Recipes and Life – A Memoir

Tags

1960s England, Cooking, Creative Nonfiction, Family, Food fun, Memoir, Nurture, Sunday Lunch, Tradition

Sunday Lunch

My mum always cooked a traditional roast dinner on Sundays. Dinner, usually eaten in the evenings by our family mid-week, was moved to lunch time on Sundays. Sunday Lunch, even to me as a small child, felt unlike mid-week meals which seemed more like food put in front of us to nourish the body. Without the words to describe the feeling of Sunday Lunch, even as a six or seven year old, I knew this food, this meal, was more than just about nurturing our bodies.  It would not be until I was a University student sharing Sunday Lunch as a guest of a Church family, or cooking with fellow students that I would understand this tradition as one of communion, sharing, appreciation, thankfulness and sheer delight in this great British tradition.

Today, continuing the tradition of eating roast dinners with family and friends, many people flock to the local pub for Sunday Lunch. Who knows how many families in the U.K. today keep up the Sunday cooking ritual at home? Perhaps people are too busy to cook on Sundays, or maybe with so many two-parent-working households the Pub offers a treat while still maintaining a tradition.

When traditions survive from generation to generation one has to wonder why? What is so important about this tradition, or ritual that keeps us so engaged? When traditions and rituals are based in religion it is easier to comprehend why they would stand the test of time. Perhaps even if the “why” of Sunday Lunch is not universally analysed, the answer can be found deep down in the British psyche.

When I moved to California twenty-four years ago with my then almost six year old daughter, I found it hard to maintain this treasured tradition. The weather is better in California than in England. The almost year-round sunshine tempted us into outdoor living, enjoying the simplicity of being outside in the warm sunny weather. As with any other day of the week we found ourselves eating dinner in the evening on Sunday. After all, who would want to punctuate an otherwise cloudless, rain-free day with an extended time indoors only to eat?

I mourn the loss of this tradition in my California life. I love when I go back to England to visit and Sunday Lunch becomes part of my life again. One thing I can say about all of our mealtimes while Alexandra was growing up, is that we were fortunate enough for them not only to be about nourishing the body. Every mealtime, sitting around the table, was an opportunity for discourse, for making sense of the world and each other. We navigated school life, parenthood and anchored our stories, discoveries, lessons learned, joys and sorrows shared, around a table of food conjured out of love with the help of fresh ingredients and the memory of cooks before me, like my mum.

Back when I was a little girl living in London in the 1960s, Sunday Lunch, for our family and everyone we knew, was part of a greater Sunday ritual. Going to Church came first, followed by Sunday Lunch at home. Often the men went to the pub for a drink after Church while their wives dutifully returned home to the kitchen.

Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding

In anticipation of Sunday, our family ate dinner late on Saturday evenings. We ate late so that my parents could stave off early Sunday morning hunger. Dad and Mum didn’t eat breakfast on Sunday mornings because Catholics had to fast before receiving Holy Communion. They needed their bodies to be as pure as possible in order to receive the body of Christ. Fasting on Saturday nights was a sacrifice I had to make only for a short time as not long after I made my First Holy Communion, this fasting was no longer required by the Catholic Church. With the arrival of “Vatican Two” our young Catholic lives changed. Mass became more interesting as we understood it for the first time as it was said in English, not just in Latin.

Roast Chicken

I remember my mum getting up early on Sundays and preparing the vegetables and the joint of meat before Church. She would put the meat in the oven, and set the timer to switch the oven on while we were at Mass. Even though I must have been about six when mum got a cooker (stove in the USA) with an oven with a built-in timer, I can remember her being very excited about it. The next piece of culinary equipment my mum seemed to get a lot of joy out of was a stacking steamer pan set. Vegetables were so much nicer steamed than drowned and saturated in a pan of boiling water. Perhaps it is because of my mum’s excitement at such things that I, at the age of twelve, was extremely proud of my first electric hand mixer. I know, weird isn’t it? A twelve year old saving up her pocket money to buy a food mixer. A foreshadowing of things to come, maybe.  

Even back then when I was little, I knew Sunday Lunch wasn’t just about the food. It was about sharing that food with family or friends. Occasionally my grandmother, mum’s mother, would come for lunch. I never questioned the absence of my grandfather. I can only remember meeting him once. Mum didn’t talk about him and I never asked. Now and again my favourite Aunt – Aunty Ethna and her husband, Uncle Bill, came for lunch bringing their four children with them. These were the only cousins I really got to know. Mum was the eldest of eleven and so her siblings were very spread out in age and marital status. 

More regularly than any other Sunday guest though, was an honorary uncle, Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe was a friend of my dad’s. Dad and Uncle Joe were both writers for the Irish Press Newspaper in Dublin before they left Ireland to make their “fortunes” in London where the streets were “paved with gold.” From what I can remember being told about Uncle Joe, he continued to be a journalist, while my dad tried out a variety of jobs.

 Mum and I loved every second Sunday because that’s when Uncle Joe came to lunch. In fact, just today mum and I talked about our memories of this man who, as mum said “was a part of our lives forever.” To mum and I Uncle Joe was the bringer of gifts. He brought mum a box of Black Magic chocolates every visit, while he brought me something different every time. Sometimes Uncle Joe brought me a toy. Other times he brought me a book, or after Santa Clause brought me a record player, Uncle Joe built up an eclectic collection of forty-fives for me. I listened to songs from Pal Joey, or part of a movement by Beethoven. Best of all I liked listening to “I could have danced all night” from My Fair Lady. I learned the words off by heart, and would stand on my bed singing along to the record at the top of my voice.  

Of the books Uncle Joe gave me the ones I remember most were a few collections of poetry, The Wind in the Willows, and a volume of The Encyclopedia Britannica. I longed to own a whole set of the encyclopedia. I begged mum every time the Encyclopedia salesman showed up on the doorstep to buy them for me. They were too expensive for my parents. Now, at the age of 57, I still have one of the poetry books Uncle Joe gave me. It was because of one of those poetry books combined with my love of The Wind in the Willows, that I felt inspired to write a poem about Mole and Ratty. It must have been a sad poem, don’t you think, as I remember my mother crying while I read it aloud?

