Pretending

One delightful characteristic of young children is the facility with which they pretend. One of our sons had an invisible friend named Memo, pronounced Meemo.  He was delighted when he discovered that we had a little book with his friend's name on the cover.

Halloween was a big deal at our house; the young boys became hugely excited by the costumes that I concocted. I can tell you, painting chain-mail rings on long underwear is no trivial task. Once I sewed matching dinosaur costumes with spikes and big stuffed tails. Our younger son loved his outfit until he saw himself in the mirror. Terrifying! It looked so real to him at that age that it somehow crossed the line from pretending to some sort of reality.

The younger son almost always wanted a matching costume to his brother, so we had the Grim Reaper and the Grim Reaper's assistant, and the Knight and Squire. As the boys grew older, this coordination of outfits extended to include friends.  For several years they were a small mob touring the neighborhood as a company of medieval fantasy characters.  There were problems like furry hobbit feet absorbing massive amounts of water and the wizard's tome (a dictionary) becoming too heavy, but they were all so excited to be pretending that one year they forgot to go to the neighbors' houses until reminded. Oh yes, candy.

I dress up every year too. Why should the kids have all the fun? This year I am a cat, last year, a pirate. Our young helpers always dressed up too, sometimes at the last minute. (We enlisted helpers because we typically get well over a thousand Halloween visitors.) My husband makes wonderful costumes out of kitchen utensils.

We as grown-ups become so set in our identities that we forget to pretend or even act silly. This wonderful skill often goes dormant, except in those precious souls who act or dance or tell stories. Let's remind ourselves to let go of our dignity once in a while and let our imaginations play.

Soap

With all the concern about hand-washing to prevent flu, I am somewhat more conscious of soap these days. Arguably soap is a rather important blessing, but it is one of those things that is  just "there," not considered. It is actually a very curious substance. Every soap molecule has two ends: one end sticks to oil molecules, the other to water molecules. So when we rub soap on our hands, the little bits of oil on our skin become surrounded by soap molecules,with their oil-attracting ends stuck. This is called emulsification.  Then along comes the water, grabbing the little porcupine of oil and soap by the water-attracting ends and whooshing it away. What an amazing process!

According to wikipedia, the earliest mention of soap-like materials is around 2800 BC and a Babylonian clay tablet exists from 2200 BC giving a method for making soap. Eventually soap-making became one of the precious skills of the homemaker, although fancy soaps were made by skilled artisans. It wasn't until the late 18th century that commercially manufactured soap became more common, along with increasing public awareness of the role of hygiene in health.

If you wanted to make simple soap, you would need to get some lye - nasty alkaline stuff. It was obtained by leaching water through ashes. Then you would boil the lye with any kind of oil or fat until the mixture saponified - a sort of curdling that binds together the fat and alkali into soap molecules. If you used enough fat, the lye would be all bound up and wouldn't eat into your hands when you used your soap. Soap can also be made without boiling, if you follow an exact recipe and know the strength of your lye. I can imagine scenarios involving a campfire, rain and spilled grease that might have led to the discovery of soap.

Now we have every sort of soap from artificial detergents for every purpose to elegant hand-made bath soaps scented with cinnamon or sage or whatever. But I am enjoying thinking about a determined colonial home-maker, well-aproned against lye splashes, carefully stirring her pot of soap over the fire.

Candle Light

As the nights close in, we once more enjoy the magic of candle light. We differ from many families in that we are able to have a sit-down dinner together most nights and always burn candles except during the summer.

For us, lighting the candles sets the dinner hour apart from the rest of day. It is a time for conversation and relaxation; a time for paying attention to each other, not to the distractions of life. Candle light is romantic. It warms and softens skin tones, and softly shadows and highlights hair and eyes.  It doesn't glare and makes food look appetizing, sending intriguing glints through wine and onto silverware. It encourages us to linger and enjoy each other .

Then with the ritual snuffing out of the candles, everyday life returns, and the washing up.

Intimate Faces of the Garden

I like gardens with secret places, fairy houses, and unexpected inhabitants. Gardens should not only have gorgeous vistas, but should encourage one to look closely.

