family crafting to the rescue

We returned from Thanksgiving with my stellar hostess of a mother yesterday. We departed after countless trips up and down the stairs, our car jammed with dirty clothes, books, shoes for running and shoes for dressing up, sacks of whole wheat pastry flour in pleasingly plain brown paper, wooden chairs for small people to sit on, diapers, peanut butter sandwiches, Widget, Ha Ha, and four clementines with their peels carefully removed in a small plastic bag.
(I told you she was stellar.) 
While in Lancaster, I visited the health clinic where I used to work. Amelia had asked if I'd like to help transport Thanksgiving dinners donated by families at Frances' old school for clinic patients (a project I once organized), and I happily agreed. I hadn't visited since we moved to Annapolis well over a year ago, and it sounded like fun to see everyone. Fun. Of the light-hearted, lots of hugs and how-are-yous variety.
Has this ever happened to you? I bounded in with boxes of donated meals, feeling good in a very uncomplicated way, and within a few minutes I was fighting off tears. The more people I saw at the clinic, the more weepy and disoriented I felt. What was going on? Every time someone told me how much I was missed, each time someone joked about when I was coming back to work, I felt my knees grow weaker. My face get hotter. My responses get less and less light-hearted.
Uh, no, I guess I don't love Annapolis. Uh, no, still not working. Oh, but I really love being with my kids! I do! And we're fine, I mean, I think we're fine, I mean, it's totally great, and I can tell you're so busy right now, wow, it is SO GOOD to see you and I should really get back to carting those boxes...
Etc. Mumble and stumble some more, feeling sweaty and downright unhinged. This continued until I met up with Amelia in her car and burst into tears. I was caught off guard! Unfair! I had no idea I was walking into a trap -  a trap to show me how much I miss my old identity, miss working with the poor, miss excellent and dedicated colleagues, miss a sense of larger mission about my daily tasks. I miss being known as someone besides a wife and mother!
The tears continued for the next 24 hours or so. I felt utterly depressed and lost about my life, unable to shake it (and really, only able to succumb to this sort of thing because I was with my mama). I could barely explain to Mike and my mom what was going on inside me; I wasn't sure myself. Life with my children has been more satisfying and joyful in recent months than ever it has been...and yet. My own work is missing, and the imbalance is getting to me.
So. So, I am rededicated to working this one out, and perhaps I'll have more to say on that in another post. But this post is about a fine antidote to disorientation and uncertainty about my professional future - family crafting.
More of the same? Really, Meagan? Aren't you telling us you need a change? Well, yeah, I guess so, but when all four of us sat down in our pajamas this morning to glue and paint and marker felt squares for an advent calendar, I felt an unexpected blast of reassurance and peace. This new chapter in my life is still unfolding. Not knowing how I - how we - will find the new equilibrium is not easy to tolerate. But to hear Gabriel hoot and holler about the lellow paint, the geen and the boo, to see Frances assemble Rothko-esque felt squares from ribbon cut and pasted in layers, to watch Mike lay out little white and black beans and study them carefully before applying the glue...to swim in our familial creative waters and sprinkle the wheat berries onto the blue felt before me...for a few moments no one was speaking. In that quiet I think I heard my heart take stock of the fears of the week before, and grow in faith and love anyway. It'll be okay.

This is where our calendar is tonight. It makes me so happy. It is a beautiful document, for me, of our loving family in this moment of growing and not-knowing what the future will bring.

Stepping off the Big Insights pedestal and back down to the nitty gritty for a moment: we did have so much fun working on this today, pulling out every bit of crafting material we could find. I hot-glued the felt squares tonight to make little pockets out of them. (What can't a person do with felt and a hot glue gun? I plan to make Frances' prom dress with just these items...). Tomorrow I'll make loops at the top and figure out a way to add numbers below the pockets. Hopefully it will involve more hot-gluing. Man, that is satisfying stuff.

glamorous, yet practical

Here's a fun little craft project Frances and I worked on together a few days ago. It was so satisfying to make - the process and the finished product - that I wanted to share it with all of you, just in case you have also been wishing for a bejeweled pencil holder and can't wait until Christmas.

We started with an egg carton, which we filled with all the 'jewels' we could find in the pantry. The red lentils added lovely color, and the pepitas were a particular hit, because we could munch on them as we worked.

