Loose Ends and Thai Noodle Salad

As a former English major, I read metaphors in everything.

It's been a week of loose ends at work, a week when things feel unraveled. The team that I'd cohered so well for the past few years is falling apart: one of my staff members has officially left for a faculty job at an institution in the midwest, and my head of college just finished up a victory lap after what was supposed to be an eight year term. Losing both of them at the same time means a shift in energy, a shift in overall positivity in the office, and I feel it keenly.

The other day, towards the end of the day, I was cleaning out the fish tank in the office, and it seeemed like everyone was standing around chatting, completely oblivious to the fact that my hands were full of fish poop and that it would have been nice to step in and help me out. As I looked around at the people who would be left, I wondered whether I'd ever be able to pull a team together again like I had in the years before. I wondered if I'd ever have someone who saw me like my departing colleagues did, without me needing to say a word. I wondered what the point of trying so hard was.

Of course, my kid is away at camp for two weeks, so I'm sure that's part of the unraveled feeling. She's leaving me, too ... more slowly, maybe (I have three more years before she leaves for college), but surely nontheless. And my other kid is in Boston for the summer and fall, and then likely Copenhagen for the spring.

It's a lot of leaving, and it all makes me want to hide under my desk, or better yet, leave my office entirely and go hide in the garden. Or better still, in bed.

As I was leaving work, having cleaned my hands of fish poop, I happened to glance down into the mulch next to my usual parking space, and I noticed something glinting up at me. It was the front of a pin I'd lost weeks ago ... the Kind pin from Penzey's. I had the back of the pin in my desk, but figured I'd never find the front, having looked everywhere for it.

So of course, that, too, was a message. Be kind to yourself. Others still need your kindness. Look for kindness and it will find you when you least expect it.

Which, because I'm all unraveled, made me cry.

I can't help but think that life would have been less complicated in my head if I hadn't been an English major.

Thai Noodle Salad

a recipe for when things are feeling a little unraveled; dress it and somehow it all starts to stick together
 

6 ounces rice noodles

4 cups mix of cabbage, carrots and radish, shredded or grated

1 red bell pepper, finely sliced

3 scallions, sliced

½ bunch cilantro, chopped (or sub basil and mint)

¼–½ cup roasted, crushed peanuts (garnish)

3 thin slices ginger- cut across the grain, about the size of a quarter.

1 fat clove garlic

¼ cup peanut butter (sub almond butter)

¼ cup fresh orange juice (roughly ½ an orange)

3 T. fresh lime juice (1 lime)

2 T. soy sauce 

3 T. honey or agave

1 1/2 T. toasted sesame oil

1/2 t. cayenne pepper

1/2 t. salt

Cook noodles according to directions on package. Drain and chill under cold running water.

While noodles are cooking, blend the peanut sauce ingredients (ginger through salt) together using  a blender until smooth.

Toss shredded veggies, bell pepper, scallions, cilantro together in a serving bowl. Add the cold noodles to the serving bowl and toss again. Pour the peanut sauce over top and toss well to combine.

NOTE: If you're not going to eat this immediately, don't dress it! It will actually get sticky and absorb all of the dressing.

Adjust the salt (to your liking), add chili flakes if you want, and serve, garnishing with roasted peanuts and cilantro and a lime wedge.

On Blogging and Abiding (with Strawberry Snacking Cake)

Someone asked me the other day if I've ever written a blog. I confess I usually hesitate when people ask me this, because it was sort of nice to exist in relative anonymity, and I still don't like outing myself to people I have to see on a regular basis, unless I choose to be vulnerable with them. But on the other hand, this space and the community I found through it have been so important to me for over fifteen years that it's hard not to acknowledge; it's also shaped the person I've become far beyond the page.

The fact that there are 5 million paid subscriptions and 35 million active subscriptions on Substack alone, never mind the people who just read occasionally or the other platforms where blogging happens, seems to indicate that there's still something we crave about the connection we can only make with other humans in long form writing. It requires us to slow down, requires attention, in a way that TikTok or doomscrolling on Instagram never did. And I think it's something we really need right now.

Though I don't read nearly as much Substack as I used to read Blogger, one of my colleagues recently shared a post with me from our former Dean of the College -- a professor of English and Theater, and a person who I came to admire in so many ways during her years at the helm. Her stack is about the experience of living with "indolent" stage four endometrial cancer, and while the post is a meditation on where she finds herself right now, she also talks about connection and witness in ways that resonate for me. 

Though there are some notable exceptions, we generally suck at simply being present when we can't fix a difficult situation, and this is particularly true in cases of illness, grief, and loss. Five years ago I wrote this post about sitting with people through grief, in particular, sitting with people through the loss of a child to suicide, and (to take me back to where I started today), that ability to really be with people when you can't do anything continues to be my most meaningful takeaway from blogging.

