Talk of the town

If we had a newspaper out here on the Lost Coast, the headline would read “Frozen Food Giveaway Makes Every Customer a Lottery Winner Thanks to Broken General Store Freezer.” As I ran down Lighthouse Road pushing 55 pounds of sleep-resistant youngsters and their wheeled chariot, I was stopped by numerous vehicles driven by excited friends asking if I’d heard about the frozen food giveaway at the store. I don’t think there’s been any news this big since a sperm whale washed up on the beach. Our little store’s freezer is on the fritz so Bobby was giving away most of the contents. By the end of our run, the jogger was filled with frozen organic vegetables and oozing ice cream.

I heard that at the evening’s poker game, the table was buzzing with talk of what frozen delights people had scored at the store. Tots and ice cream were being traded for burritos and enchiladas.

The other big news around here, besides the relentless wildfires that have periodically choked our blue skies with smoke for more than two weeks now, is the parched river. The Mattole is at a record low which is tragic news for struggling salmon and not so good for any of us other creatures -large and small, nearby and beyond – either.

On a trivial and positive note, if you come into some ripe plums, as we have recently, you must make this cake. We first created it for Blase’s birthday and I’ve been selling it at Cafe for a few weeks since. It’s an indulgent use for plums…..

Plum Upside Downey

1.5 sticks (12 TB ) room temp butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 TB honey

6 large plums – or a bunch of small ones – cut into wedges

1.25 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

1/8 cup flax powder

1/8 cup ground almonds (or walnuts or pecans)

2 large eggs

3/4 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup milk (any kind you want, I like rice milk)

• preheat to 350
• Stir 6 TBS of the butter, brown sugar, and honey in heavy skillet over low heat until melted, blended, thick and smooth
• Pour into 9 inch cake pan with 2 inch high sides
• Arrange plums on top of goo in pan in overlapping circles or whatever dense pattern suits your fancy
• Mix flour, flax, nuts, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in medium bowl
• Beat remaining 6 TBS butter in large bowl until light
• Add sugar and beat til’ creamy
• Add eggs and beat til’ fluffy
• Beat in Vanilla
• Add dry ingredients alternately with milk, mixing just til’ blended
• Spoon evenly over plums
• Bake until golden and tester comes out of center clean …about one hour and 5 minutes
• Cool completely before loosening edges with a knife, placing plate on top, and inverting onto plate
• EAT IT AND LOVE IT

mommy, why are your teeth so yellow?

Nola is officially walking without assistance. She let go of Blase’s hand and ran back and forth across our long bedroom floorboards. We all shrieked uncontrollably with glee for nearly an hour as she ran back and forth giggling and jiggling with pride and unleashed enthusiasm.

At 15.5 months, one could say that her independent walking is fashionably late. She has now been upgraded to a toddler and Ossian, having completed her first year of preschool, has earned the new title of “preschooler”. They are growing and emerging and diverging right before our astounded eyes.

Because I can’t resist, here are some recent Osh quotes that compel repeating:

• “we’ve got to get rid of this house cuz’ it’s so big and it’s too dirty…maybe we could live in almeriga”

• “oh mommy, why do your boobies hang all the way down so far?”

• “mommy, why are your teeth so yellow?”

• “mama, you should really take care of your body”

Ahh, the humbling sound bites of parenting in the wild.

sparkly shoe demands

Ossian dresses herself these days which makes for some unprecedented outfits and almost always pants on backward and shoes on the “wrong” feet. This morning, while she was getting herself dressed for our big trip with 16 loads of laundry to town, she said, “I demand to wear my sparkly shoes.” Blase and I exchanged long, perplexed looks over stifled laughter.

Speaking of demands, Ossian likes to adamantly request specific parameters for bedtime stories. Tonight, after she’d jammied up and pillowed down, she said, “mommy, tell me story about a berry trying to get of a dot.” 3 minutes into my best attempt at such a storyline, she added, “Mommy, give me a hand massage while you’re telling the story about a berry trying to get out of a dot.”

Last night, she asked for a story about a “necklace that wants to get on a light”.

Earlier in the day, she said, “mommy, it’s interesting... daddy reads me books at bedtime but you don’t read books at bedtime. I think that’s interesting.”

Harp reconciliation

For two years, the stringing, tuning, and playing of my dust-covered harp as been gnawing from my list of “want to do’s”. Though parenting is inherently creative, stealing moments for other creative outlets is an elusive goal and, when it happens, a thrilling victory in the life of this kuntrywife.

My concert grand harp has been standing dormant and neglected for so long. It has gradually moved from the edge of the middle of the living room into a dead corner. Recently, it turned its back on our living space and huddled alone beneath a thickening coat of dusty despair. One, two, three, and finally four strings had broken under the stress of signficant temperature fluctuations and sprawled lifelessly on the sound board and beyond in loose and limply disorganized curves.