We used a toilet paper roll as the base. I couldn't find one initially, so in a fit of indulgence I let Frances spin half a roll of paper off onto the table. Talk about process! I then cut a circle of paper to fit the bottom and reinforced it with masking tape. I also reinforced the peely parts of the tube with tape and covered the whole thing in brown paper.

Then came the fun part, painting glue on the sides and sprinkling and pressing the jewels all over the thing. As soon as it was dry enough to handle, Frances raced to fill it with its intended items:

She will tell you, it nicely accomodates one pair of kid scissors, four pens and two pencils. Not bad. And it looks even nicer now that the glue has completely dried. 

didi and the too-bigs

Yesterday I took the kids to a popular local playground. It was a beautiful day, yellow sunlight filtering through the trees, just cool enough for a scarf. As we approached the playground, Frances looked up at me with her big eyes and said, Maybe we'll meet some new friends today!!
I heard all the screaming and boisterous play coming from the playground, and I thought: uh, maybe, yeah. Frances is intensely social, but also - perhaps because of that - she can feel overstimulated, a little manic, brittle, in big busy social settings featuring lots of kids off their leashes. (Did I just suggest children are like dogs? Yes, I think I did.) Let's just say many a meltdown has occurred in the vicinity of the swings.
You may be wondering who the too-bigs are. That moniker dates back to the 2007-2008 toddler class at the New School in Lancaster, and refers to the big kids who can take over a playground in seconds, who can knock a toddler off her feet as they barrel past on the bridge or push a tentative three year old aside at the top of the slide, making him fear for his life. Too many too-bigs can ruin a perfectly pleasant day at the playground.
So, back to yesterday. Frances takes stock of the social opportunities before her, looks at me a little grumpily, mutters something about how there aren't kids here her age to play with. I suggest we hop aboard the planet taxi, which always cheers her up (a little platform featuring the solar system in relief). Gabriel adores spinning the big wheel opposite the planets and Frances starts her imaginary play motor running, chattering about tickets and which planet we'll be stopping at first and how long it will take us to arrive. She tries engaging other kids, but no luck. She is so earnest about it! She climbs up to the next platform to ask an older girl in sparkly pink mary janes if she'd like to join us on our planet taxi? because we're visiting all the planets and you can get on board! Do you want to play? And the girl looks askance, tilts her head to one side, and informs Frances she is already playing with someone else and doesn't want to. And then she runs past towards the wobbly bridge.
Oh, it pains me!
Frances is getting discouraged. She heads for her most successful spot - the place she has roped in countless children before - the pretend ice cream store. This is a little window she can lean out of and hawk her 'cinnamon surfer' and 'chocolate chocolate chocolate' flavors to all the kids heading up the stairs to go down the big slide. It's prime real estate. But today, what is with these kids?? No one wants any pretend ice cream! Gabriel is admirably game; he keeps repeating CHOCOLATE! and smiling, almost falling off of some nearby climbing apparatus, waiting for the actual chocolate to appear. Suddenly I notice about 5 older boys have surrounded Frances and her ice cream stand. They look between 6 - 8 years old, and they are standing a little too close to her. Their ringleader is whacking his hand violently on the top of the stand, almost immediately over her head. She looks out of her depth. I feel my feet moving towards the scene before I even know I'm going to intervene. I hear the boy tell her we don't want your ice cream in a rather not-nice tone. I squat down so I am eye level with him. I feel hot rage coursing through me and I tell him with quiet restraint that he is not being very nice at all. Would he and his friends give her a little space? Go play somewhere else. And when I finish, I find I am staring at his still-whacking hand. He looks at it too. He explains sheepishly that's he just bouncing a pretend basketball upside down on this part of her ice cream restaurant.
He is a little boy, after all.
Frances looks at me, disoriented. I cheerfully suggest we take Gabriel to another part of the playground, maybe play on the swings, okay? On the way Frances mournfully wonders out loud why none of the kids want to play with her today. My heart breaks a little. I help Gabriel up to a slide and watch him go down it. I help him again. Perhaps 2 minutes have passed. I turn around and Frances is running across the playground hand in hand with our basketball bully. She catches my eye and yells WE'RE PLAYING GHOST TAG AND ZACHARY IS MY PARTNER!!!!
He smiles at me too.
For the rest of our visit, she is playing ghost tag hard, running like crazy, screaming louder than any of them (and you know she can), finding and losing Zachary over and over, informing every parent and grandparent on the playground of the rules of the game while she catches her breath. (Someone is the ghost; that's all I could figure out). She is plotting, directing, heading off to do some tricks that will help her game, heading back into the fray, a small girl among many bigger boys in a bright blue old pilly fleece jacket and uncombed hair. She is mine.
But how did it happen? How did she do it? I realize that my own memories tell me a lot about social misfires, feeling funny and let down, feeling outside of some social reality I can't quite crack or understand. But this quality Frances has, this charisma and confidence she can access - I was never that kid. So I don't expect her to be, but so often, she is. She got off the planet taxi, strode right into life on earth, and made it hers.
Was it a good idea to tell those boys to back off earlier in the afternoon? I'm not sure. They looked physically intimidating and it scared me. But Frances showed me she can handle it - not just handle it, she can excel in it. A ragamuffin queen of the too-bigs! I'm the one who needs to back off. She's got this.
And in some future posts, let's talk about the fact that a group of boys is far easier for her than a group of girls. Let's also talk about the image of Gabriel yelling DIDI!!!! and toddling after Frances as she booked across the playground with Zachary and his friends, totally unaware of him. Let's talk about sibling relationships.