My favourite toys from Uncle Joe included a Slinky, and a Gyroscope. Uncle Joe spent many hours playing with me, and reading to me. His attempts at explaining the science of the Slinky, or the Gyroscope were lost on me. I was fascinated by the magic of the seemingly self-propelled falling and folding motion of the Slinky. I can still hear the sound it made as coil followed coil in a silver-spun journey from the top of the stairs to the bottom. The Gyroscope became boring quickly when spinning it seemed pointless.

He might well have been the admired and adored gift giving friend to my mother and me, but to my dad, Uncle Joe was “The Communist.” As a little girl I didn’t know what a “Communist” was, but I knew it was something bad because dad would yell “you’re an effing communist” at Uncle Joe, and Uncle Joe would ask dad not to shout in front of “the child,” and mum would say to dad “listen to him, Paddy.” The shouting and accusations didn’t come about until after lunch, and usually by tea time all was well with our little world again, when mum would bring in sandwiches made up of whatever cold cuts of the roast meat we’d have eaten that day, along with picked onions and pickled cauliflower. Occasionally mum would bake a cake, but that’s for another story.

I asked mum today about why dad accused Uncle Joe of being a communist. Mum is almost 81 and she will tell me she forgets things. She had no recollection of the accusation. I had asked mum about “Uncle Joe the Communist” a few years ago, and at that time she told me it had something to do with a socialist newspaper Uncle Joe had been writing for secretively. At that time mum remembered my dad being very angry when he discovered one of Uncle Joe’s author aliases.

Memory: Fallible, our own, and only our own. Is memory truth? And if so, whose truth? I always tell my readers and my students that when I write memoir I write my truth, and there may well be other truths.

For now, in this chapter as in others, I am interested in sense memory and all the recipes, recollections and stories that brings. With that in mind I hope you will enjoy my Sunday Roast recipes. I hope that when you cook you will create and recover memories of your own to share along with the food. And of course, you can turn any day into a Sunday with a hearty roast dinner.

(Note to Root – Mum loves and approves this story.)

Recipe:

Traditional Roasted Chicken with a Twist

All measurements are approximate to taste.

Ingredients

1 Free Range Organic Chicken (Choose a size to suite the number of people you desire to serve)

1 sweet onion

1 medium size lemon

1 small bunch of herbs (fresh cut handful thyme, sage, a few twigs of rosemary) If you don’t have fresh herbs a tablespoon of good quality Herbes de Provence will work.

2 Tbsp of olive oil

2 Tbsp of butter

2 cloves of minced garlic

Salt (large sea salt crystals or kosher salt), pepper, and paprika to taste

 

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Strip herbs from twigs then chop or mince finely. Melt butter in microwave until sizzling.  Stir herb mixture into butter with approximately one clove of garlic.  Crumble some salt crystals and pepper and combine to a paste.  Gently slide your fingertips under the chicken skin to break up the membrane.  Spoon herb butter mixture under the skin and massage to evenly cover the chicken.  Peel and slice onion in quarters.  Put half of the onion into the chicken cavity.  Cut the lemon in half.  Squeeze half of the lemon into the cavity and place the remaining half of the lemon into the cavity along with a few uncut herbs..  Loosely tie the chicken legs together with culinary string.  Massage olive oil around the top chicken breast and legs.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and a light dusting of Paprika. Place chicken in oven.  Cook at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.  Then reduce to 375 degrees for 1 hour.  Baste chicken thoroughly with pan juices after 1 hour and check the color.  If chicken is already golden, cover loosely with aluminum foil (shiny side down).  Check for doneness every 15 minutes using a meat thermometer.  Chicken is cooked when meat temperature reaches 165 degrees.  Remove meat from oven to a carving board.  Cover with foil and let rest.  Meanwhile make gravy.  See Gravy section.

 

 

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Challenges, Writing and Otherwise.

Tags

Big Sur, Challenging Body, Creative Nonfiction, Knee Replacement, Memoir, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Writing Life

Hello again,

To all of you who keep nudging me and asking “when are you going to write another blog post, I want to say thanks for the encouragement! The reality is that when I’m working on an essay, or part of my memoir, I’m entirely focused on that, and blog posts disappear.

It’s that time of year again when we hunker down and enjoy the change in season. Autumn leads us into reflection, well certainly some of us. In Big Sur we still have super warm sunny days, but we also have days like today when the fog rolls in and bathes us in an invisible cloak. The trees and the landscape are truly “shrouded” in the sort of fog that feels like one of those ultra-light down jackets, you know the ones, they fold up and fit into a tiny bag and barely seem to exist, but when you open it up and put the jacket on you are snuggled into a warmth you can hardly believe possible.  Looking out of my window this morning, the fog hides my view of the south coast but I feel warm and held in a weightless, barely perceptible, gift from mother nature. It is hard to believe on days like this that the cliffs and cresting waves were ever visible from my window. I know they will return.

A foggy sunrise

The Writing Life.

As far as writing goes, I am most productive on days like this. I am not tempted to swim outdoors. I cannot resist a swim on a sunny day when procrastination rules! I do a lot of my writing in my head. I know it sounds odd, but I can go about my daily activities thinking writing. I might not put pen to paper for several days, but when I do, it all pours out. All of the thoughts and internal edits I’ve been making for days, sometimes weeks, manifest in an essay or a segment from the memoir I’ve been working on.

The problem with writing a memoir is that it is so personal it can also be extremely painful at times. There are days when I can write without sadness. There are days when I just cry. There are days when I stand back and wonder at the life I’ve had so far, days when I cannot believe I have emerged into the woman I am today, a woman I am beginning to actually like, and sometimes admire. I know I’ve worked through a lot of the highly charged, emotional issues in my memoir, and I can say I’ve come to terms with a lot, but that doesn’t stop me, the memoirist, the writer, from feeling all over again. My friend, Allison Williams, a superb writer, pushes me to go deeper with everything I write. Allison advises me not to just hint at a challenging aspect of my life in my memoir, but to dig deeper and explore the stories on the page with continuing depth. I’m trying to do just that.