In the past few months, one of my best friends has been dealing with stage three colon cancer, and is going through chemo, which is nasty no matter how you slice it. My college roommate had brain surgery to remove a large fistula that was trying its best to kill her, and though she is healing now, it's going to be a long road. My high school English teacher had to have a stent put in for NPH. While I brought them or sent them all food, because that's one of the ways I try to see embodied humans, perhaps more valuable was just being there, acknowledging the awfulness, showing up when I could, seeing them, "abiding," as Mel has called it in the ALI blogging community.

At work, we're about to welcome the incoming class, and among the things they have to do over the summer is a reflective self-paced course that tries to get them thinking about their purpose in coming to college. I was going through the course just so I could see what they'd see, and found that one of the assignments asks students "if you could wave a magic wand and change anything in the world, what would it be and why?" As I was writing my answer, I didn't think much about it, but I realize now just how informed it was by this impetus towards presence and connection; I said something about wanting people to see the world through other people's perspectives to the extent possible, and when it isn't possible, to bear witness to their experiences in ways that may require them to be profoundly uncomfortable.

All of that to say: I'm still grateful for this space, fifteen years in, even when I don't write much any more. Thanks for being here, and for teaching me how to be there, too.

It's strawberry season here, so in the spirit of sharing food, here's a cake I made from Yossy Arefi's Snacking Cakes book a while back. She shared the recipe in her substack, here. It's what I might bring to make the first five minutes of sitting together just a little easier.

Adulting

More so than my birthday, February is a month that marks the passage of time, the month of anniversaries of losses and other milestones. While I can feel a little heaviness creeping in, I haven't had time to sit with it -- my daughter had whatever norovirus-like thing is going around, which kept me emotionally occupied for a week, and there’s always work -- but I guess there are still plenty of days left before March for me to start feeling like I'm lying under a two ton gorilla?

My body keeps the February score even if my conscious mind doesn't: after my period hadn't shown up for seven months, it arrived on the day after my daughter's birthday, my reproductive system getting in a meaningful jab (ha! ha!) just as I've started to breathe a sigh of relief that maybe my cycle and I have parted ways, as if to assert that it's still in charge. Not that I'm surprised, mind you. We've been more at odds than usual for a while, my uncooperative body and I: in addition to the fallout from the concussion and mysterious undiagnosable illness, the perfect storm of injury and hormone shifts over the past few years without the ability to run or dance has added twenty pounds to my frame (ha! ha! it says), yet another way in which my physical container is sometimes unrecognizable as my own.

In the fall I tried a tai chi course offered by my public library, and though I was dealing with tendonitis and tennis elbow (even though I don't play tennis - ha! ha!) it felt good to move again, so I signed up for an eight week course offered by the local adult school. The first class in the series was on Monday, and after stumbling around the municipal complex in the dark for a while, I finally found the building, marked by the sign "Center for Modern Aging." I'm pretty sure I laughed out loud. At the very least, I laughed in my head. It sounds sexy or cool, "Modern Aging." Which I definitely am not.

I had worried about finding the room, but shouldn't have, because I could see the converted basketball gym (also not cool or sexy) from the doorway, and since I was a few minutes late, I got a first look at my classmates before they saw me: slender bald guys with glasses and hearing aids, women of many shapes and sizes wearing all manner of clothing that wasn't quite designed for us, and in whom I saw my menopausal self.

I shed my winter layers as quickly and quietly as I could, finding a spot in the back of the class where I hoped I could hide. Is this who I am now? I wondered. Am I the middle-aged woman in tai chi class, hair thinning, eyes not quite focused, trying to keep my balance and finding myself frustratingly unable to get a good view of the teacher?

It was okay, I guess. I will go again next week.

I came home to an empty house; my husband had taken my daughter to dance class, which is two hours long and twenty minutes away (so no sense coming back in between). It--and I--felt abandoned. I puttered around, a little lost, without a plan. There is always plenty to do, but the weight of the silence was distracting, even though it didn't feel right to disrupt it, either. Soon it will be the norm.

This feels like a new chapter in adulting, and it's going to take some time to get used to who I am again.

Pumpkin Brownies
I've been wanting chocolate, and now I think I know why. These are not good for you. But you can pretend they are because there's a vegetable. And I'm using up the pumpkin puree I froze back in November, so that's good, right?

1 1/2 c. chocolate chips + 1/4 c. (divided)
1/3 c. butter
1 shot espresso or dark coffee
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. white sugar
1/4 c. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 c. pumpkin puree
1 1/4 c. all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, grease an 8" square baking pan.

Melt chocolate chips and butter together slowly in the microwave or over a double boiler, stirring as often as possible.  When they are completely smooth you can turn off the heat and start adding the other "wet" ingredients:
shot of espresso, vanilla, sugars and then finally the pumpkin puree. Stir briskly until smooth.

