Dear Santa...

Dear Santa:

I know that you haven't heard from me in oh, let's say 35 years or so, and I guess that is a pretty long time to lose touch.  How is Mrs. Claus and how are the reindeer?  If I remember correctly, that is how I used to open my yearly missives. Yeah, I know I probably didn't use words like missives then, nor was I likely to spell words like reindeer correctly (and, in the mis-directed spirit of confession I have to admit that I have actually eaten reindeer since then...in Norway...it would have been culturally rude for me not to) but, as someone once said, that is neither here nor there...

Now then, I've gotten caught up in the whole Great-Recession-Simple-Living-Deprivation scene so I haven't actually allowed myself to want or desire stuff for the past several years.  After all, I have plenty; other people have less and there is so much judgment going down about greed and consumerism, I feel guilty craving a bag of potato chips (shame!) This year, however, I am giving into my rumblings of want; there are a few things I would really, seriously dig:

• A big, new waffle iron--not one of those piddly, makes one waffle at a time modern jobs, but one that makes six or eight golden waffles with one snap of the lid over a poured glob of batter.  They are hard to find, but maybe you have a sturdy old one laying around the North Pole somewhere?
• A new flour sifter. Enough said.
• The latest Red Hot Chili Peppers album I'm With You--yeah, I know I'm old, but they are as old as I am.  I really groove on that song The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie and I still like to buy and own entire albums; I'm old-school that way. Besides middle-aged, white, West Coast funk sounds mighty fine seeping out of the windows of a teal green PT Cruiser driven by a sassy middle-aged me.
• A year's supply of stamps.  I don't mail much anymore, but standing in line at the post office sucks (you know what I'm talking about) and it takes 2 weeks to get them through the mail when I order them online.  I think about 100 would do us just fine.
• A Book: The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & The Unlike Ascent of "Hallelujah" written by Alan Light. I don't know why, it sounds intriguing and very English-major-y--an entire book devoted to one song, just like an entire college class devoted to one poem. Yeah...pretentious...I want it and not from the library.
• A Kenyan top-bar bee hive.  Those babies are a little spendy and I just don't have the skills to build one. If one appeared wrapped in a red bow on Christmas morning, I would show you a bee dance like you've never seen (nor has anyone else seen it, really. I don't really know how awesome it would be myself, but it would be amazing.)

That's it.  I think.  It feels odd, Santa, asking for things.  I feel a bit guilty. I mean, sure I really want world peace and justice and equity and access to affordable health care and prosperity for everyone, but, seriously, I work on those biggies all year long.  It's a little bit of a flip-flop from those folks who wish for it once a year. Not being Snooty McRighteous here, just sayin'--I want to indulge a little selfish want too! Maybe I'll call it by the trendy moniker I hear others use: self-care and I won't feel so guilty. So, if you have a minute--or maybe Mrs. Claus does, or maybe that gay dentist elf wants to take on a special project? Other than a few stumbles this past year, I think I've been a pretty decent person...and I haven't really asked for anything in decades...

Warmest Regards and Happy Holidays,
your pal,
Kori

Cold Winter Mornings

Lately, our mornings get started quite early around here.  With Teri working the seasonal job at "Harry & David" and finding herself with an early morning shift starting at 6:00 am, we stumble out of bed in the dark and dress by the light of the Christmas tree.  It has made me start to question my claim to be an authentic morning person.  After all, a leisurely 7 am start to the day is a little more civilized than a 5:00 am one!

You may wonder why both of us are crawling out from under warm quilts so early? Well, we figured no need to pay for downtown parking and there really isn't a safe place for Teri to stash a bike, so I do the drive and drop-off and then she walks the 2 or so miles home midday.  It is working and it is temporary, but it is damn early.

There is, of course, an upside.  I have been taking advantage of the early start to do a little work, do a few chores, and enjoy watching the street come alive while I sip my second cup of coffee. After two weeks, I'm getting into a bit of a routine...