Shaping a memoir feels like an almost insurmountable challenge. I’ve written chapters and just when I think I’ve got them in the right sequence in the book, I review them, and lacking confidence in my last decision, the reshuffle begins all over again, and so does the whole question of how to transition from one chapter to the next. Recently, I’ve been looking at memoirs written by writers I admire in an attempt to see how they resolve the structural issue. (Thank you Dinty Moore.) I’m moving towards constructing my memoir as a series of stand alone essays. My thoughts are that if I put the narrative together in this way, I can still keep a loosely chronological movement driving the book by making definite transitions from one essay to another. The reader can pick up the memoir, read one essay, and have a complete “story” to enjoy and think about without being held in an artificial suspense which requires needing to read on to find out what happens next. Of course what happens next is very important, and if I can skillfully transition from one story to the next I hope the reader will want to read on. Enough of that. I need to get back to work pretty soon.

This week is very special. Two of my friends, Kim and Sherilyn, have joined me for a writing retreat at our home in Big Sur. We all went to Antioch University, Los Angeles, for our MFAs in Creative Writing. Kim lives in Kauai, and Sherilyn lives in LA. We usually work together remotely. We are all so excited to be together in the flesh! We are spread out right now in different parts of the house writing away. We kicked off our time together last night with a home-made curry, and some wonderful wine. Tonight we will eat together again and talk writing.

The challenging body.

 Another reason this week is so special for me is that it is the last week in a while that I will be able to come to Big Sur. Lately I’ve been spending half the week every week here. I’ve fallen in love with Big Sur all over again.
Many of you know that I had a knee replacement last year. It was challenging as things didn’t go well, and I had to go back into hospital for a manipulation under anesthesia, which is basically a surgery to break up scar tissue and get the range of motion in the knee back. I’ve struggled all year with pain, and my knee has never felt right. After some research I found a surgeon who specializes in knee and hip replacements. He is amazing. I had a C.T. scan and a series of x-rays, and the doctor was able to show me what went wrong with my knee replacement. Unfortunately though, I have to have the surgery done all over again. On November 18th I’m having revision surgery. This means the surgeon will remove the “new” knee that was put in last year, and replace it with another set of components. It can be a complicated surgery. The doctor needs to get all the cement out of the knee.
While I am anxious about going through all of that pain again, and having an even longer rehabilitation than I had originally, I am excited at the prospect of ultimately returning to a pain-free, active life.

An exciting part of this whole new experience is that I intend to be awake for the surgery and watch it on a big screen in the operating room. The doctor warned me about the noise when they get their surgical chainsaw things out and hack away. He said being wide awake can be stressful, and if I feel stressed the anesthesiologist can give me something to sedate me. I hope I will be able to stay awake for at least some, if not all of the surgery, but if I need a nap, I’ll take a nap.
I’ll keep you posted about how this whole new wide-awake knee surgery goes. Imagine, I get to see inside my body!

Time to move on. Please watch this space. I plan to write more about the aging, not as stable as I’d like it to be – body. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Osteoporosis among other things. I’ve tried to live my life in denial of the related challenges I face on a day-to-day basis. One of my writer friends suggested that I write about my life with this complicated body. I think the time has come. I am such a positive person normally, but there are days when my body doesn’t work and I struggle to stay positive.

Until the next time – thanks for reading and sharing your comments.

Audio recording – Forever and Ever

Tags

Audio recording of readings, Big Sur, childhood, Creative Nonfiction, Family, Literature, Meditation, Memoir, Nurture, Reading

Recently, during my time at the Keyon Review Writer’s Workshop, I did a reading of a short piece I wrote during my week at Kenyon. All of us students read from work we had created during that week. This is my first experiment posting a reading to my blog. Please excuse the crude editing. I will work at fading in and out soon. I just wanted to get this up here asap.

I hope you enjoy this short essay. It is 465 words. It is just over 4 minutes long.

Dear Daughter

Tags

Alexandra Cowell Soprano, Dvořák, Epistolary form, Family, Memoir, Motherhood, Mothering, Opera

Dear Daughter,
I listened to a recording of you sing last night. You sang a song to the moon. You were alone on a stage six thousand miles away, and I was at home, in the home in which you grew up. The symphony gathered like wood nymphs congregating in the forest, creeping through the long, tall grass until they found you; you, an angel with gossamer wings. That’s how I saw you in my mothering mind’s eye.

You stood alone on that stage, and I could see you, feel your joy to be there. I felt your excitement, your anticipation, your giddiness, your sense and seriousness of what you were about to do. You were about to gift an audience the most beautiful sound they would ever hear.
You sang so beautifully, your heavenly voice scaling earth to sky, the richness of your low tones, the soaring clarity and thrill of your high notes brought your mother into ecstasy, and I broke down and cried. My chest heaved with a swollen heart, and I understood yet again in my life what it means to burst with pride.

I am proud of you, the daughter whom I admire.

Alexandra Cowell.
Photo courtesy of Scott MacDonald Photography.

You stand alone so often, not just on the opera stage, but on the stage of struggling life. You are not one of those people who land on their feet, effortless into your desires. You work, you fight, you lose, you win, you thrive, and sometimes it must feel like you just survive.

You are the most amazing young woman I know.

You inspire me with your curiosity about life and people and what makes this world both good and bad. You have such a level head and an innate sense of fairness. You teach me so much about patience and acceptance, about struggle and reward, and also about fun.
The first time that I saw you lying on my stomach, your wrinkled face turning toward the light, I knew I loved you more than I could love any living soul. I joked that you looked like Winston Churchill, then you snuggled to my breast, no longer alone in the womb but with me in your new world. You blossomed into your beauty, and I still stare mesmerized by your truffle eyes, your sallow skin and your long dark hair.
You were always an advocate of your own special style. You wore baskets on your head and pretended they were hats. You shuffled around like little girls do in my grown up adult shoes. Today you still love hats, sweeping, statement hats, and shoes an architect designs.

When you slipped on a wet leaf one winter, your heel escaping beneath you, your devastating injury robbed you of your career as a flutist, but you picked yourself up, and gradually one foot in front of the other you found your way back into music, to an instrument you dug deep inside to find. You didn’t give up.

