Monthly Archives: April 2020

The industrious wren

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I started my Sunday with a wren warbling and dancing in the forsythia outside my living room window. It was my second wren sighting of the spring, and I’m pleased to know they’re in the neighborhood. They’re not uncommon here, but I don’t see them every year. I’ve set out wren houses more than once, and I once scored a nest, but it wasn’t the nest momma ultimately picked for her brood, so we didn’t get any tenants.

I wondered what symbolism attaches to the wren, and it seems to depend whom you ask. One Native American totem website associates it with confidence, energy, and gusto for life. Another tells me it doesn’t have much meaning in most Native American cultures but is, in some, a bird of war and believed to boost courage. The Celts apparently associated it with the old year coming to an end, and for that reason, more than one website (including the Smithsonian magazine’s) says the Irish traditionally hunted it on the day after Christmas.

Well, I don’t want to kill wrens. So I chose to associate them with industriousness and gusto, and took my wren sighting as a sign that I should get something done during the day. Amazingly, that’s what I did. By day’s end, my garden and yard were all tidied up for spring: birdbaths in place, fountains spouting, patio swept, yard debris collected, a second round of spring seeds planted, and seedlings starting to think about sprouting in my portable greenhouse. We exhausted the dogs by spending the day outside and giving them a walk. And I finally did the craft project I’ve been planning for two years, which has haunted me since the start of sheltering in place.

We sat outside for a lovely video call with the faraway son, and I saw my wren again, along with a woodpecker and other critters both winged and earthbound. I’m not sure what symbolic meaning attaches to woodpeckers—maybe industrious or mischievous? Leaving now to go look that up.

P.S.

I still haven’t looked up the woodpecker symbolism, but I did challenge myself to draw my sweet little wren, which is why this post is delayed. Here he is in black and white also.

Cooking in the pandemic

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Creativity comes in many forms. My primary—and professional—medium is words. But food is a close second that brings me a lot of pleasure.

I haven’t had much time to cook while sheltering at home, mostly because I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home and my job is one whose demands have ramped up significantly in the pandemic. But occasionally I get a cooking urge when I actually have time to explore it.

Yesterday was one of those days. So I looked in the freezer, found some ground turkey that needed to be used, and went recipe hunting. The result: turkey meatballs seasoned with cardamom and orange, served over a bed of cabbage and brown rice, with grape tomatoes on the side.

My first pie ever with a butter crust

I started with this recipe and played with the seasonings a bit, substituting a smaller quantity of mace for the nutmeg in the meatballs and adding turmeric and ancho peppers. I also added turmeric and ancho to the sauce, along with a lemon-garlic seasoning that gets a lot of use in my kitchen. I didn’t alter the cabbage at all, except to skip the salt and use a slightly citrusy pepper blend instead of plain pepper.

It was tasty, and the cabbage is an absolute keeper, especially mixed with rice as in this recipe.

Dessert was peach pie I made the night before, and the weather cooperated so we could eat outside. Heaven.

Good from sadness

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Most people I know are having mood swings in this pandemic. On top of feeling isolated and penned in, there’s much to fear—for ourselves, our loved ones, our nations, and for humanity.

Reading poetry can help me when I’m in a funk, as can sunlight and the outdoors. I don’t think I can write my way out of a funk, but sometimes I’m able to put pen to page despite low spirits. There’s a chicken-egg conundrum to this; I’m not clear what comes first—whether writing helps me get away from the gloom, or I’m already on my way out and that allows me to give voice to my feelings. But they do often seem to go hand in hand.

Today, a poem I wrote near the darkest point of my recent funk—during a two- to three-day period starting on Holy Thursday of Easter week—made its way into the wide universe. “What I Fear Most” is published now on Headline Poetry and Press, and the editor who accepted it made my day by telling me it had struck home personally with them, voicing what they considered a common experience.

It’s gratifying and comforting to know that something positive can come from sadness. I’d rather not have gone through (or put my husband through) that 1 1/2-week funk. But having done so, I’m glad to think I might help someone else muddle through as well.

I intended this blog to serve as something of a social distancing diary when I started writing daily posts with the institution of shelter-in-place orders. Clearly that plan has crumbled, given the nearly two-week gap. But sometimes it’s hard to write, and hard to share. I’m forgiving myself.

Photos of the day

I used most of yesterday’s good photos in yesterday’s blog post. Here are a couple taken while the sun was out one day during my funk. Dogs on the deck—a recipe for contentedness.

