And She Answers

 

How lucky I am!

When I Rest In Peace

I just turned 50 in December. It is so very fine to be 50, especially when the alternative is to not be anything except, if you are lucky, a memory.

I write the following with no sense of morbidity. The first time my father almost died, I joked with him about what our obituaries or tombstones would say as he was recovering (some people might think that is a bit insensitive or odd, but it worked for us).

My mother and I have also talked a few times about what makes a great obituary. I have read a few that I loved. Mrs. G posted a wonderful obituary to her blog and this reminded me that I had been determined to make a start on my own.

It is a tremendously difficult task to create a portrait in words contained in just a few paragraphs. I do think it is a task worth undertaking when I think it may be the only "knowing" of us that a  descendant may have.

Here is my first shot at it:

Kelly is eternally grateful for the great sex, delicious food, music, books, and most ardently for her family especially her wise and beautiful children.

Her life goals included:

becoming half as good a woman as her mama

sharing the bleak Irish humor she inherited from her grandfather John Kelly with those she loved at the most importunate times

eating all the cake

being an O.K. - enough human being to merit the love of her many fine canine companions

keeping her teeth and hair

practicing patience and kindness and ecstatic mental yoga

being loud

Depending upon which of her friends or family you speak to, she was either a great success or an abject failure at achieving her goals. All will agree that she was trying.

I'm Slow Cookin' Darling!

Pulled Pork Sandwich photo credit goes to the Food Network 

Mrs. G let me mess up the kitchen over at Derfwad Manor- home to a grand group of soul sisters and Gary. Care for a pulled pork sandwich with some savory sides of mancake, moi, and poetry? Of course you do!

Long Time Sun

may the long time sun shine upon you
all love surround you
and the pure light within you
guide your way on

2012 You Were Batshit or Was It Just Me?

Kisses lovers. This is what 50 looks like the day before it hits.

I squandered  49 in procrastination and sadness. How incredibly stupid.

I am  grateful everyday for my family. I have to keep my attention on fine details because the big picture right now makes it hard for me to breathe. I am trying to let go of fear. That is such a hard thing to do. I am sporadically creative and feel in my bones that therein lies my salvation. Where is the courage required to leap?

There have been years from which I ungraciously took my leave claiming I would not miss them. Hello 2009! But I will. Right now, feeling properly old (thanks Mama for the AARP membership including bright red retro fanny pack!), I see them for what they were. Opportunities squandered. And fuck that.

So, barring Mayan prophecy, 2013 will be wooed. No more waiting for perfect conditions. I'm leaping. And I know I'll land where I should. Like always, I'll land on my feet. Remind me to tell you about how I used to jump off my horse Marmalade at a run and stick a perfect landing every time just for fun. That's how I roll. I truly do love you.

Valley of the Dutch Babies and Mountains for Cowboys

I've been away. Caretaking. Driving up and down between 5800 ft and 8000 ft in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado where my father lived until he rolled his car and changed his circumstances.

One day, driving home from the hospital I saw this scene at the local Denny's. We are not in Portland any more.

I can't sort out all the emotions, ideas, revelations, and resignations of this trip just yet. Still in the midst of figuring out the fine points.

When I drove home down that mighty and magnificent Columbia river  gorge and rounded a bend to find the tip top of  my sweet Willamette Valley I could finally breathe. I tasted the moisture in the air. I drove down an everyday street in this beautiful place and saw every sort of person in every sort of dress. No cow ponies or cows at Denny's. But I did see a goat mowing a lawn and my own fine dogs dancing with joy. And, best of all, the people that I love who make this place home.

In honor of the fullness of that I made a dutch baby that my baby and I just devoured.

 

Moan at the cliche if you will, there is no denying that, for me, there is no place like home. And home is a green, wet, fertile valley that terminates at its northern border in a confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers and lies just a low, misty mountain pass away from the Pacific ocean.

