good.  A turn to the side offers a satisfactory sight.  The rear view rotates into scrutiny.  Angelica is brought to wonder, “Do the pockets on these britches make my butt look big?”  The answer to the final question:  Yes.  The pockets are not flattering.  This marks the third pair as two-thirds tolerable.  Angelica twists and assesses.  “How high a price should a girl pay for just okay?” 

        She returns three rejected pairs of jeans to the rack outside the dressing room and strides in her old skirt from the store thinking of what blue may be in the next shop.   

 

Hunger

I have been experimenting with hunger.   I was not aware of it when the process became an organized approach over ten years ago.  Just after my first baby, I started reading about nutrition and diet.  I felt dismay after gaining a significant amount of weight.  I tried different ways of eating based on information I was gathering.  I threw in a little exercise.  Over the decade that followed I bounced around various states of weight, eating approaches and exercise.  This created a kind of hobby:  exploring eating – vegetarian, low-carbohydrate, gluten free, low-fat, reduced calorie, meal replacement, macrobiotic influenced, protein shakes, herbal supplements, dairy-free and combinations to feed my hunger.

Dictionary.com lists the following to define hunger as a noun.
                1.  a compelling need or desire for food
                2.  the painful sensation or state of weakness caused by the need for food
                3.  a shortage of food; famine
                4.  a strong or compelling desire or craving   

While my experimentation may have been a banana peel littered path along the edge of eating issues it taught me a lot.  I was searching from a place of hunger.  Through life’s course I found empty places in myself.  I decided food would fill them.   I read books, took cooking classes, digested research, bought an elliptical machine, discovered yoga.  I also sometimes stopped at the store exclusively to buy cupcakes that, if they made it home at all, I would hide in the freezer to avoid sharing them instead eating them in stealth secrecy when no one was home. 

Recently, I watched myself walking home thinking, “I am hungry.”  The thought did not go further.  Simply, I felt hunger.  No headache, no lightheadedness, no wonder about what it meant.  I was experiencing the pure, physical feeling of an empty stomach combined with the ultimate knowledge that I would be soon be home and could eat.  That moment felt like a revelation. 

The physical reality of hunger and the body’s need for food is real.  We cannot deny our physiology.  But we can separate it from our emotions.  We all know when we are empty – it makes hunger.  Deciding what to ingest is our work.  Much of consumption is not about food at all.  Hunger is physical and emotional and spiritual – fasting and feasting relate to our souls as well as our stomachs.  We know hunger can have as much to do with our sacred selves as our physiological need for food. 

Yoga may be the nourishment that allowed me to find the truth in my hunger.  What I have learned from living in my body and food research I have ingested on my mat:  humans thrive in balance.  From the science of nutrition I learned excess fat storage is an outward sign of my body’s internal imbalance.  Balance in the physical body is thrown off by extremes - over consumption (say of sugars) and under-consumption (perhaps of protein and green stuff).  Feeling hunger and feeding ourselves in balance is a daily challenge.