Fold in the baking powder, salt and flour. Stir to mix completely, but do not overmix.

Pour the batter into your baking dish and top with 1/4 cup chocolate chips.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool another 10-15 minutes in the pan before cutting. And for the love of all that is holy, eat them with whipped cream or ice cream or something else and try not to feel too bad about your spreading middle or thighs or whatever you've got going on in that uncooperative body of yours.

The Gift Must Move

(cross posted at https://theyakboard.com/)

In 2019, I traveled to India with my yoga teacher and a group of her yoga students. I think I was seeking enlightenment; that’s what so many yoga programs promise middle-aged women like me. While I have positive memories of that trip — walks along a dusty road to town and admiring the warli art on the concrete walls, getting elaichi from the tiny stand close to town, squashing into auto-rickshaws at the crack of dawn to attend aarti at the temple, visiting a workshop where women were sewing — I left India feeling uncomfortably like a consumer of the experience, rather than a participant. I remember coming back thinking maybe I'd do teacher training, but I actually stopped doing yoga, uneasy with my own practice, feeling like I'd appropriated something that wasn't mine, but not wanting it to devolve merely into exercise, which seemed wrong, too. I’d bought a pair of earrings that I loved during the trip, tear-drop shaped tiger eye, and eventually lost one of them. The loss felt symbolic.

Fast forward seven years. 

I am standing on a walkway along Fateh Sagar Lake in Udaipur, at a "Be the Gift" festival sponsored by Shikshantar, a movement founded to re-think education and provide opportunities for people to participate in social regeneration. I have been tasked with holding a sign that says “Free झप्पी” ("Free Jhappi," or "Free hugs"). I awkwardly wave the sign and smile; many teenaged boys cluster across from me, talking to each other and giggling before shoving each other forward to take turns posing next to me for a picture. I am certain that I'm Instagram-famous within minutes. A few people take me up on the offer of the hug (despite the fact that I had worried about gender conventions and the weirdness of inviting that kind of intimacy). I talk with people about the meaning of money, why we worry about it so much, what we can give each other to make it feel less burdensome. At one point I'm invited to play a game I’d never heard of before called "Beauty and the Beast" that feels a lot like tag but it much more confusing.

I'm on a program with students and a few colleagues, facilitated by Where There Be Dragons, that is intended to provide a context for students to broaden their understanding of community activism, education, and leadership. And I find that I'm experiencing India as a learner, with humility, with curiosity. 

During the ten days we were traveling, we visited with leaders and visionaries (not people with big visions but small, one-person-at-a-time kinds of visions) who were helping the community collaborate to leave their world a little better than they’d found it. We were invited into the homes of our students’ homestay families, where they talked with us about their relatives, cricket, and upcoming weddings, and fed us and poured so many cups of chai. We took walking tours of villages like Delwara and Kotri and cities like Udaipur with people who call those places home, who have seen them change, who are thinking about the impact of development and the ways in which history and culture and class (and caste) shape individual and collective identities. 

Each day, I’d listen to my fellow travelers asking questions, recounting their homestay siblings’ funniest remarks, reflecting on their perspectives on India, education, and what it means to be “doing enough” in this difficult world to help create and nurture positive change. I felt deeply fortunate to be in this space, in this moment. I thought a lot about my own communities, and things we build together just by showing up.

On the last night, we walked down a street in Delhi on the way to Hemanji’s favorite tea shop, a pair of earrings in a small jeweler’s window caught my eye. They were tear drop shaped tiger eyes, like the one I’d lost, but the stone was dangling from a tree of life, a symbol I’ve connected with over the past few years as I’ve tried to be more mindful of things like community and rootedness and mutual growth. It was like a visual representation of the ways in which this trip was both similar to but completely different from the one I’d taken seven years ago.

At the airport in the wee hours of the morning, Neeravji, Tserginji, and Hemantji (our Dragons leaders) stood outside to see us safely towards home. I felt sadder than I expected to feel, like I was leaving people who had become friends, but also grateful to be traveling back with people who were going to keep asking questions and challenging me to be more reflective, too.

It's hard to know where to go from here. But that’s the point, right? To be open, to be curious, to be unable to distill complicated places and people down to a single blog post or photo.

I told the group towards the end of our trip that there’s an anthropologist who says one of the essential qualities of a gift is that it must “move,” that if gifts aren’t passed on, that they lose their tranformative abilities and become just things. This journey was a gift, generously given (the “free jhappi” that people offered to me, the beautiful mehndi that I received at the festival, the boost from Hemantji and the extended hand of Neeravji that helped me get up the mountain), and I hope I can do that gift justice for a long time to come.

*photos don’t include other people because I didn’t ask permission to publish them … not because I was alone in India!! 🙂