I’ll never play again, I’ve thought so many times. That thought often lead to the next thought…I’ll never be good again anyway. Creeping shortly behind came, I never was any good anyway. A little spiral of negative projection and self-defeat that supported the march of untouched dust on my former instrument’s gracefully carved wooden column.

I began taking harp lessons in the fourth grade. My first harp was a tiny rented lap harp. As I grew over the years, so did my harps. By high school, a parade of rented harps gave way to the purchase of an old and beautiful full size Lyon and Healy concert grand. Despite it’s magnificence, it had to compete with the other pulls of adolescent life … driving around, sneaking out of the house, theater rehearsal, track meets, keggers, homework, endless phone conversations, sleeping in, and boyfriends. My 1-2 hours of daily practice dwindled to just minutes each day, reluctantly squeezed in between perms and mowing the lawn. I continued with weekly lessons and played with the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra for the U.S premier of an Erhu concerto by prominent Chinese composers. I didn’t like playing with an orchestra. It made me nervous and was a lonely experience. As the only harp, I sat alone and had to count what seemed like thousands of measures before my parts came up. I never liked counting for that long and struggled to stay calm and focused during these long anticipatory passages. When my parts did come around, there were no other musicians to look to or play with. As a somewhat shy teenager, this was a nightmare.

Though I think I was a moderately talented harpist with the benefit of 12 years of weekly lessons, I was terrible in front of other people. When I had to play in front of people, my hands would shake and sweat making it nearly impossible to play the correct notes in a moving, musical fashion. As I struggled to get through music I normally played well, my anxiety reaction increased making my hands shake more and my focus vanish in thick clouds of panic. It was a quick and vicious little cycle that made me dread and avoid all performance situations. What is the point of years of training and practice if not to perform? I think people just thought I was weird about it and I figured I must not be a great musician if I couldn’t perform calmly and successfully in front of an audience.

When I was a junior in high school, my harp teacher invited me to play in the Festival of Harps she was organizing for performance at the University of Washington. 25 acclaimed harpists from around the country would be flying in to join the performance. I was younger then all but one of the harpists by at least 10 years. I was in awe and thought at least with 27 harps on stage, if my hands shook and I missed a chord, no one would notice. I would not be the lone harpist.

On performance night, I waited backstage as the pros showed up. They all seemed so confident. Twenty minutes before the curtains were to open, ALL of them started popping tiny pills. All these performers I admired and aspired after were popping beta-blockers to counter stage fright. I felt like they were cheating while I had to sweat through my part of the performance feeling like a shaky pubescent loser while they sailed through under the medicated bliss of pharmeceutically induced peformance greatness.

When we all rolled the first chord together on stage, it was chilling. Drug haze and all, being part of harp army was inspiring.

I played through college with the same performance avoidance. I got roped into one symphony bit that was disastrous in all the familiar and sweaty ways. When I left college, I left my harp at my mom’s house in Ohio and began my serial habitation of small, cheap apartments in Seattle. Though I could have squeezed the harp in somewhere, I was over it. I wanted a break from the confines of my exlusively classical music training and felt a little resentful that I was completely incapable of improvising. I wished that my 12 years of work had earned me the ability to “jam” with other musicians or play something slightly social and interactive and fun. Instead, in my post-harp-break-up-early-twenties angst, I felt all I knew how to do was play someone else’s ideas accurately instead of playing something of my own creation.

Six years later, my dad died and I bought a house with the money he left me. With all that space and adulthood, there was no excuse not to accept my harp when it arrived in the moving truck my mom sent from her new home in Utah. It was good to see it again but things were still awkward between me and the harp.

Three years later, I married a musician. Enamored by my harp and the lore of my harping past, he incessantly encouraged me to play it. I incessantly resisted, giving in only to agree to a brief performance at our wedding with him. Though brief, it was a disaster. Thinking about it at all makes me cringe. Thank god, the microphone was pushed so far away from me that most people couldn’t hear my bridal musical massacre over the ocean breeze.

Two years later, he convinced me to play a Stevie Wonder tune with him at our friends’ wedding. This was my first positive performance experience. Perhaps it was the vicodin I was taking for my tooth abcess. Or maybe it was the welcoming environment of that gorgeous same sex wedding. It could have just been luck. Whatever it was, I enjoyed it. We did “You and I” with harp and vocals.

Thinking I was over my performance problem, we tried to repeat this at two more weddings. One of which required driving the harp all the way to California and carrying it down a steep rocky ledge to a cobbled river bed. The other involved a one hour rental harp in Malibu, CA. The former, was a poor performance but one that my self-esteem survived thanks to the help of beautiful surroundings and glasses of honey mead. The latter was an astounding disaster. I played without any warm up and almost no practicing for the preceding 3 months. I was wearing a bridesmaid dress that was unquestionably unflattering to my pearish figure. To top it off, I botched it all in front of lots of people I would have to see again and again for the rest of my life. Martin Sheen was there, too. After the disaster, one drunk cousin in law walked up to me and gave me consoling pat on the back and said, “it’s just not your instrument”. I didn’t have the stomach to tell him that it actually was my instrument. Just thinking about it now makes me want to eat a pan of brownies and change my name.

