Under a Red Roof

So Many Feelings

June 27, 2022 in Cooking + Baking, Learning, Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

Hello reader! How about that sky? I always appreciate nature’s gifts when I am feeling a little down. Like a lot of people, I am reeling over the Supreme Court Decision about Roe v. Wade. I actually find abortion abhorrent, on the whole, but absolutely wish to keep it legal and safe because I find the following (taken from research by Lisa B. Haddad and Nawal M. Nour) unacceptable:

Every year, worldwide, about 42 million women with unintended pregnancies choose abortion, and nearly half of these procedures, 20 million, are unsafe. Some 68,000 women die of unsafe abortion annually, making it one of the leading causes of maternal mortality (13%). Of the women who survive unsafe abortion, 5 million will suffer long-term health complications. Unsafe abortion is thus a pressing issue. Both of the primary methods for preventing unsafe abortion—less restrictive abortion laws and greater contraceptive use—face social, religious, and political obstacles, particularly in developing nations, where most unsafe abortions (97%) occur. Even where these obstacles are overcome, women and health care providers need to be educated about contraception and the availability of legal and safe abortion, and women need better access to safe abortion and post abortion services. Otherwise, desperate women, facing the financial burdens and social stigma of unintended pregnancy and believing they have no other option, will continue to risk their lives by undergoing unsafe abortions.

Having someone very dear to me as a child of adoption, knowing women who were quite cavalier about their multiple abortions, as well as knowing women who badly wanted children that did not live more than days beyond birth has given me a front row seat to the nuances of choice.

Before I was married, and ages before I knew my body was wholly inhospitable to fertility and pregnancy, I had two “scares” where my period was very late. Having known I did not ever want children from a young age, I was terrified at the prospect of becoming a mother. Yet, both times, I never considered abortion. My first instinct was adoption. This inclination has obviously never changed. As this has been unfolding these last days, I wondered why more women don’t consider it. Most who choose abortion, find the thought of terminating a pregnancy more palatable than giving a stranger their baby. Only about 1% choose adoption. The remainder find themselves attached to the child and become single moms.

I don’t really know where I am going with this, besides to say life is so complex. I want all women to feel agency over their lives. I want all babies to be wanted and cherished. To thrive! I want families not to struggle financially to raise their children. I personally won’t be helping any woman receive an abortion for reasons of my own morality (save in cases of rape, incest, mother or infant mortality), but I will absolutely support families by continuing to contribute to food banks, affordable housing agencies and initiatives, and Save the Children. Additionally, candidates who believe in choice will get my vote, since that is the only remaining option, governmentally speaking. It will not help people over the short term, sadly, but if the people will it to be, choice will come for every woman again.

And now, for something completely different! We had a most amazing cool and rainy day yesterday. I took full advantage by making what would normally be a sweltering day a most hospitable experience. The windows were open, the kitchen abuzz. I made: strawberry rhubarb jam, with our own rhubarb, of course; sweet-tart jelly/almost jams of roasted bell pepper and chipotle; and green chiles – Hatch, poblano, and jalapeno. We test drove them over today’s lunch of smoked chicken, and all the thumbs are up, dear peeps!

Then there was soap. From the top: a goat milk and oat made spicy with cinnamon, clove, and ginger; and my favorite shampoo bar combo of essential oils of rosemary and mint, fresh mint leaves – also home grown; and nourishing herbs of calendula, marshmallow, horsetail, nettle, and burdock (I make a tea and add the lye to it), with rhassoul clay. Hair luxury in a bar!

I used to fuss over getting the soap to a thick pudding stage before putting it in molds and creating swirls and flourishes on top. Now, after everything is thoroughly combined, I dump the mixes straight in and smooth the top, deciding the initially pretty crests and valleys only attracted dirt from our grubby hands when washing. Gross. I also pop the molds in the oven at 160 degrees for about an hour to ensure each loaf gels. I got tired of partial gels with that weird oval at the center and decided this was easiest. Working smarter and not harder, batch by batch. I do what I can, at least.

Kintsuge

May 31, 2022 in Being, Learning, Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

Do you know about kintsuge? Also known as Golden Joinery, it is the practice of fixing damaged pottery by adding gold to the repair. This enhances the broken bits and becomes part of the history of the object. I have known about it for a while but never had occasion to put it to use.

My Mom bought me this tray for Christmas. A New Mexico license plate?! So cool. It sits, with pride of place on our kitchen counter, a nice spot for fruit. I clumsily dropped an ice pack on it, and it snapped in two. Instead of searching for another or tossing it, I immediately thought of kintsuge and bought a kit. My repair, being my first, is FAR from expert or even terribly pretty, but I like it! Which, I believe, speaks loudest to the purpose of the practice.

Our broken bits can be made whole again, beautiful and useful, too! We need only believe them to be and willingly make the effort.