Intermittent coping

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Last time I was here was almost two all weeks ago, and I see that I was in a funk. There’s a surprise, eh?

Life is all ups and downs these days. Only two things surprise me about finding that I was blue the last time I wrote here:

  • That I managed to write at all while in a funk
  • How long the funk lasted (well over a week)

In any case, I’m back, and in a better mood. I think we’re all having ups and downs, better times and worse. Here in the Midwest, the weather matches the mood. It was clearly spring a week ago, sunny and warm. Now it has snowed three of the last four days. Not snow that sticks, thankfully, but snow. I actually woke this morning to news of a multi-car pile-up on one of the local expressways. It felt like I was in a time warp.

Today’s snow was thick and heavy and fluffy, very pretty and perfect for building snowmen though it didn’t stick around. It was nearly gone by early afternoon. Yesterday’s was light but hung around a little longer, though it never accumulated on streets. Different days, different snow, different moods.

Today’s mood started out as a cooking one, and I pulled out a couple of my lesser-used cookbooks to inspire a marvelous dinner. Then I looked in the freezer to see what ingredients I could work with and found so much food, already cooked, that I’m now banned from buying anything but produce and fresh dairy products for the near future.

I did manage to turn my personal yen to cook into an assignment for my husband to bake bread. So tonight’s menu is for Finnish cardamom bread and a lovely kale and lima bean soup I made some time back. I will bake a pie, both to feed my creative cooking urge and to use peaches from the freezer.

Does anyone else’s life feel a bit random these days? I wake up wanting to cook and instead write a blog post. I plan my garden and order seeds but have only started a handful in soil since they arrived. The first craft project I planned to undertake during social distancing is still waiting for me, the supplies I thought I had on hand having actually just recently arrived.

It’s all topsy turvy. I’ve actually come to appreciate cold and rainy weather because it keeps more people inside. And I take my longest and most relaxing walks at night, when fewer people are out and about.

Perhaps even stranger, I’ve had trouble reading anything but poetry. This has significantly increased the amount of poetry I read, but at the cost of a certain escape that I typically find in prose. I think I found a solution, though, in young adult literature. I wrote about that over on Escape into Life, in the column I’ve started calling “Accidental Coping.”

One thing I’m grateful for everyday, though, is the extra time I have with Old Dog, the 14-year-old cardiac patient who spends nearly every waking moment wherever I am. She sleeps behind me while I work, paws at me to join her when her day’s rest is over and she wants a walk, and lies at my feet when I’m on Zoom or FaceTime calls with loved ones. I don’t know how much time she has left, and I’m happy for every minute of it.

Blue funk with yellow

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My forsythia is in bloom, along with one daffodil, and the four yellow crocus that got moved from my back garden to the front parkway and somehow haven’t yet wilted. Today’s garden is all yellow.

I can’t extract any hidden meaning from that, just a coincidence. And while I try to plan variety into my garden, it’s just a fact that an abundance of spring blooms are yellow. “Why that is” is a rabbit hole I might slide down in a minute or two, but for now I’m content to enjoy these scattered bits of color and the insistent calling of a robin to my left and a cardinal to my right as I sit on my front porch.

It’s only about 40 degrees F, and there’s not much world passing by right now—an occasional walker or bicyclist, sometimes a car at the intersection a block away. The neighborhood isn’t just social distancing today; it’s mostly huddled inside trying to stay warm. I did that this morning and found myself headed toward a blue funk, so we grabbed the dog leashes and got outside. Pups exhausted, we now sit quietly on the porch, reviving our spirits and lungs with fresh air.

Yesterday was warm enough (low 60s?) to open up the windows and let fresh air into the house, which is a spring treat. I often crack open a bedroom window at night even in early and late winter, but being able to open the windows wide and let in a breeze is a blessing after a long winter—perhaps even more so now that I’m working from home and don’t get as much fresh air in the morning and afternoon.

These are all small condolences, of course, and I would trade them all—the enjoyment of them, anyway—to have this horrible disease go away and know that my loved ones and I and total strangers the world over could feel safe. I’m seeking out this calm moment because inside I’m a roiling mess of anxiety, and I know that I’m one of the lucky ones. Able to work from home, with the company and care of a spouse I love, I owe my comfort and safety to those who’re going out into the world and facing this menace on my behalf. They include family, friends, and strangers, and I worry for them and am angry at a government that has done little to protect them.

Hug the ones you love. Pray for everyone. Try to stay safe.