Tonight I ate a half a chicken, stuffed under the skin with herb butter, that made me feel like a new person. Or maybe it was the bottle of wine that we finished with my sister and my brother-in-law, or maybe it was the mocha creme or the walk through the woods to the candlelit restaurant near the Puget Sound. . .or maybe it was all factors rolled into one delicious experience that made me feel that life was full to bursting with possibilities, all at my fingertips. If the Italian owner hadn't told us we weren't allowed to dance on the tabletops, I might have.

Here in Washington it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, though there won't be any snow for us. Tomorrow we'll take the ferry into Seattle to see the lights and ride the carousel with my brother.

We were talking tonight about the temptation to dream up a new life for yourself, and that dreaming is okay as long as it doesn't make you discontent with your life now. And I'm deeply grateful for all this life is to me now: my close community, family, and employments, our big old house and out-of-control garden. But sometimes I imagine what I want life to be someday: a tiny, tidy house, a garden just big enough for a vegetable patch, flowers, and a patio with a tiny table and herb pots, long mornings to write followed by a long, rambling walk down a quiet path by. . .where am I when I imagine this? By the sea? Back on Orcas Island? In East Africa? I have no idea.

Life is so often what we could not have dreamed, what has been given to us and fallen to us by a series of blind turns, what we have bungled into. What is intentional, of course, is how we stumble along our paths, with joy or with suspicion. How many undiscovered rooms still wait for me to open doors? I wonder. . .

Meanwhile, I find my thoughts returning to next semester. I won't be teaching and I'll finally have the time to work on a book. But I can't settle on a project. I want to compile a book of poetry, a novel, a children's book, and a memoir, but I have to choose one and stick with it. And stick with it I must, even through the long February days when I stare into the grey sky and find the same things over and over again--mostly bright birds with wild feathers askance, mostly red birds. Maybe I will have to swear off birds this winter.

Today is my Elspeth's birthday. She had a wonderful coming. Martin and I sang Christmas carols through my labor transition and then I rocked back and forth on a giant exercise ball and laughed with the midwife, Martin, and my mom, pausing to work through contractions until they intensified to such a pitch that I knew she was coming. I began pacing up and down the room and then I held onto Martin's neck and pushed her into the air and the midwife caught her like a football. That night I held her until morning, and I remember feeling completely content and happy. Her little head, soft with reddish hair, nestled under my chin. She slept so well and soon I took her home and placed her in a shaft of winter sunlight, where Merry knelt down and read to her from a tiny book. She felt like a natural, seamless addition to our family. Today I picked her up in my arms and smoothed a blond tendril away from her face, and though she is full of the moments of her own life and can't remember her genesis, she squeezed me back, and her arms were strong, and I love her for being full of exactly who she is.

It's late and I feel as though I am writing terribly, but I wanted to post an update even though I am as luxuriously full as a stuffed Christmas goose and as stupid. I hope tonight finds you all with something pleasant to drink, something lovely to read, and someone comforting to say goodnight to. Goodnight!

High Heels!

Brilliant musician Greg Scheer writes:

I didn't write a poem about high heels, but I included high heels in a new song. I hope there's a prize or something, because I just ate up a half of a day on this absurd little venture: http://musicblog.gregscheer.com/2011/12/15/baby-youre-not-wearing-pants-again/

Listen to his song now before you hear it on Top Ten on your favorite radio station.

PLUS. . .Heather Long McDaniel submitted this beaute about a callous aunt from Pennsylvania:

There once was an aunt from PA
Who gave neices sharp heels for play
The aunt did not know
Of the pain in the toes
She doomed me to suffer that day


Don't be intimidated. Submit your art/poems/etc. about high heels and win Wazoo's fabulous (virtual) prize!

Advent Poem 2

Today I look for you in birch bark
and find your eye seared black into its trunk.
Perhaps you are the bird that bellied to my daughter’s window
and opened white wings edged with blue.
From the spindle of a black walnut
you watched me with marble eyes,
ticking your face left and right like a mechanical toy.
But when you flew you were like snow falling.
Later I heard you, clawing at the window, scratching
at the frame. I wondered what you wanted.