Of course, this got me thinking about how I have the opportunity to make my life this way, too. I used to feel a lot of shame around patterns I allowed to repeat over and over. Women came into my life, and I put aside my needs and feelings to make them feel loved and appreciated. That I was a friend they could count on. I’d drop anything for them. Give anything to them. Keep quiet about their negativity, insults, and slights.

I didn’t see it as me being a doormat. Until. I felt the first cracks in my being and knew I could do something about them. I stood up to them. The ways were mostly small, the glue filling the tiniest of fissures. A flimsy, yet valiant, first effort. Definitely no gold.

I experienced the seams holding and was emboldened. More and more, I uttered yes to me and no to them. I also started seeing the behavior more quickly in new relationships and ended them the moment I felt a fracture, even the tiniest of one. It leaves me with very few close friends, but I don’t see it as a negative. I am sprinkling gold about and enjoying the shimmer, the promise of all the history, of all that I was and now am. It is far from perfect but pretty grand.

Searching

March 30, 2022 in Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

Yesterday it rained, gloriously fat splashy drops, and now, the finest globe style snow drifts ever so slowly down, down, down. In an hour, it will be sunny and wonderfully jarring, a typical spring hereabouts.

Again, I let a long time pass between these posts, so short on words am I. Writing is hard when I can’t hear what to say. So, I fill my time with the usual HGTV fare, movies, and books, searching for the perfect story and am mostly, sadly, underwhelmed. The best have been rather old, Stoner, by John Williams, not a pot head story, by the by, instead a vivid tale of an ordinary life. Some Tony Hillerman (definitely not all), with their watercolor renderings of idyllic Southwestern landscapes. Those leave me breathless, and I reread passages, devouring more-like, a harmless drug. Oh, the power of words.

Often my mind turns to darker places, and I let my heart rest a moment there before lifting a prayer for better days. Tulips and crocus are emerging and tree leaves budding and little joys everywhere I remember to look. Don’t ever forget to look, Colleen!

Alright, back soon….

Pondering

May 28, 2021 in Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

I read, once, a story about a poet who could feel a poem coming, usually while outdoors, and would rush headlong at the house, or anywhere that might hold a pen and a scrap to write upon. I know this feeling, though not as intensely. It is more like a sudden and steady tumble from within. I need only sit still and gaze upon the words with my mind’s eye, transcribing onto neat legal pads. Never the computer.

The writings arriving at the keyboard exist on another plane. Cultivated. The tumble down-on-paper variety are more like a surprise visit from a beloved friend. Peggy or Andie. Effervescent and alive.

I am surrounded by disease and death. The daughter of a friend, a walking buddy, and a relative all with cancer. Greg’s cousin, died in a forest, unexpectedly and too damn young. A once musical finch found, stiff and floating, in the stock tank; the woman whose book I just finished. A time and phase of the here and now. I try to be okay with it, not to get completely sad and overwhelmed. It befalls every last one of us, after all.

But. Still. It is the end. Flesh to ashes, consciousness on the wind.

I have no thesis here. My words are a wretched scribble. Maybe that’s precisely it, the knowing, the pondering, that matters. A flicker in the background to make a body consider the precious nature of life, how it could vanish at any second.

Lift

April 6, 2021 in Learning, Listening, Making, Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

I am not a religious person, but a very, very spiritual one. And though my Dad has read the bible daily, for as long as I can remember, I have never had the desire or inclination to do the same. I’ve found people’s interpretation of religious texts, and religion, as a whole, to be more dangerous to the general population than not. The Crusades, Islamic terrorism, Hindu & Buddhist extremism, the sexual abuse of priests and pastors on the innocent, the list goes on and on and on.

That being said, there are two very powerful notions of God that are with me daily. That he or she resides within every body and especially that a person can encounter God any place, any time. I always had difficulty believing this when encountering the cruel people of the world. Why would God reside there, when there are far nicer places to be? But then I thought about the awful person being an instrument of teaching for others, for me. God works through that person to show me how NOT to be. What to stand up for and rise against.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how when I was little and would see a brilliant sun beam, I believed God was shining a light on a person in need. How the thought left me joyful. The sticky bit was in wondering if the person knew it. How often are we aware of that brilliant light shining on us? How often do we take the time to recognize the beauty and love around us? I think it’s time I do more to seek that awareness. That presence.

And a perfect tie-in to the photo up yonder. When my Great Aunt Mary died, my Grandma Tess found hundreds of Catholic medals in her room. I took maybe a quarter of them and fashioned a necklace with a few of them a while back. I liked the spirit of it, of having metal worn by her prayerful hands, but the look wasn’t quite right. I took it apart and made this one, with all my favorites. It jingles and sings, speaking loudest of her, while buoying my spirit, too.