Tim loves to put miniature animals and buildings in his rock garden, like this prowling leopard. They encourage us to stop and really see. Then we notice the details and textures of the plants and the harmony amongst the parts. 

In our garden there are things heavenly and delightfully horrible.

Just as a path invites us to wander, our garden characters reward us for looking more closely.

The Sound of Rain

The rain sounds so nice. Its continuous murmur rises and falls with the intensity of the rain, punctuated with drips and the gurgle of the (unclogged) gutters. Storms are exciting, but this rain is an adagio. It calms and soothes; it is the kind of rain that is good for sound sleeping and thoughtful activities and loved by plants.

It falls steady and slow, allowing the summer-dry ground to soak it up. The trees hold out their twigs and remaining leaves as if letting the rainwater run through their fingers, precious substance that it is. On our drive through the rainy Cascades last week the great fir forest was rejoicing in the wetness and mist. Some of my readers may not be in the Pacific Northwest - odd thought that. Our summers are very dry and sunny - that is the well-kept secret. My first summer here I was out with my backpack every weekend and never got wet!

Now the streams and rivers are rising from their summer lows as the groundwater levels rise. And for the mountains there is a prediction of snow. When next the "mountains are out", we will see glistening white tops. That snow, feeding the mountain glaciers and melting slowly in the spring, is what keeps our mountains green, our rivers flowing,  our fields and vineyards fruitful, and our tap water delicious.  My friends, do what you can to prevent climate change - there is so much at stake.

Home Copiers

At risk of trivializing the idea of blessings, I write today about home copy machines.  My husband has a collection of antique cello music. He was contacted by a musician in Spain studying some Spanish composers whose work is represented in the collection. I just finished copying some fragile old music here in the comfort of my home, with the calm golden garden just outside. So much more pleasant than trekking to the copy center in the rain!

I am of an age to remember the odd, sweet smell of mimeograph copies - the blurry purple pages  of pop quizzes in school. Modern copy machines were a wonder, even the asthmatic one in my office, back when I was working as a hydrogeologist. This machine wheezed, rocking slightly back and forth; at intervals it sneezed, blowing a small cloud of black dust out the back. When my sons were in high school I helped out in the book room at school. Part of that job was operating an enormous high-capacity IBM copy machine. The amount of paper used defied description.

Indeed, I noticed when I was working that, as copy machines became omnipresent, we began to substitute making a copy of an article for actually reading it. Accumulating huge files of paper was equivalent to controlling a body of knowledge. The internet and gigabytes and terabytes have changed that. Now an unimaginably large amount of knowledge is out there (where is there?) and even books are threatening to become obsolete.

It hasn't been so long ago that we never imagined having a home printer/ scanner/ copy machine, much less using it for homely things such as to copy a recipe for a friend or to enlarge a drawing.

Having only One Car

Obviously having a car at all is a blessing in terms of the comfort and flexibility of travel that it affords. I grew up in suburbia in the 1950's. Cars were a very big deal! My father did his own maintenance of his cars (note the plural). He taught me how to change spark plugs, drain oil and adjust timing. When I was still a child, he would ask me as we drove along, "If the car stopped now, how would you figure out what was wrong with it? What would you do first?" His love of cars rubbed off on us kids. My brother became a fine mechanic, going on to work on aircraft. I have owned some fine automobiles, and always had one for my own use. It is easy to take for granted.

Last year Tim and I decided that we really didn't need to have two cars. We sold his beautiful Saab and kept the Prius. The decision was based partly on saving money, but more on how we felt about the earth and trying to live a sustainable lifestyle. Yes, having to share one car is sometimes inconvenient. It requires a lot more communication and planning.

The small blessing that has emerged from this choice, and perhaps it is not so small, is mindfulness. I became much more aware of the trips and errands with which I thoughtlessly added up miles of travel. The habit of combining errands, as well as doing more on foot and by bus, is slowly becoming part of me. This awareness can apply to many more choices we make, to more mindful living.