After an hour or so of work on the computer, I notice the morning light prying its way through the curtains and head out into the cold garage to scoop a big bowl of cat food for the miscellaneous outdoor cats who clamber on our back deck.  I refill the water the dish with clean water and fluff the various pillows and blanket beds. By that time, the chickens have realized that I'm out and about and they are clucking and pecking the wire walls of their little coop, anxious to be sprung free.  With chicken feed scoop in hand, I tromp to the coop and unlock their door and they all three immediately stretch and march over the threshold (unless one of them happens to be already on the nest, which happens every couple days.) The chickens get fresh water too and I check the nest box to see if it needs a bit of a clean-out--replacing the soiled winter cedar chips with clean ones (summer=straw, winter=cedar).  Lately, I've been feeling particularly farmer-ish on the cold, wet mornings so I head over to the compost bins--looking like a funky Mother Goose with a trio of chickens trailing--and after I turn a few pitchforks over to mix in all the garden debris and newly-added fall leaves, I pull out a couple warm scoops and dump them on a nearby garden bed--the chickens consider this the poultry-equivalent to steaming oatmeal with raisins and honey and they dig in searching for unsuspecting grublet morsels.

Usually, around this time, our neighbor has come out in his saucy knee-length blue bathrobe to tend to his little chicken flock. We share a 7:30 am wave across the garden fence as he bends over not-so-delicately to free his hens from their little cage. Seriously, talking chicken farming only here.

Climbing up onto the back porch and sliding open the glass doors, when I step back into the kitchen, I feel a bit of self-righteous satisfaction. Out the front picture window, the yellow school bus is stopping for kid pick-ups and windows and shades are being pulled up and open up and down our street. Maybe it is time for breakfast or maybe I should sit down and write and address a few more of the big stack of Christmas cards temporarily living on the dining room table? It might be time to heat up my chilly coffee mug in the microwave (unless the cup is still sitting in there from an earlier heat-up) or it might be time to think about the house-wide tidy before getting ready to head off to work myself.

All in all, the morning chores and productive fiddling haven't been too bad--I just wish we didn't have to get up so damn early to make it all happen!

Awesome Ghosts of Holidays Past

Neither Teri nor I are very sentimental people by nature.  I don't even make excuses for myself around it any more and Teri is the quickest person to pack up, discard and give away of anyone I have ever known.  This tendency to live in the present, however, does not mean we don't have attachments, memories and ghosts--and this is the time of year when a flurry of memories whirls around us.

Here's my confession: I have not saved every piece of schoolwork or homemade ornament my kids made while growing up.  I have a few--representations, if you will--and they suffice.  I've given back many items to the kids so they can have, cherish or not, depending on what matters to them. Besides, for me, the ghosts and memories aren't really in items or things--they are more in smells, recipes, activities, and stories.  Teri and I find ourselves doing a whole lot of story-telling this time of year--remembering benchmarks, comparing childhood experiences, and thinking about holidays that have come and gone.

For me, the best Christmas is always the one that is going down right now--everything else seems shadows or rickety drift boats floating off in the distance.  That does not, however, stop us from remembering people who are no longer with us; versions of our kids that pop up in stories of certain times and places; or versions of ourselves we've said good bye to long ago.  I think this is one of the reasons Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has stood the test of time and still rings true with so many people; we all have whole lifetimes we've lived and people we used to be and this time of year gives us full on permission to revisit, re-tell and repent.

The ghosts come and go--they wander in and out of the kitchen while I am making Russian teacakes or stirring up the zillionth cup of hot cocoa; they slide across the floor when I unwrap the set of colorful Nutcracker ornaments three school-age kids and I got in the lobby during intermission at one of the many performances of the Nutcracker ballet we attended; they slosh across the backyard in the plump, green mist of a Pacific Northwest December; and they gyrate through the air while Burl Ives sings "Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas"...

These ghosts mean well, but they are not always welcome.  It can be hard to reconcile my 3-year-old son, Stuart, dressed as a pirate-superhero-ballerina with the tall, thin, soft-spoken and stoic young man he is now.  Thoughts of my grandparents dressed up for the annual Christmas party at the Elks club in all their polyester finery are bittersweet. Memories of sad Christmases--deaths, loss and loneliness--remind us even more of the attachments we have made and lost.