To make a dutch baby:

Heat oven to 400 degrees f

Grab your cast iron skillet and cut up an entire stick of butter to toss into pan

Place skillet with butter in hot oven and melt

Meanwhile:

In blender or with a whisk and large mixing bowl beat 6 eggs, then add 1 1/2 cups milk, then slowly whisk in 1 1/2 cups flour and whisk/blend for a minute.

Quickly pour egg mix into melted butter in skillet. Place back in oven and cook for 20 to 25 minute. Dutch baby will puff up and become golden.

Top this golden goodness with a squeeze of lemon and powdered sugar or jam or maple syrup.

If you are wildly inspired, during the intial butter melt, toss in a couple handfuls of thinly sliced apples and a handful of brown sugar and let this cook for a few minutes in the oven before pouring over your dutch baby mix. My oh my! how your mama doing?

In other news, this is lovely and again, not news to anyone, but such a wonderful reminder. Also, via the ever lovely, often poignant Miss Whistle our beloved Stephen Fry on Kindness something my glorious mother with her generous wisdom suggested as my mantra for the trip.

Here was the view driving back to Ouray every night for the past couple of months. Spectacular.

 

The Beauty of Brown Bears and Salmon

I always joke that I could be a brown bear. My favorite foods, foods I grew up eating in Alaska, include salmon and berries. My sister-in-law just posted a link to brown bears fishing at Brooks Falls in Alaska. It is too gorgeous not to share.

Brown Bears and Salmon. A perfect marriage. They each need the other. There is no need to root for one over the other. Neither exists without the other. May they be together always.
When I was a little girl I used to love it when my parents would take us to the restaurant at the visitors center at Mendenall Glacier where I would consume the words most delicious tuna sandwiches ( I have tried to recreate these sandwiches to no avail-closest I get is buttering both sides of the bread and spreading a very light layer of mayonnaise then piling on the tuna and adding some salt). Beside the road on the drive to and from the glacier runs a creek. I remember watching it carefully as we drove up when the salmon were running. Dear reader, you could not see the water for the fish. A creek of flashing silver as far as my eyes could see. I imagined it always had and always would be so rich with life.

I remember taking my son to see the Trask River Fish Hatchery here in Oregon one fall as the Chinook were spawning. In Oregon fourth grade public school students must do a report on a state county and my beautiful child scored Tillamook County-home to so many treasures including, conveniently, Al & G Ma's beach cabin in Rockaway.We embarked on an epic exploration of all things Tillamook from the highly recommended Historical Pioneer Museum to the Cheese Factory. We decided to check out the fish hatchery after visiting a nearby Pioneer Cemetery.

There I stood, suspended on a gangplank above the river, caught completely by surprise, sobbing at the sight of so many glorious fish. I never imagined I would ever see such a richness of salmon again after leaving Alaska. I knew it was just a small, hatchery raised group that I was witnessing in the magnificent, poignant finale of a journey as mysterious as it was epic. And there I stood weeping for the bears and the salmon and the native people and the fisherfolk and the little kids (the little me) who knew abundance and now knew that richness was gone. And I wanted my son to understand that story so desperately-to recognize those fish as life-bearers, as silver and red, exhausted gods creating whole worlds with their struggle.

Brown bears can be scary even though they most often remind me of my favorite dogs. We camped on Kodiak Island and heard stories of visitors who had  to swim for their boats as they were chased off the beach by big bears. As we hiked to our cabin, we would ring bells and sing camp songs as loud as we could so the bears could avoid us. I remember marveling at my parent's good humor when all around us prowled hungry brown bears. I was sure we would eventually be eaten but I never let it deter me from running around that island with my brothers splashing into lakes and picking salmon berries.

Silly me, I thought plump children would be more delicious to summer hungry bears than fat salmon. There is nothing more delicious than fat salmon.

On my father's first week of work as state highway engineer, one of his survey crew was killed by a bear.  I knew and respected their power even as a child. And I loved them. I love them. As ferocious as they are.

I hope they live long and prosper and send descendants out into the future to meet up with an ocean tested multitude of fat, shiny, oily, rich, beautiful life-giving fish.