If you call me with warble from the top of the birch,
will I hear you? Inside there’s a roar of heat,
the calling of my children’s voices, the smells of dinner.
Your feathers fluff against the cold. If I fed you,
would I know your secrets? Every thistle
bears stars, the soil smells of God.

Call for Poems

While this is not really in the spirit of the Christmas season, and while I should be grading final projects, I've noticed lately that there's quite a bit of traffic to Wazoo generated by people hunting for. . ."poems about high heels." You faithful visitors may remember a poem I wrote about Merry's high heels last April, which was National Poetry Month.

High heels and I are not on intimate terms right now, nor do I know any women (or men) who wear them. But I'd love to post some fun, silly, or serious poems about high heels! You can leave them here in the comments section, with lines separated by back slashes ( / ) and I will publish them in their correct form. High heels in December? And why not? I've got a red pair the color of holly berries. They languish in the basement next to old seed packets. The girls try them on once and a while and trip and clomp around the laundry room. The girls LOVE them. Why? What is so inherently attractive about high heels?

So write me.

P.S. Weirdest search by a Wazoo visitor? "Bald flight attendants."

advent

Now is the time of waiting,
the hours of music in the womb,
of fields swept up, covered in sheets
of snow. Gathering, sheaf and boil
is done, now jars gleam with dilly beans
and gemmed berries. Lone cats paw
through the garden. I think of you
and gather seeds, each one a womb.
In the spring after the last frost
I will scatter them over freshly turned
soil, scented richly as coffee. But for now

They lie ponderous in my palm
and I am full of their weight.
Holy winter, heavy with waiting,
grow in me a green thing
strong as grapevine.

My story, "Name Finding," has been published at Literary Mama. Please read it (and leave a comment if you'd like) by clicking HERE. I hope you enjoy the site--it's not just for mamas, of course.

And. . .to read about my first experience hunting, check out my column for this week by clicking on the geranium at right. (Did I mention I never write my own headlines?) Also, while you may be the reader that takes the total reads to fourteen, the column is mostly read in print in this county and in the next. But online reads are important, too, so leave a message if you'd like! Finally, big thanks to Tonya for putting up with me as a novice hunter.

from Marial Thon in the Southern Sudan airport

Dear All,

I'm waiting in a jumble of people in the Juba Intl Airport, sweating from every pore as people crowd into one another, many human scents wafting from our places of origin. The airport is not air-conditioned. There is one big room for all of the flights, domestic and international.

While I am writing the desk staff comes and check-in is done efficiently. I step around people to the immigration counter where they stamp my passport and then I fill in their register to give them a record of my visit. I go to security. I am given a quick pat down ignoring the lumps in my pocket and then through a metal detector that does not work.

My computer bag goes through the X-ray and the man tells me to take out the computer battery, which I do though he never looks at it except briefly when I hold it up.

I then pass into the one room departure lounge with very worn but fairly comfortable overstuffed leather chairs and sofas with crammed in everywhere suplemented by a few plastic chairs.

But before I sit down I have to pee. The door to the men's room lies directly in line with those coming into the room from security but there is not a door that will close. So those coming in get to see me standing at the urinal doing my thing. No washing hands here.

There is a sink but the entire top of the faucet-the part with the handle to twist, lies at the bottom of the basin, broken free from its threaded bounds.

But I'm on my way back to Nairobi and home-just waiting for the plane to land.

It's the five month birthday of Southern Sudan today-a new airport is being built built just down the way and I rejoice in their growing time.

Love,

Mere/Dad

Today, from Nairobi:

Enjoyed your blog on time. I built my workshop completely around proverbs and stories. So to begin to help folk understand that proverbs reveal something about the culture from which the people who created it came, I gave them two proverbs to consider. One was “A log can be in a river for a long time and never become a crocodile.” And the other was “Time is money.” I asked what they thought it meant, where they thought it was created and what it might show about the people who created it. The discussion of the last one brought out the huge differences that you referred to in the blog. It is not only chronos and kairos but time as repeated cycles vs a line. There is not sense of time as a commodity but, in facing modernity——[both have to be understood].