There is something about these short, dark days and the need to light them up with candles, twinkle lights and the burning of the home fires that all goes hand-in-hand with the dance of the mid-winter ghosts. If we allow ourselves to settle in to the darkness and the cold damp, it is tailor-made for waltzing with memories, sharing our stories and giving in to the soul-healing rituals of bringing ourselves solidly into the present. There is no where else I'd rather be than right here, right now, and the Christmas ghosts help to remind me how I got here.

The Road to Burnout Mountain

My true confession is that I work...a lot.  Seriously. Early mornings. Most week nights. Many weekends. My cell phone goes off at 11:30 pm with texts from staff or volunteers, and whether I am at home or at work, I tend to be either working, worrying about work, strategizing about work, or knowing that my phone could ring or buzz at any moment and I'll need to problem solve, go somewhere or just think about work stuff.  Even my so-called volunteer work tends to somehow end up work-related. I am neither bragging nor proud. In fact, I fully acknowledge that it is, to put it kindly, a bit much. I also know that I am not particularly unique.

Working in a small nonprofit is very much like running or working for a small business.  Things are rather entrepreneurial and quite precarious.  Awesome, amazing people who have true passion for the work tend to find their way into a world of long hours and low pay (when and if there is pay) and rising to the authentic expectations means going above and beyond on a fairly regular basis.  The propensity for burnout is well-documented. But, alas, that doesn't necessarily mean that those of us who do this work know how to do everything that needs to be done and avoid the stressors that contribute to burnout!

Perhaps the saddest reality is that we tend to unintentionally drag those closest to us into our world of overwork too.  When your job demands you work all day and attend evening meetings and weekend events, families and partners tend to choose to join in or go along just to make sure that there is some "together time." Teri has helped raise thousands of dollars, staffed many a table, stuffed a zillion envelopes, and been what a few of us call "adjunct" or unofficial staff.  Our kids have attended events, volunteered and pitched in as well.  While all of this household support is awesome, it is not really sustainable--nor is it what most people are expected to contribute to their jobs.

Obviously, I haven't figured out the answer or the solution--but I think I am in good company.  As long as we live in a society with the values and expectations of ours, the high-paying and economically just jobs will not be those providing social or human services, nor those that contribute to a more just and equitable society. Just like any other business, we have the weight of making payroll, paying taxes, and providing health insurance for employees, and just like any other business, we must earn or raise enough money to do that--or we close our doors or resign ourselves to doing the work without adequate salary. Unlike other businesses, raising and earning the money is not always directly linked with the services we provide. This results in a great deal of free or donated labor to the greater society. Honestly, the handful of economics classes I took in college never really explained to me how to preserve the dignity and recognize the worth of all the workers who give their lives over to the social good.

So, we all do our best.  We work until we can't work any longer and hope that someone else will step in and carry the load a little further.  We hope our families and loved ones can hang in there for just a little more and that we can leave things in some sort of shape for the next person. We juggle, take an extra aspirin, drink an extra cup of coffee, or swallow a spoonful of peanut butter for lunch and hope it carries us through until dinner time. In the end, we cling to our belief that we can move things along and make the world a little better--empower, support, encourage and involve--even if it means stretching ourselves a bit further than we ever imagined we could go.  And then, unfortunately, sometimes, we burn out and need to tend to our very human bodies and spirits.

I really don't know the answer. I tend to offer advice that I don't follow and spout platitudes about self care that I don't adhere to. I am hesitant to ask people to do anything I won't and don't do myself and I'm not sure what to do about that.  In the end, I know that there are all sorts of contributors--a crumpled economy, societal priorities, gender politics, technology, etc. but I don't imagine explanations and excuses stand much of a chance against good, old-fashioned burnout!