As a little girl you stood back, alone, even at nursery school. You surveyed the landscape of your dreams, and only when you felt safe in your own perception of trust did you launch forth, gracing the children and adults around you with your spirit.
You fell in love with a boy when you were four, and found yourself torn between two loves when you were four and a half. By six years old you had knocked a young suitor out with a golf club, and he still loved you.

Today the “boys” that please me are the ones who cherish your love, and also know how to make you laugh. When you throw back your head in abandon your laughter warms my heart.
You stand today on the precipice of your longing. Those gossamer wings once again ready to take flight. I watch. I want to be there to catch you if you fall, to mend your delicate heart, to punish all who hurt you, but I cannot. For you are a woman on top of the world, and I stand beneath you, in awe and adoration of the person you have become.
Fly my darling, fly.
Your adoring mother.

Dear Teddy

Tags

childhood, Creative Nonfiction, Epistolary form, Family, Innocence, Love, Memoir, Teddy Bears, Writing Process

Tuesday – Continuing with the Epistolary experiment

Belinda, aged 1, takes Teddy for a walk .

Dear Teddy,
We are both getting old. I celebrated 56 years of my life last week, and I celebrated 55 and a half years of your life same day. I am told Santa Claus brought you down the slim chimney of my parent’s first house on my first Christmas Eve. I don’t remember meeting you back then, but once you arrived we were never to be parted. They placed you in my cot.

Belinda and her new friend, Teddy

We have shared many secrets over the years. I have cried, my nose tucked on top of your nose. Perhaps it was my tears that softened your straw filling and soaked it into disintegration. I’m sorry if that was the case. I hope you haven’t minded my amateur repairs. I think the new flashy bandage the doctor gave me for my hand is a better fix for your nose, than the bulky ace bandage that smothered your face almost beyond recognition. The skin tone of the Coban better fits your faded once-upon-a-time golden fluff. I got my hair coloured yesterday. I’m not bald like you, just white – snow white underneath the painted on blonde. There is no cure for your baldness, and even if there was, I like you the way you are. I don’t mind being reminded of my aging when I look at you and watch you fade. I dare not let my hair go white though, as to do so would remind my dearest love that he is aging too. I think it is an American thing, or maybe just California dreaming that buries age in dye. Twenty-five years ago my dad suggested I box you up and send you to the teddy bear hospital to get you fixed. I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion a month ago that I simply could not do that. Again it’s about loving you the way you are. It’s also about fear – fear of change, fear that you will not look the same or smell the same. You host a thousand scents; of infancy, childhood, the first perfume I bought when I was a teen, the dried in sweat of the first time I made love and sobbed with you afterwards, him gone, you and me alone in the bed and I, asking you, wondering if I had given away my virginity too young. You spoke to me back then, reassuring me every time I tipped you forward to hear the gentle growl from inside your tummy. I don’t remember when your voice box fell silent. I still tip you now sometimes hoping you will speak again.
You carry the dust of continents in your round, still soft belly. I wonder what the airline staff thought all those years when I fastened the seat belts around you. My heart almost broke the first time I traveled without you. But I came home to your worn out hands, your creaking arms tired from my childhood handling. It must have been the oils from my skin that wore away your leather clad paws, hands and feet. I did an awful job stitching black felt around your worn out hands – your now black-gloved forearms.

Teddy today

You were such a sport in the olden days. You played sick so well lined up in my imaginary hospital; home-made beds for you and walky-talky doll, long-legged-Polly Anna doll, stuffed dog, and the occasional pretty doll that mum brought home from business trips. You outlived them all.
You were a good student too, sitting to attention on the classroom bed with the above cast of characters, my home-made school books tucked into your lap. You learned so much, and I did too.

Belinda and Doggie

I sat you up on my grown-up bed today, tucked up against a pillow. You were wrapped in the cotton blanket – the first blanket, from my almost 29 year old daughter’s ancient crib. As your cover fell away and revealed you, it revealed me too. I laughed. I too have worn frilly white socks that cover my legs from toe to thigh. Like you, I wore those socks to cover and support the frailty of aging. I went to the people hospital and got a new knee some months ago, not much fun. Don’t you think those frilly socks give such great support? And as for hands, again like you, one of mine barely works anymore. They couldn’t fully mend it at the people fixing place.
I look into your brown glass eyes, and they reflect a past, the present and a future too. They speak to me in loving calm of joy and pain, love – lost and found, lessons learned, lessons failed, hopes and dreams and trust, but most of all you speak to me of the gift of acceptance.
Thank you Teddy. All my love xxx

Light and Shadows

Tags

Bullying, Creative Nonfiction, Discrimination, English Village Life, Family, Memoir, Newsletters, Nurture, Reading, Teachers, Teaching, Travel

My husband, Ken, and I spent last Christmas in Wales with our daughter and my best friend and her family. We loved every minute of our time with our “chosen family.”

Two days after Christmas Ken and I set off on our drive back to London. Ken was to head home and I was to stay on for another four weeks in the U.K with my daughter and some dear friends. We decided to take a few days and play tourist, stopping at Bath for a couple of nights, and at random villages throughout the Cotswolds. That’s when we discovered “the village of light and shadows.” Of course that is not the name of the village. It would not be fair of me to name it. Suffice to say the village was beautiful. It was a picture postcard English scene. I would discover the small shop/café/post office the next day, the only “industry” to grace this village since the closure of the silk mills in the 1800s. The recorded history of this gorgeous place goes back to at least AD 855, when the village was granted a monastery. The Doomsday Book records much of the early history.

We arrived at our hotel just as the sun was setting. A golden light warmed the yellow Cotswold stone. Terraced houses lined the steep and hilly streets like sentries on duty. Long shadows sheltered doorways. Detached cottages and farm houses occupied fields a stone’s throw away. The meadows heaved rich blue-green grass, and the water caressed the stones in the brook. The only sounds to break the silence were the babbled conversations of the brook, and the last evensong of the birds nesting back down in the trees.

