The Simple Joys of Health

It's Friday and it's been snowing for two days straight. NYC schools are closed for the second time in a month (and only the fourth time in six years). Benedicta headed down to the Financial District an hour ago to work a 9-hour day at the Reading Room as the librarians from New Jersey and Long Island can't get their cars plowed out. And I'm relishing the smell of granola baking in the oven, the hum of snow blowers on 25th Street and the sight of icicles growing on the window frame.

Today is the first day this week my head doesn't feel like it's weighted down with soggy, salty newspaper stuffed inside and I'm not plastering vaseline on my outer nostrils to keep them from chafing when I blow my nose. I'm sitting upright while my peppermint tea brews. I've just made the bed with all the proper tucks and turns. The one task I've wanted to accomplish all week - that batch of granola in the oven - is nearly complete. Hallelujah!

As I've puttered this morning, attending to my tea and sitting down to write, I've enjoyed each task with the freshness that recovery brings. Remembering that with health, life swirls on with ease just as the snowflakes softly spin to a gentle landing. With health, free from the the push-back of unwilling and unable limbs, simple acts like washing the dishes and taking a shower are no longer overwhelming. On this day of recovery, they are done with joy. The joy of finding life livable, of tackling the mundane without effort, of feeling good.

Thanks to the snow I'm keeping it in low-gear today. I'm not jumping back to my to-do list and running over to Lord & Taylor to look for black pants on the clearance rack. I'm not easing back into normalcy by slipping on my snow boots and trudging over to Chelsea Cinemas to catch a matinee. I'm not going over to UPS to make photocopies of my tax return. I'm staying put. I'm sitting in my favorite chair watching snowflakes swirl. I'm simply enjoying the simple joy of every flake.

I'm Committed! To Fruit and Veggies

I've wanted to join our neighborhood CSA (community supported agriculture) since the day I learned about it six years ago. The thought of reaping the harvest of fresh vegetables trucked in from a farm upstate every week tickled me in several of my favorite pleasure zones: eating, cooking, low-maintenance shopping and supporting sustainable farming. Every year the obstacle of time and scheduling prevented me from signing up.

Since I quit my day job last September I've frequently checked the Chelsea CSA website to look into actually committing this year. Always the same story - the only option available was signing up for the waiting list. I didn't want to be on a waiting list. I wanted to join. So I let it go assuming I'd be navigating the "conventional," "organic," and "local" produce in the narrow Whole Foods aisles for another year. Until yesterday. Checked the website and to my delight, on-line registration was available for new members.

A few facts:

• Pick ups are every Tuesday between 4 and 7. Check. Between the two of us we should be able to get over there each week. (Did I mention the pick-up location is a block away? One block closer than Whole Foods and I'm guessing about 75% cheaper.)
• Members must volunteer for 6 hours each year. Check. This can be shared too. I'm sure we can manage to dole out veggies one Tuesday afternoon this summer.
• Vegetable harvest begins mid-June. Check. We're returning from a three-week vacation in Maine on May 27th. As far as I can tell, we won't miss a single delivery!
• $520 buys 24 weeks of vegetables (enough for 2-3 people). And an extra $250 buys 20 weeks of fruit. Check. $770 has been paid in advance. A preemptive strike on the summer/fall grocery bills.

I'm looking forward to this grand adventure of getting a mystery box of veggies and fruit every week and figuring out how to transform them into delicious meals. My eating and cooking passions have four months to salivate before the goods arrive. And I'm thinking of blogging the adventure so my writing passion won't get jealous.

Haiti's Orphans

In my 20's I dreamed of adopting a little black baby. I already had a darling white baby fresh from my very own womb. She was perfect in every way and I had no compulsion to make another one. Why do that when the bright black eyes popping out of coffee brown faces on the front of Save the Children brochures radiated such joy, love and hope. I wanted to have and hold a baby that was already real, not to gestate one. This desire was a non-starting argument with my husband at the time and once I became a single-parent, a single child was plenty. So life moved me on and that ancient desire remained a dry seed in my overflowing clay pot of unfulfilled imaginings.

Today I watched Anderson Cooper report on the hundreds of thousands of pre- and post-earthquake orphans in Haiti and realized any dirt I might have to plant my lingering seed of hope to hold one of these precious children is infertile - barren even. These children, as aid organizers attest, belong in Haiti. Perhaps they don't have parents, but they do have hope and the aching soil of Haiti is their home. Sometimes parents are overrated.

They do need shelter,food, love and a decent shot at an education in ways to replant and replenish their homeland. These orphans are Haiti's hope. Haiti's future. I believe a greater lift to the orphans of Haiti is to fund provision for their collective well-being than to pluck them one-by-one from their calamity and settle them in suburban homes saturated in the culture of consumerism. Let them grow together, proud of their triumph amidst the ruin, and prepare them to transform the rubble into riches.

Imagine how many orphans could thrive in Haiti on the money spent to raise one upper-middle-class American kid. Imagine! Is not this a higher model? When we reinforce that the lucky ones get sent to America, even though well-meaning, we chip away at an orphan's pride of place and create the illusion that happiness is somewhere other than within the heart. Let's celebrate the joy of growing up surrounded by other children and cultivate programs that encourage loving places of permanence rather than waiting rooms. Too idealistic? Maybe. But those are seeds I may be able to actually plant and water. Seeds of hope sprouting in sparkling brown eyes.

Orphan's Home

I wept at the end of Part 1 of Horton Foote's Orphans' Home Cycle on Saturday. The streaming tears from my front row seat heralded the bowing cast with more poignance than my feeble claps. I unwittingly surrendered to the dramatic moment and lacked the strength to stand.

The Orphan's Home Cycle is comprised of nine full-length plays written over decades recently whittled to a nine-hour series exploring the early life of Horace Robedeaux. The death of Horace's alcoholic father at age 12 and the absence of his mother due to his step-father's refusal to allow Horace in their home shapes his character and informs every aspect of his journey to and through adulthood. Part 1 concludes when Horace is a young adult visiting his mother in Houston for the first time and culminates in his realization that he is entirely alone in the world and will have no one to help him forge his way.

Refusal. Rejection. No childhood home. Orphaned with living parents. I know these. I've navigated the estuaries of self-reliance and parental disassociation. I've felt the burden of needing shelter from mothers and fathers whose own fragility and cowardice and instability banish children to the arms of strangers.

But I did not weep for me. I am blessed with an inner fortitude and will to survive. I have the skill to bind up wounds so they leave no trace when they heal. My outburst registered the pain of the children unprepared and unable to weather the frosty climate of homes with step-parents eager to bar the door and the complicity of parents who ship their children off with neither a key nor return postage.

Horace found his way. And so did I. But many don't. They find solace in drugs, alcohol, emotional barrenness. And unfortunately, they too have children. And become step-parents of other people's children. And the cycle continues. More parented orphans in need of home.