Sacred Acts of Culinary Variety

Today, it begins.  Well, truthfully, we have been prepping, gathering, cleaning, sorting and making lists for over a week but today, the Thanksgiving holiday preparations begin with diligent focus. I find I approach them with such anticipation. Teri likes to say that Thanksgiving is "my day" but it doesn't feel that way at all to me.  I actually feel like a tiny piece in something bigger and it has absolutely nothing to do with mythological pilgrims or imagined Jamestown multicultural picnics.  It feels intensely emotional and sweetly sacred.  It is about storytelling, multigenerational connection, community and this flawed human stumbling we call life...

Teri and I share stories of childhood Thanksgivings--they are wrapped more in the emotions of how we felt--hers were pleasant affairs of predictability and order; she remembers them as easy, stress-free celebrations of good food, football and good behavior.  My memories are steeped in a bit more anxiety.  I imagine my childhood Thanksgivings fall more on the post-modern therapy couch scale of things and because of this, my adult Thanksgivings have become a ritual of healing.  Every year is a little different and the older I get, the more holidays become participatory benchmarks of aging, connection and forgiveness.

 

Our kitchen is sacred space.  It is the blood-pumping organ of our home and life together, and it is where Teri and I have both best combined our two separate selves and where we continue to tussle over differences and preferences.  We have our own individual favorites--favorite pots and pans, measuring cups and bowls.  We each have our own separate rolling pins. But, Thanksgiving is more than just the two of us.

 

My cooking influences are complicated. I am largely self-taught, although I do pay homage to Mrs. Bonebrake's 7th and 8th grade Home Economics classes (I only took the cooking half of the year and not the sewing!) The other day, when Teri and I were doing our last big grocery shop for Turkey day, I was patiently waiting in front of the spice shelves for a hunched older woman to move herself and her cart aside and when she turned around, it was none other than Mrs. Bonebrake--30 years older and with the same terse look on her face--and it seemed a sacred nod to my historical culinary continuum.  Before you ask, no, I didn't introduce myself--I can't imagine she remembers me; she's surely 80 now and I wasn't particularly a stand-out student at omelet making and I hated the way she made us do all that math at the end of a project.  Honestly, I never figure the cost per-serving in my middle-age life!

 

I learned from cookbooks, cooking shows and by being a guest in other people's kitchens.  I learned how warmly beyond tepid to heat the liquid for bread dough and fail-proof pie crust from my former mother-in-law; I learned how to boldly cook copious quantities and complicated recipes fearlessly from my friend (and Best Gal at our wedding), Wendy; and I have gathered recipes, tips and tools from a wide variety of sources and like a chameleon, they have become my own.  Once I got out into the big, wide world as a young adult, I realized that there were a zillion people who wanted to share and who saw the kitchen as a playground of possibility. This had not been my childhood understanding of what a kitchen was. Now, I experiment.  I make stuff up. I make substitutions.  And, I've learned over the years to be unapologetic--so what if the sausages get a little crisp or I don't know the perfect way to carve a turkey? There is no one right way to make a salad, or a pie, or to glaze a ham--there are endless possibilities!

 

Cooking is alchemy, love, an offering; it is a prayer of hope and sustenance--it is meant to be shared.  As we spend the next couple days in our kitchen, we'll be joined by our kids, our friends, and family and we'll be committing sacred acts of gratitude and merry mess-making.  These are the new, evolving memories and what a gift they truly are.

 

 

 

The Age of Precariousness

I was recently chatting with a friend who sighed a yearning sigh for what he called "security and stability"-- it wasn't until an hour or so later that I realized I could no longer really wrap my head around what that actually means.  It seemed mythological, an almost unreasonable Utopian pining. Who has the luxury of security and stability these days?

I've stopped really paying attention to those who appear to have it all--and by have it all, I don't mean mansions and yachts, I mean stable full time work, a reasonable benefits package, and enough to tend to the basics in life. I just don't move in those sorts of circles.  I know you are out there and, well, good for you, but I know many more individuals who are striving, scraping, and bowing under the weight and stress of precariousness.