Ken was careful not to knock his head against the low exposed black-stained wooden beams in the doorways of the string of 17^th century cottages that together made up our hotel. Snuggled up on the sofa in front of the inglenook fireplace, waiting to be called for dinner. I fed the fire periodically, throwing on splintering dry aged logs, warming myself to the bones during this, the harshest winter in the UK in 30 years. Flipping through the stack of magazines on the antique mahogany coffee table, I stumbled upon the Parish Magazine. That’s when I began to contemplate bullying, a subject that would cause me to look deeply into my own life over the months to come.

The Magazine was filled with reports. Some told of the financial health of the village church, and the other small churches in surrounding hamlets that combined to form this parish. Other reports told of social activities. I read about the tree lighting ceremony just before Christmas. The Christmas tree was beautiful. I could see it from the window on the hallway in front of my bedroom door. It was unusual in that it sat atop the church spire and was dressed entirely in bright blue lights, lights that shone an eerie beam over the graveyard behind the church. I read about the Women’s Institute, the WI, an institution worn deep into British life, and made famous by the film, Calendar Girls, all over the world. It was heart-warming to see how many charitable activities the community engaged in. There were food drives for the hungry, collections for Cancer research, and the usual requests for used clothes and coats for winter warmth.

Admiring this tiny community I moved on to read the village school report. I don’t remember much about it, only the part about parental attendance at the annual parent-teacher evening. This is the opportunity for parents to meet with their children’s teachers to discuss the progress and needs of each individual child. It is an evening some children look forward to. An evening when paintings and projects are on display, and assignments with their letter grades are laid open on each child’s desk. This is a time when the truth is told, and some children dread their parents returning home with the inevitable chastisement, questioning and the occasional accusations of laziness.

Memories stirred in me of my childhood, and how I could never be quite good enough for my parents. I can still hear my mother’s voice: Belinda, why can’t you be like Sarah? Or any other number of children about whom my mother had overheard the teacher regale their achievements to adoring parents. I was a “daydreamer.” I was a creative child with a wild, seemingly untamable imagination. Creative children who did not conform to the workbook and rote style learning of the 1960’s did not win many gold stars to be pasted on the classroom achievement chart.

A statement in this annual report brought me to a pause in my reading. It read something like this: Parent-teacher evening was a great success last month. We had the best turn out ever. All but one set of parents attended.

My heart went out to the one set of parents. Shame? Guilt? What was the intention of this statement? Who knows why these parents didn’t attend? I could imagine the gossiping adults overheard by children as they read this and hazarded guesses at just who, exactly, the absentees were. I could imagine the playground conversations as some of the more precocious kids would inevitably relish in the fact, that it wasn’t their parents who dared to miss parent-teacher evening. I could imagine the anger felt by the child or children of the missing parents. The embarrassment. Surely there was another way to let the readership know just how successful the school event had been. How about “we were delighted at the best turnout ever for our annual parent-teacher evening.” How about leaving it at that? Was it really necessary to spell out the specifics of the turnout? I think not. I truly felt that to have thrown one set of parents into the spotlight of non-attendance was an act of bullying.

Childhood is a time during which bullying has its roots. Most schools these days, have anti-bullying policies. Educators are aware that at some point in a child’s development he/she desires to be in control of another child. Children jostle for position. It’s about hierarchy. Someone ranks higher than the child – a parent, teacher, or sibling. A child feels the need to assert him/herself, and being in control of another child, asserting ones will over another, is often the means to express this. Children experiment with power. We see it in the games they play. It is as clear as day in peer leadership, such as classroom/school, captain and prefect systems. Reading the statement in the school report made me feel that the people who should be guarding against the act of bullying were actively engaging in the practice. In my opinion, teachers and head teachers should be leading the way by example. I didn’t get the sense that the author of this school report had any interest in understanding why the family in question had not attended. Set against the background of a report that boasted the achievements of school, children and parents, this highlighting of one set of parents seemed cruel to me. I can only hope that this family were either unaware of this depiction of their actions, or knew how to deal with the fallout.

At some point in our lives, most of us are the victims of bullying, be it as children or as adults. We are also often the perpetrators. If we are honest with ourselves we can surely find instances when we were the bullies. No matter how significant or insignificant the act, we were there. I look back on my school days, and I will admit to have been to some degree at some time, a bully. In my situation it was in my role as a class leader. I feel sorry for the pain I might have caused.

Some children are able to articulate their experiences of bullying and seek help. Others are not.

I attended a reading by a famous author a few years ago. The book he read from was about his childhood growing up on an Indian Reservation. He talked about his experiences being bullied. When it came to question time from the audience, a twelve-year-old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome stood up. He told the audience about his experience with Asperger’s Syndrome, and about how he was being bullied at school.  He asked the author for advice on how to handle being bullied. You can probably imagine there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. The author left the podium and went to the boy. He turned his back on the audience as if trying to find a private space, and sat down on some steps with the child. His advice to the boy in summary, was to find a friend, or make a friend of an adult he trusted. The author suggested making friends with a teacher, telling the teacher he needed a friend, and he encouraged the little boy to tell the teacher about the bullying. He suggested he ask the teacher for advice on how to cope with his situation. It was sensible advice delivered in a caring and sensitive way. Looking back on it, I wish that the teachers in the village school last Christmas could have heard this little boy talk about bullying. I wished the author of the magazine article understood the subtleties of bullying and his/her participation in the act.

It is not only in childhood that we can experience bullying. Some of you reading this will identify with your own adult experiences of being bullied. Bullying takes so many forms. We see it in situations of many kinds of discrimination. We experience it at work, and many people experience bullying at home, in their private lives, in the most intimate of relationships.

If you are being bullied, consider carefully what you can do about it. The advice from the author I mentioned earlier can be applied to your situation. You might substitute friend, trusted family member, or therapist, if you are lucky enough to have one, instead of teacher. Find someone and talk about it. Strategize on how to manage your bully.

I can add a little advice to that of our famous author.

I have a bully. When I say “have” I mean that she exists, and attempts to assert her cruelty on me. However, while my bully exists she cannot touch me anymore. I have developed strategies to eliminate the pain she tries to inflict on me.

In my case my bully is a family member. Those of you who have been reading excerpts from the book I’m writing about my relationship with my mother, will have come across my bully already. For those of you who have not, I can tell you that this woman has worked systematically to wreck my relationship with my mother. She has succeeded. My mother, as many of you know, had a serious stroke in 2011. I looked after her in Ireland for six months. During that time I did not see my daughter, and I only saw my husband for six days.