My little ringleader, a sometime too-big herself.

and getting back to food...

Your responses have been extraordinary, these past 24 hours! I am truly grateful for such generous, smart, insightful and kind people in my life.

But enough talk about the pain of love! Let's get back to one of my favorite topics. I think we need to talk more about special magic green sauce. If you haven't been reading all the comments, here is the digest:

Milena has discovered raw spinach leaves also work well. So do smaller amounts of arugula, and soon perhaps she will report on a creamy pesto variation. I tried it this week with ricotta instead of cottage cheese - a bit denser (I added milk) but just as yummy. This makes me think I should try special magic orange sauce with a bit of squash or sweet potato, special magic pink sauce with tomatoes, etc...if anyone comes up with something interesting, do share!

And since you now know about the go-to kid meal in our house, I thought I'd also share the go-to adult fare. I must eat rice and dahl once or twice a week, and I'd eat it every day if anyone else would join me. As it is, Gabriel and Mike like it (within reason) and Frances loves when I make it, because she can have a dreamy all-white dinner of basmati rice, yogurt and cucumbers.
I do the most short-cuttingest technique imaginable with this. Every few months, I hit an Indian grocery (I like Ohm in Lancaster) and buy sambar masala spice mix, pickle, coriander chutney and a big bag of rice. And all sorts of other things that I may or may not be able to identify but have a pretty good feeling about. Here's what I do with it:

1. Saute onions in a lot of oil (I should use ghee, but oh well). I usually use one enormous onion, or two medium-sized ones. When they are translucent and soft, I add about 1 - 2 tbsp spice mix and continue sauteing until the onions are almost caramelized. Sometimes I add water to keep things from sticking too much.
2. While onions are mellowing in the spices, I cook about 2 cups of red lentils in water with a pinch of salt. When they are soft, I add the spiced onions and let the whole thing simmer for  a few minutes.

Voila!

I often add vegetables. I love a sprinkling of frozen peas at the end. I usually serve this with chutneys/pickles and some plain yogurt mixed with cucumbers, ladled over basmati rice. If not for Frances, I'd probably get a little more daring with the yogurt...grated carrots? Nuts? Tomatoes, scallions, garlic? All would be lovely, I think. I have a thing for mushy food and this really hits the spot.

And speaking of mushy food... I am the only person in the house that eats this one, but if it works for you, it really works. I found this recipe for a breakfast porridge a few months ago and I've been eating my own version of it ever since. I call it the growing edge of breakfast. It is a little challenging, truly. What I love is that it satisfies the yearning for things warm and mushy I feel at 6 am in our cold house, and all those whole grains keep my body busy for hours. I don't feel too full, and I'm not ready for lunch at 9:30! Amazing. I make it with golden raisins and vanilla soymilk. Sometimes I add some maple syrup if I'm not up to the challenge!

Anyone else want to share their beloved standard dishes?