My correct Dinka name is Marial Thon (Thon pronounced with a silent “H” but aspirating the “T” sound but not the “O” sound as in “ton” but rather in “tone”). It means a “bull with black and white color & strong bull at the same time.”

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Love,
Dad

Tuck Away Your Watches

One of my biggest problems when I returned to live in the US was time. In my memory, my childhood in Kenya is filled with expanses: expanses of savanna, only stopping at low mountains, dizzying expanses of sky scattered like a road with the brightest stars I have ever seen, moments stretched out like empty rooms full of slanting sunlight.

In Kenya, nothing ever began on time. Time was relational, not rigid. I remember my mother waiting at an intersection as two women chatted leisurely out their windows. You didn't go into any place, whether it was a home or a place of business, without first taking the time to exchange greetings. A handshake, inquiries as to health and family. Chai. Gifts. Meals. A place marked by an appreciation for relationship.

When I returned to college in Chicago, my heart constricted with clocks. I ran to classes and arrived breathless. I began to nurture what would be a life-long bitterness against time and its restraints, against the idea of being late--late to class, late to appointments, late to work. College was marked by intense heartburn, stress that resulted partly from over scheduled days. When I showed up a bit late for a meeting with a professor, she was curt and dismissive.

As an adult, I dream of those empty, unscheduled rooms of my childhood. As a writer, I thrive in spaces that are free from clocks.

My friend Carrie, who is also copastor of our Mennonite/Brethren Peace and Justice church nearby, recently spoke these reflections on time. Ironically, we'd jostled and pushed each other out the door to get to church on time not long before I sat and listened to her words. But sometimes you have to rush a bit to get to a place where you can be quiet and open yourself to being. I am not an advocate for sloth, just a passionate believer in time being surpassed by imagination, relationship, and a longing for open, quiet spaces. Madeline L'Engle discusses Cronos and Kairos. Kairos time, she writes, is the time of creation. We dwell in Kairos when we "lose time" as we create. Here's Carrie's take, just in time for the Advent season:

In Greek there are at least two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners. Chronos is where the word chonology comes from which gives the illusion of an ordered progression of time. Chronos is ticking of the clock, counting of shopping days until Christmas. . . Chronos makes us angry at our bodies when they don’t heal as fast as we think they should. Chronos makes us anxious about our self worth when our hopes and dreams haven’t been accomplished by the age we thought they would.

And then there is the other word for time: kairos. Kairos is the time when you are lost in the beauty of a piece of music or the reverie of poetry. Kairos is the moment you hold someone in their pain and when you’ve laughed so hard for so long your side hurts. Kairos comes in moments of meditation of watching sleeping children, of falling in love. Kairos means “opportune moment” and is used when referring to a different type of time, a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. …a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. A time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. . .

Kairos gives the soul a space to deepen when the body slowly heals. When our minds were set on certain lists of accomplishments that we thought we could control,Kairos presents us space to explore new possibilities . Kairos replaces counting down till Christmas with the patient waiting of Advent. And we can’t control it. No alarm clock will alert us to it. . .

You can find more of Carrie and her husband, Torin's, reflections by visiting their website HERE.

Better Late

I haven't had the heart to throw away our squatty little Halloween pumpkins. I thought they were appropriate to keep around for Thanksgiving, but after the Christmas tree came out of storage and the twinkle lights mingled with their old ornament friends, I knew something had to be done about the pumpkins. They were suddenly gauche, awkwardly crowding the counters with their generous rumps.

I kept them out of guilt. They are technically pie pumpkins and could feed a village for a day, and I felt as though I should be chunking them, roasting them, pureeing them.

And I've promised the girls, particularly Elspeth, a jack 'o lantern for the past three or four years. And we've never, ever carved one. I remember my dad covering our table in newspapers, I remember the sweet, spicy smell as my mother stirred the seeds in the oven. I always assumed they'd carry around this quintessential American memory too.