Strategy number one – use humor as a way to reduce your bully’s power. With that in mind, I chose to substitute a new name for the real name of my bully. I call her “Root,” as in root of all evil.

Strategy number two – examine your bully. Look at her life as closely as you can. Ask yourself where her need to bully comes from. Once you understand that, you can begin to get a sense of perspective on her, and how to manage her. For example, my bully had an insecure childhood. She came from a very large family where she jostled for place. In her mind she probably had to compete for her mother’s love, and knowing as much as I do about her childhood, this was probably true. Going beyond her childhood, I can tell you that Root married young. Her first husband was abusive both mentally and physically. I remember my mother attempting to rescue Root on a number of occasions. It is not always the case but childhood and adult abusive relationships can lead the abused into becoming an abuser, subtle or otherwise. So now, knowing even this much, while not excusing Root’s behavior, I can feel pity for her.

Strategy number three – once you have looked as deeply into your bully’s life as you can, ask yourself what she has to gain from bullying you? I can tell you that typically, and certainly in Root’s case, a bully derives her sense of self-worth from putting people down. A bully needs to make her victim appear bad in order to make herself seem valuable in the eyes of others. Root has made a career over the last few years out of blackening my name to my mother and other family members. Root has systematically taken everything good I did for my mother and lied her way into making all of my loving actions seem bad. Root is clever in this way.

Look for the areas in which your bully seems clever, and look for her weaknesses. Root is not that well-educated. Her understanding of people is extremely limited. She has had problems at work as well as with the family. She is to be pitied. She clearly has a warped sense of her own self-worth. You might find that your bully has both intrinsic and extrinsic things to gain from bullying you. These could be emotional gains, and even monetary gains. Do your homework –  forewarned is forearmed.

Strategy number four – reduce your bully in size. Seeing your bully as a pitiful individual will help this. Consider your bully’s physical attributes as you shrink her. I have reduced Root gradually from being mentally monstrous in size, down to this withered little splintered stick creature, bent over and hobbling. She has an accent and voice that my mother once said could grate granite. This mental image allows me to pick up Root and chuck her into a dark desk drawer, or even on the fire whenever she rears her ugly head. This mental picture allows me to feel sorry for root, something I know she’d hate.

Strategy number five – last but not least talk to the people you trust about your bully. Ask for their support. They might be able to help you with practical ways to deal with your bully. They might be able to intervene with your bully and get her to see the error of her ways. I have tremendous support in dealing with my bully. We can’t make her go away, but other people who know her well, trust me and reassure me. They know her and her potential for bullying and deception.

In my case, the result of Root’s bullying has a greater impact on my mother than on me. Root has silently bullied my mother, depriving her through her deception, of me, her only daughter, of my love and company in my mother’s sick old age.

If the potential exists for your bully to extract financial gain, or to hurt someone other than you, put measures into place to protect third parties as much as possible. Although my bully has caused permanent damage in my life, your bully doesn’t have to be allowed to cause permanent damage in yours. Seek help.

I have come to terms with the fact that my bully has made it so that I will never see my mother again alive. I can tell you that my bully has done her worst, and will never be able to inflict pain on me again.

My situation is extreme in some ways. The situation at the village school seems to be naïve and in the early stages of bullying. Catch it early. I would have loved to have been able to point out my observations to the author of the annual report, but I couldn’t.

In fairness, I must tell you that in reading further, and researching this school and the staff, the school appears to be an excellent school, with good teachers. The children appear happy and enthusiastic about learning. So please, village school, be careful, and Practice what you preach. Defend and protect those vulnerable children and families. Be a source of good, not bad.

I am Green

Tags

Australia, Creative Nonfiction, Meditation, Memoir, nature, New Zealand, Nurture, Travel, Wildlife, Writing Process

Shades of Green

There were too many people from tour buses wandering through the rain forest on the twenty minutes of exploration time allowed for on our itinerary for me to fully indulge my senses amongst the verdant vegetation. I’d like to have plunged my face into the silky wild grasses whispering in the wind. I’d like to have felt them whisper-tickling my brow. I’d like to have caught the trickling water on my tongue as it dripped from leaf to leaf. I’d like to have cradled my face between hand-shaped leaves of what looked like a rubber plant. Oh to be held between the palms of Mother Nature. There are so many shades of green here in this luscious forrest. My time is up in this slice of heaven and I must get back on the bus.

South Island Rain Forest.
Photo courtesy of gorentals.com on Google Images.

We drive past hitch-hikers, and a few of us who sat together the previous day on a different bus recall a young couple who left our bus to hitch-hike in another direction. They seemed very young. The girl looked around sixteen. her long blonde hair looked as though it had encountered some stormy weather. She seemed to be in charge. She carried the guidebook and spoke to our bus driver, Pete. She pointed to a map and Pete nodded. The girl knew exactly where she wanted to get off the bus. The boy, who didn’t look any older than the girl, dashed off the bus without saying anything. He fiddled with his hands, seeming not to be able to contain himself. He looked anxious. Maybe he’d have preferred to have caught the earlier bus – the one that actually went to the place his girlfriend had indicated on the map. The six of us who had sat together observing the couple agreed that if we had been driving we would not have stopped have for them. I wonder why?

‘I was like them once.” Driver Pete frequently joined in our conversation. He has a wonderful sense of humour. The six of us were like a school-girl cliche, snickering from time to time at a semi-private joke. There were two conversations going on on our bus. There was Pete delivering his commentary with the occasional comment thrown in from someone towards the back of the bus. And then there was our little group – the teachers pets at the front of the class, lapping up the attention our Pete was paying us. Pete indulged us, throwing in anecdotes that showed us his deep commitment to his glorious land and his neighbour-people.

“I’ve traveled all over New Zealand with my thumb. I did it as long as I could, but when I felt I was getting old it was time to settle down to a job. That’s why I’m here doing this.” Of course Pete hasn’t really given up traveling. Here he is driving a bus, sometimes going off for days and spending his nights all around his Island. It is obvious he likes his job. It is obvious he likes to tell us stories.