I guess I haven’t really played since then. Oh, except for one more wedding performance for a best friend. I planned ahead for that one arrived in steamy Connecticut bearing one small tablet, a beta-blocker. The doctor said tons of her patients take them to manage their fears of public speaking. Twenty minutes before the wedding, I guiltily decided to try it. I don’t actually know if it helped but the performance as ok.

So, for years, my harp has been neglected as has my inner musician. But, tonight, my two underslept and filthy daughters (we have had no water for much fo the past week.. but that’s for another post) and I, their even more underslept and filthy mother, played the harp together. Osh helped me string it and Nola chewed on the old strings while waiting for her spaghetti dinner. I did my best to tune it while they simultaneously bashed every instrument in our music basket for “band practice”. Then, with my 15 month old standing on the base of the harp, holding onto the column like it was the mast of a storm tossed ship while playing her kazoo, and my 3.25 year old accompanying me on tambourine, we played Variations on a theme by Haydn. Ossian made up some words and we all clanged and plucked and quacked together for my first musical moment in many years. It was divine. Maybe my harp and I can work it out and at least be friends again.

a perfect day

Today was as perfect a day as any mortal should hope for.

I woke up to two joyful children screeching with glee and one loving husband. Our orange cat was mistakenly locked in the basement, but I like her alright, too. I ate steamy oatmeal with my girls and made a towering mug of my new caffeine treat, yunnan tea, and then took my first shower in many days. I then put on clean clothes and left for Lost Coast Camp where I did a mandated reporter and child abuse training for the camp counselors. As always, I was moved by what an exceptional experiential place LCC is for kids. People who do supportive and empowering work with kids should be celebrated as heroes in our culture. Instead, they are wildly underpaid and chronically un-recognized.

Anyway, back to my perfect day. After my LCC presentation/discussion, I took my kids plus our dear nearly four-year old friend Nick to the beach where it was atypically windless and cerulean. We plopped in the warm sand and drove boats through the “waves” (of sand), buried firefighter faith and her cronies, gobbled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and asked passers-by if they’d caught anything with their wet fishing poles. When nap time made itself known, we followed a stout lizard back to the car and loaded up for home. After a failed nap attempt, Blase joined us and we all made bean salad and danced to random songs. As we approached dinner time, it began to feel like a holiday and all of our preparations for leaving the messy house were tinged with sparkling and festive expectation for the gatherings to come.

The world’s most beautiful drive brought us to the Smith’s annual 4th of July party. We feasted, laughed, hugged, chatted, and headed off at sunset to another friend’s party up river. There, under a dome of blazing stars we giggled with friends and watched the band while our children slept heavily on our Blase’s back and my hip. I fell asleep instantly as I rested my head to settle the baby in bed. We all woke up dusty and a bit tired but full from the day before.

What was so perfect about this day? I think it was the balance of work time/professional self, focused kid time, all-together time, cooking yummy food, looking forward to special event, and festive friend time at annual gatherings. More of my selves were engaged than they are on usual days, I guess. That’s quite a privilege.

Foul smells afoot

We have a decrepit but loyal trailer that has tolerated many visions for its use. First, it was to be the music studio. It would have worked if only our 6 foot tall recording artist, his drum set, guitars, recording equipment, mike stands, and fellow musicians could have actually fit into it. Then, it was to be my craft haven. I would write and make fantastically unique art pieces inside the mildewing walls of a once glorious Silver Streak. Now, it holds tubs of miscellaneous. Mostly, music and art supplies. I went on an expedition to the trailer today in search of pipe cleaners and felt for Ossian’s centipede project. I hadn’t entered the space for a couple of months and was somewhat overwhelmed by the stench of dead animal. Rodent, I thought, while combing through towers of blue and purple plastic tubs bearing misleading adhesive labels that read “craft supplies” when they should have said “old notebooks from junior high that no one will ever read again but that we can’t seem to stomach throwing out”. The pungent foul smell was noteworthy and I glanced around for a bloated carcass. Seeing nothing, I continued to pick through boxes, looking for treasures. Ah ha..I located the felt. A nice stack in 5 colors emerged and I set it aside. The stench was overpowering again and I scanned the room once more in search of the decomposing culprit. Nothing. Hmmm. I turned to leave and as I stepped toward the rusty door, my foot gripped ever so slightly before making an unexpected slurping sound as it was released from the ground. I looked down to find that I was standing on the fairly fresh but definitely decaying and malodorous spread-eagle skin of a dead goat. Mystery solved. Blase must have decided to dry the fresh goat skin on the floor of the trailer…. pinned down with my craft boxes? Lovely. I wondered where that goat skin had gone. He got if from the family of one of Ossian’s fellow preschoolers who farm goats. The sneaky smelly thing is bound for a djembe drum that’s skin ruptured years ago. Moral of this story must be, if something smells foul, make sure you aren’t standing on a moist goat skin.