It is not lack of education--in my little work world, for example: six people have a combined minimum of 10 degrees--this includes three master's degrees.  We are super well-educated, super-competent and work long, lumpy hours.  This is not enough to guarantee dental care or even a steady paycheck. We struggle to pay off student loans with low-paying social service sector jobs and probably donate as much time and talent as we'll ever be compensated for.

We never know if the computers will be working, the funding will come through or whether we'll even have a job to claim tomorrow.  That is an exhausting form of precariousness. And, still, we piece it together--multiple jobs, contract work, and by sharing whatever we have with friends, family and community. When Teri and I aren't feeding kids or making sure they have shoes, toilet paper and toothpaste, we scrape together what we can to donate to various charities and causes that are hanging off those precipices of precariousness too. Don't ask me why, it just never dawns on us that this is not the way to go about things.

Is this the way things are going to be for the near and distant future?  Is this simply the "age" in which we live? I know this is not the way things are for everyone, but it is the way things are for many. I also know it depends on where you live, what you do, and various uncontrollable factors like skin color, gender and age. But  knowing all this does not really justify the age of precariousness. The other day, Teri said that maybe the path to peace was to simply accept that this is the reality, plain and simple.  I couldn't figure out, however, how that would make things feel any less tenuous and temporary?  I imagine she was imagining it would be less exhausting without the struggle for something else, but that doesn't account for the effort to simply maintain...

What it All Means (to Us)

As Teri would say, I'm not going to lie--this is often her prelude to true confessions of the blunt variety.  So, this morning, I'm not going to lie, this election season has been nerve-wracking to say the least and downright frightening on some days.  As we sat, paced, and baked our way through the dispensing of the results last night, there were some moments where we felt cautious, tight-lipped surges of hope...

As we watched first Maine, then Maryland and, hopefully, finally Washington state all approve marriage equality (or as the news reporters like to say "Gay Marriage" because it is somehow completely different and separate from any other sort of marriage--I think it is lumped in with "plural marriage" and other italicized arrangements)...by popular vote...at the ballot...we got a little teary.  Teri summed it up in a simple sentence when she said "There are some good people out there who stand by us."  It is hard not to take it personally--both for those who are finally voting to approve marriage equality and for those who surely now know plenty of good and awesome gay people, but who are still clinging to discrimination.

It feels monumental, historical, and, honestly, exhausting.  I am so grateful for all the people who organized, phone-banked and literally went door-to-door talking to folks in these states.  These are amazing victories--the first ever achieved by vote.  What we hope this means is that we will eventually be able to overturn some of the discrimination that has been built into state constitutions (like ours in Oregon) but there is also something bittersweet about stitching together rights state by state--rights still for some but not for all.

We are solidly the first generation encouraged, cajoled and pressured to be "out"--there was a sense that if we all came out of the closet, our visibility would inspire change and this has been true. What has also been true is the painful, soul-searing backlash.  Teri and I realized last night that these victories would not be met without plenty of push-back from those who are convinced that all this equality is just the sort of shameful horror that will bring about the end times. So, out of habit, in the midst of all the Yay! we were bracing ourselves for the Yuck.

Meanwhile, there were/are other things that matter to us too: Maryland also approved a measure that would allow immigrants who have attended high school to pay in-state tuition for college; many of our local bond measures to pay for schools, road repairs and parks were passed; and progressive ballot measures legalizing recreational marijuana use (and thus decriminalizing while paving the way for taxes to support the public coffers) passed in Washington and Colorado--but, alas, not here in Oregon.  Tammy Baldwin was elected as state senator in Wisconsin--first woman and first out lesbian to hold that office. The state of New Hampshire now has an all-female delegation--including a female governor. The presidential race mattered as well, but it was one piece of a whole lotta big and heavy stuff!

I know full well that just as we are feeling cautiously optimistic and breathing a little easier this morning, there are those who are praying fervently or brooding about the disgusting trajectory of America. I've already read the remarks about how "we Christians need to stick together" and a variety of racial and homophobic slurs.  In other words, it's not a clean win.  It feels like hard-won progress but not really a victory.  We know the battles are important but we have to fortify ourselves for the rest of the journey.