At our next stop along the way to Milford Sound I manage to escape my fellow passengers for ten minutes. I find my green this time. I am leaning over a railing looking through the green of trees at the sea and plants. I have time to meditate on what it means to be green

Many shades of being green

The art of translation – What is Green?

Five years ago when I was studying for my MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles, I took a unit on Translation. The fact that Antioch offered this unit was one of the reasons I wanted to study there as opposed to any other MFA program. During my time at Antioch we focused on translating poetry from Chinese, Japanese and Spanish languages. We didn’t need to be able to speak or understand any of the languages. In fact, our Chinese came from ancient Chinese languages. There was one translation exercise that affected me more than others. We were given a poem consisting of about 6 lines of Chinese characters. For each word-like string of characters we were given a list of possible English word translations. I was struck by how many English words could possibly be substituted for each Chinese “word.” You can imagine how potentially difficult this made translating a poem into English, modern day English at that. We soon learned the importance of learning what we could about the author. Sometimes we didn’t have any information about the author. We researched the political and cultural climate of the time. We considered spiritual aspects of life at that time.

My senses were infused with a multitude of descriptions and essences of “Green.” In my favourite poem (sorry I can’t remember it now. I’ll go back to my MFA notes when I get home) I felt absolute awe for the number of “greens” the author was able to convey. The poem was about a man sitting in what I can only summarise as a rain forest. The smells, shades of light, textures and tastes of green, the character of the man along with the sounds of nature evoked in that poem will stay with me always.

I am Green

I have eyes that sparkle jade when I am happy and dull to the grey of a threatening ocean swell when I am sad. I was conceived on an emerald isle where once I was the apple of my father’s eye.

I can inhabit the infamous green-eyed monster on occasions, although this is lessening as I grow sage with age. My skin turns to olive in the summer sun. I inhale the fir forest and feel drunk on the scent of new-mown grass. In autumn I* can sit in the gold light of evening and will sometimes with the drooping willow.

Green is the colour of my early days – callow then as the day was long. I could strut with my teenage friends opening our feathers to reveal the peacocks we were in every sense of the bird. As a child I would eat spinach only because so did Popeye.

Green is my state of mind. I can sink into a puerile state of meditation. I am naïve, but often creative, burgeoning, budding, bosky and blooming.

Our planet needs green and while I try to live my life as kindly as I can to our blessed planet, we all need to work much harder at embracing green.

Of Myths and Legends, Story and Magnificence

Tags

Creative Nonfiction, Geography, Memoir, New Zealand, Travel

Belinda at Fox Glacier

We have travelled through volcanic owned landscapes. We have marveled at mountains rising from seemingly bottomless glacial rivers and lakes into a never-ending sky. The New Zealanders, original and immigrants, clearly took the time to consider the beauty before them before naming mountain ranges, lakes, glaciers and towns with names like “The Remarkables,” “Aspiring”. The rivers named “Roaring Meg” and “Gentle Annie” speak to the collective sense of humour and acknowledgment of characteristics of people and geography by early New Zealand settlers.

A huge chunk of the glacier falls off every day

New Zealand is a land of story. There is a creation story attached to everywhere you go. Stories tell of how the country was formed, about how places were named, about early settlers, and even more recently about a sheep local school children named Shrek. Shrek came down from the mountains one day. He was wooly beyond belief, shearers estimating that he had evaded them and hadn’t been shorn for seven years.

Shrek the sheep

Maori mythology tells us how the world was created, but traveling in New Zealand we are frequently reminded by guides and travel articles about how the north and south islands were created. According to Māori mythology, the North and South Islands of New Zealand came about due to some mischief by the demigod Māui. While fishing at sea with his brothers one day, Māui caught a very big fish. While he wasn’t looking Māori’s brothers fought over the fish and chopped it up. The larger remaining portion of the fish became the North Island, thus the Maori name for the North – Ika-a-Maui (the fish of Māui) and the next largest portion became the South Island. All the smaller chopped up pieces became the mountains, lakes, rivers etc. This is one demigod’s story.  As you travel through New Zealand you will hear more stories claiming rights of creation and ownership of the land. What would we do without our myths and legends? We are like school children getting off the bus. Memories of early school days are sparked by our Driver, Pete, and his references to our collective selves. We pull into a car park off the highway and Driver Pete calls out “Scenic people, listen up, and I hear my first form teach, Miss Grant calling us to order – Miss Grant’s class line up in twos please. Pete stands up in the bus as though at the front of the class. His stomach is hanging over his trouser belt now. It has been a long hot drive and it is no wonder his shirt is sticking to him and as he runs his fingers over his thinning scalp beads of sweat help hold his thinning hair in place. “We only have fifteen minutes here. Get off the bus quickly and follow the signs into the rain forest walk. Anyone can do it. It is not difficult.” Tired and stiff passengers stand up, stretch and reach for cameras. A few of us spot Kea birds hopping from car to parked car. We are excited pointing the birds out to each other. “Scenic people.” Pete’s voice is first form teacher threatening. “Do not be tempted to take time to take photos of the Keas when you get off the bus. They will still be here after your walk.” I ignore Pete. I take photos until he catches me and shoos me along with the rest of the herd. I whisper a deal with my husband. Ken is to do the walk and take photos and show me later. He is to take the “big girl camera”, my friend, Kim’s nickname for our new Canon 5D mark ii. I am to double back and hot foot it to the car park in search of those beautiful birds. I try to catch the Keas in flight, but my photo is a blurr of colour. I catch one playful kea attempting to rip an antenna off a car, while his buddy tries to eat his way through the seal around the window. Who knows what mischief they would create if they pecked their way into a car? I love these demon gorgeous birds. Pete herds us into our seats. We are on our way to Milford Sound. From his driver’s seat, microphone close to his lips, Pete talks to us about the difference between a Sound and a Lake. I know there has been some dispute, and i have to admit I wish we were on our way to Doubtful Sound – another descriptive name given to this body of water but curious discoverers.

To be continued …..

