Breathing

Breathing

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If someone asks me a few months from now how I got through the quarantine,  I will say, well, I kept breathing. This will sound flippant and I won’t mean it to.  It’s not just that I kept breathing. But I’ve kept breathing.

The italics are important. They denote not just the unconscious, staying-alive kind of breathing, but also the breathing that’s suggested in guided meditations and yoga classes, which I’ve been taking plenty of these last several weeks.

This is focused breathing, in-and-out-through-the-nose breathing or sometimes in-through-the-nose-out-through-the-mouth breathing. It’s putting one hand on my heart and one hand on my stomach and feeling the breath moving through my body. It’s becoming aware of the rise and fall, the inflow and outflow.

I’m a remedial meditation student, but I am learning to appreciate the power of deep breathing to settle the mind and calm the body. Breathe in, breathe out. Ah, that’s better.

Brown Butter to the Rescue

Brown Butter to the Rescue

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I’ve been late to jump on the baking bandwagon. Despite an accidental oversupply of flour — bought long before the pandemic emptied grocery store shelves of it — I’ve had neither the time nor the inclination to bake my way out out of this crisis.

Instead I’ve picked up my pen and my journal. I’ve taken two walks a day instead of one, or bounced on the trampoline in the backyard. Moving through space and time have been my remedies.

Until recently, that is. Yesterday, I finally used the stick of butter that had been softening on the counter for days to bake brown butter chocolate chip cookies, a delectable treat first shared by my daughter Claire from the Pioneer Woman Cookbook. These are made with tiny M&Ms, and the ingredient that sets them apart is the brown butter, which gives them a crispness and a richness that must be tasted to be believed.

So, for the second time in a week, I share a food picture.

We must be quarantined or something.

Quarantine Chalk Art

Quarantine Chalk Art

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Rain has pummeled the Kwanzan cherry, sending a shower of petals to the ground. Rain has also washed away the chalk messages that have been decorating driveways recently. I’ve been counting on these cheerful words on my daily walks around the neighborhood.

“Happy Easter! Happy Spring!” says one driveway.

“Don’t worry! Be happy!,” says another.

And my favorite —”Flatten the curve” — is undoubtedly by a Dr. Anthony Fauci wannabe.

Chalk art is one of the unexpected blessings of the quarantine.  Though the rain has washed away one batch, I know that another will sprout as soon as the pavement dries.

(Photo: Courtesy La Mesa Courier)

Things Not Seen

Things Not Seen

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“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” 

This quotation popped into my head this morning. I had to google it to learn that it’s from the Old Testament, not the New (Hebrews 11:1). But surely what it expresses is perfect for a day when Christians around the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We are still in the tomb. Four weeks into quarantine, with a death toll that’s just put the U.S. into first place in a tally we didn’t want to win, it’s easy to feel hopeless.

But — I remind myself on an early walk, looking at the purposeful new leaves of the dogwood — it’s when we’re in the tomb that we need hope the most.

 

Eggs-travaganza!

Eggs-travaganza!

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Even when it will just be the three of us for actual Easter dinner (as opposed to the virtual one that will take place on Zoom), I still make too much food. A huge bowl of ambrosia, and 18 eggs, which means 36 deviled ones.

I make too much food even when there’s a crowd to consume it. So this year there will be leftovers galore. But they will be eaten, I’m sure of it (quarantines being good for cooking and eating, if not much else).

These deviled eggs — or dressed eggs, as I grew up hearing them called — were made the way I usually make them, which is by taste. I never recall using a recipe. Instead, I imagine Dad whipping up the yolks, adding vinegar and mayonnaise, asking us to taste and tell us if he had the balance right.  In my memory, he always did.

These eggs aren’t exactly ready for a close-up, but they were made with love.

Wind Storm?

Wind Storm?

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Just as light and weather have assumed new importance in life — since I see so much more of them working at home — so have the sounds I hear outside. Lately this has included sirens, chain saws and howling winds.

You can’t blame the virus for the last two. They come with the season, which is unsettled, changing, one day balmy, the next day frigid. Two nights ago a terrible storm blew up in the wee hours. It sounded like the derecho I remember from years past, with its scream of a freight train barreling down on us, saying “take cover, take cover.” The next day I awoke to the sound of chain saws whirring. Luckily, we were spared this time, but I counted more than a half dozen homes in the neighborhood with downed trees.

This morning I couldn’t tell if what I heard was the lumbering of the garbage truck or another storm howling in from the west. Then I realized that it’s Friday, the new (lone, weekly) trash pickup day. Ah, the relief at this realization. Knowing that it was not another wind storm, knowing that the foe we fight today is “only” the invisible one, the microbe — that it’s not the weather, too.

That Other Life

That Other Life

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In my closet are two pairs of black boots, one knee-high and the other ankle-height. Above them hang trousers, skirts, dresses and sweaters — seldom worn now.

On my dressing table four long pendant necklaces gather dust. A clutch of earrings do the same. A watch sits by them, still ticking but looking forlorn. And then there’s the perfume bottle, which has scarcely been touched these past few weeks.

These are the accoutrements of my public persona, the things I don’t bother with when I’m at home. Now it’s yoga pants and sweatshirts, hair pulled back in clips.

It’s comfortable, it’s fun (for a while). But that other life had value, too. And now it seems … far away.

Spy Wednesday

Spy Wednesday

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I’d never heard of Spy Wednesday until I began reading Niall Williams lovely This is Happiness (more about this novel when I finish it), which is set in the west of Ireland in the middle of the last century.

Spy Wednesday is the day before Holy Thursday, and it’s all about … Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. “Spy” in this case means to ambush or scare and refers to the way Jesus was captured by Roman soldiers who had been tipped off about his location.

I learn from Wikipedia that Spy or Holy Wednesday services are still held, often with a Tenebrae service, in which candles are extinguished until only one remains.

In Williams’ novel, Spy Wednesday is the day when the rain finally stops in the fictional village of Faha. Much of the action revolves around this day.

The rain has stopped here, too, and the sun is shining on the downed branches and trees from last night’s wicked storm. It’s placid here for the moment. A time to learn about an old rite — and meditate on an old wrong.


(A Spy Wednesday process in Spain. Courtesy Wikipedia)

Time to Savor

Time to Savor

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The backyard has become my secondary landscape, its trees and corners my escape hatch. Bouncing on the trampoline last evening, I marveled at the scene: low light touching leaf buds; the first green (which is gold) from the big front yard oak, which rises high above the house and at that hour was catching the rays of the setting sun.

After bouncing I lay out on the tramp to do some stretching. I kept my eyes on cirrus clouds floating lazily across the pale blue sky.  In my ears, some Enya, a studious avoidance of news.

There was little to interfere with the tableau. Few cars on the road so no loud engine noise. A still evening with no wind chiming. My work for the day complete, an evening of relaxation ahead. A sudden sense of satisfaction, of completion. This is what we have now. This is what we always have but don’t have time to savor.

Respite in the Garden

Respite in the Garden

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Weeds don’t care about viruses. They grow just as robustly during a pandemic as they do any other time. So yesterday I waded into the garden to pull out wild strawberries, dandelions and other invasive plants.

It felt good to have my hands in the earth and the sun warm on my back. It felt normal and pre-pandemic.

The mulch, when I spread it, had that same aroma it always does, and the back yard had the same discouraging bald patches it always does this time of year.  I’m hoping that our hard work now will pay off later — but, as always, I’m not counting on it.

(Violets are one weed I’ll leave alone.)