Kea

Mind the Gap

Tags

Creative Nonfiction, DP Challenge, DPchallenge mind the gap, Memoir, Travel, Writing, X

We are sitting in a cafe in Papakoura, about a half hour drive outside of Auckland airport, New Zealand. Not a great coffee lover, I am amazed at the silky soft hot drink I’m sipping.This is truly the best Latte I have ever tasted. The company is rather special too. When our flight landed ahead of schedule at 4:am from San Francisco to Auckland we headed out for the train station in Papakoura where we would meet up with The Northern Explorer train to Wellington. “You’re early.” The woman at the ticket counter had a warm smile and a cheerful demeanor. We would soon learn that the warmth and friendliness this woman showed us is common in New Zealand where strangers are welcome. We asked if there was anywhere we could get a coffee and hang out for the next couple of hours while we waited for the train. It was thanks to the blonde curly haired ticket lady that we ended up Chez Trish on the outskirts of this little town.

Superb Cafe Mottletop

Having left our suitcases at the station under the watchful eye of our ticketing friend, we stumbled into cafe Mottletop out of the warm drizzle that reminds me so much of Portia’s “gentle rains from Heaven.” If a coffee shop is filled with books I know I have come to the right place. No wonder the coffee tastes so good. What is it that makes a place welcoming? Naturally the scent of freshly baked goods,cheese scones, muffins, brownies and much more is enticing. The long red glass top table with a shelf of magazines beckoning from beneath the glass reminds me of home and I want to pull some of them out and flip through recipes in the Woman magazine, and indulge in the photos and stories from National Geographic. I scan the book shelves to see what’s there. The books we carry tell us so much about each other and Trish, and her assistant, Faith, are as delightful as the tomes in the refectory style cafe. “Are you travelers?” We’ve shared our travel plans with Trish and Faith and Trish, delighted to have a couple from San Francisco stumble into her shop is introducing us to all the locals who roll in for their early morning fix. It took me a few seconds to respond to the question. Where I come from “travelers” is another name for gypsies, or tinkers. i smile at the thought and say yes. Trish jumps in and tells the sandy haired man wearing an open fleece jacket over a polo-neck and shorts;”They’ve come all the way from San Francisco and ended up here in little Papakoura’. I love Trish. She is one of those women who radiates warmth, friendship and sheer joy at being in your company.I discover when leaving that she is huggy like me. Trish’s locals are interesting and as welcoming as she is. it is the first day back at school and we share the anticipation of a new school year with a couple of teachers, one of whom is clinging to the hope that the kids keep their energy in check as she is tired this morning, and the other has “butterflies in my stomach. Much like the little ones, I suppose.” We have moved from the bar stools at the counter and settled at a table. In this position by the door and window I feel as though I am holding court being greeted by all who come and go and share a slice of life with us. “It’s my son’s first day at school.” A man stands with coffee mug and scone in front of us and makes his announcement. “Congratulations” I say and “you must be so proud.” What strikes me is this father’s age.He has the look of a man in his late forties, maybe early fifties. I cannot imagine having a young child of my own about to start school. There is so much time between here, where I am now, and there where my own daughter was twenty-two years ago. “They’re travelers,” our fleecy friend feels the need to point out to our proud father. We repeat our itinerary which at that time saw us leaving New Zealand after a two week visit and heading out to Australia, Singapore, South Africa, and Brazil before returning to San Francisco. Since our coffee chez Trish we have added Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana to our list of countries to explore. Trish takes a photo of us for her Face Book page. We exchange hugs and I promise to send postcards. Armed with hot-buttered cheese scones we head back to the station, thankful for my new purple rain jacket bought at REI in a “just in case” moment. The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world.The distance between San Francisco and Aukland is 6,543miles. We have spanned an enormous gap. Yet the gap that we have travelled across is extraordinary in many ways, and I feel sensitive to where we are, what I know, and more importantly don’t know about it. In London, underground commuters are used to the recording of the woman with the BBC English accent calling out “Mind the Gap,” when the train doors open at each station and bustling passengers push and shove to get off and on the train. The newer tubes have been designed to cover the gap. The gap to be minded as I travel in New Zealand and onward is that of culture, history, customs, social norms and expectations,and language. It is all too tempting to fall into the pseudo-comfort zone of believing that the English language is “English” everywhere it is spoken. I know all too well coming from England and living in the USA that this is not so. There are words, and phrases, and idioms that while the words are the same the meaning is not. Each group of English language speakers have their own subsets of communicators who express and understand each other according to many sociolinguistic factors. For now i am delighted that the spelling I use, English English, as opposed to American English is the same as that used in New Zealand. Such a colourful place! (Sorry. I couldn’t resist it.) As a British person traveling in New Zealand, I need to be mindful of the history. I need to be respectful of the past, of the pain and strife inflicted on the native Maori people by the British settlers. There are under-currents still today. There is a gap between us, a gap in understanding and acceptance of the past. I will write more about the history and mythoology of this great land as I move along with my journey. What I can tell you now is that I will certainly take heed and mind the gap.

Following up on “Mother-loss”

Tags

Creative Nonfiction, Family, Memoir, motherless daughters, Nurture, Stroke, Writing Process

Dear Friends,

In the last few days since I posted the excerpt from the chapter Mother Loss, 81 of you have amazed me with your responses. Thank you!

Your responses ranged from condolences on the “death” of my mother, (my mother is still alive) to very personal stories about how your mothers are still alive but lost to you for various reasons. To those of you who reacted with the gut feeling that mum had died, thank you so much for your fast and beautiful responses. I promise I will let you know when mum passes over ….. if anyone lets me know. To the others of you who have shared your experiences with me, thank you again. It is such a privilege when you allow me into your lives.

What has become very apparent to me is that the significance of the loss of a mother due to any reason other than death is still not widely understood or acknowledged.

I’m writing a memoir. A memoir isn’t just the story of what happened in a life. The author Patricia Hempl wrote “memoir isn’t for reminiscence; it’s for exploration.” I agree with her. A memoir is the story of search, and of self discovery. The memoirist explores her story on the page with you, her reader. Together we will try to understand and come to terms with what makes a person who she is. And during my journey of self-exploration I hope you will be able to look at your life and the meanings it holds. Perhaps we will discover similarities and share those. Perhaps we will ask similar questions and help each other with explanations.

Until the next time.

Belinda