But I am mighty afeared of any kind of craft. Tell me we're going to cut out construction paper turkey feathers or tie dye tee-shirts and I break into hives. You think I'm joking? Ask the women who know me on a daily basis. They believe me when I say I'd rather clean toilets than scrapbook. So while other families sport their meticulously carved gourds, our pumpkins always remain unblemished by knife or marker.

Elspeth has made a couple attempts to take matters into her own hands. One morning two years ago, I came downstairs and found my Wustof Chef's knife, seeds, and orange guts all over the play stove. Her friend Ben cowered in the corner. "I told her we shouldn't do it," he whimpered. I checked and they both still had all their fingers.

This year Elspeth found a tiny pumpkin from a trash heap in some yard, brought it home, somehow worked off the stem, and began painstakingly fishing around in its belly with a table knife. "Don't touch my pumpkin!" she pleaded before leaving for school, suspicious of what all my daughters believe is a compulsive throw-away obsession. (Bea just found her Thanksgiving hat in the garbage can, pulled it out, shoved it down over the crown of her head and announced, 'I made this in school!' My friend Sal alluded to unpacking ornaments every year and how the children delight to see their paper Santas and pipecleaner reindeer--years of December school projects. 'You mean you KEEP them?' I asked, aghast. It had never occurred to me that I shouldn't be layering them with discarded papers and banana peels in the trashcan).

Yesterday afternoon, when our table was loaded with my netbook, papers, and crumbs still left over from lunch, Elspeth brought her pathetic little pumpkin to the table and began pulling out seeds again. Enough is enough, I thought, whipping out our paring knife. So there, on our Christmas tablecloth, without newspaper or ceremony, Elspeth and I carved our first pumpkin together. Then we carved a pie pumpkin, too, who Elspeth said was the little pumpkin's mother. We dropped in candles and Elspeth turned off the lights and put her little arms around my neck. "They're so beautiful!" she exalted. So the Advent season found our family eating dinner with the lights low, gazing at our jack 'o lanterns, happy despite the smell of burning pumpkin--someone hadn't quite cleaned out all the guts.

There was a bit of a problem with the bigger maternal pumpkin, though. I had meant to knife in some eyelashes but my attempts made the mama gourd look lost in anxiety. "That's because she's worried her son [the little jack 'o lantern with one tooth] is going to get cut up and eaten," Elspeth told me. Or maybe she's worried she's going to get thrown down the hill for the groundhog to feast upon, which she will just before Christmas. Crafts have a shelf-life, especially edible ones.

Our Christmas jack 'o lanterns. It's better late than never, right? Maybe next year I'll actually roast the seeds.

But let's not get carried away.

My dad recently left for Sudan. My mother told me he received instructions to bring food with him, since food there is sparse or nonexistent. . .so he took a big bag of trail mix. How long will this last him, I wonder?

Even in his remote location, he has access to e-mail, so he sent my mother a message that there is food though not much and the residents eat very small portions. I think he may lose quite a few pounds preChristmas. (It wouldn't surprise me if he gave away his trail mix--there's a family tradition of this. When she visited a refugee camp in Uganda, my sister boarded a UN plane back home wrapped in a tablecloth after leaving all her clothes behind. My mother has been known to slide curtains off the rod on the spot to gift them to a visitor who admired them. Keep an easy hold on things, my mother always taught us.)

Sudan gives me a bit of perspective; today, when I said, there's nothing for lunch, our refrigerator was full, our freezers packed. Our pantry overflows with cereal, cans, snacks, grains and pasta. We could survive for several months at least and eat heartily every day. What I meant this morning was, there's nothing prepared for lunch, as if making myself a pbj was a hardship. Or boiling noodles, or making soup, or defrosting a chicken.

On a lighter note, my mother just sent me this e-mail:
Your dad has been given a name by a group of Dinka women that is evidently a highly favored black and white bull, and they proceeded to teach him how to dance the bull dance. Sorry I missed that!

Maybe, she wrote in closing, he'll perform it for us this Christmas. Is that something we really want to see? My father, who has little inherent sense of rhythm, performing The Bull Dance?

Absolutely.

Dear Barnes and Noble,

Tonight, on our date to your M______ store, we expected what we always expect on what has become our favorite date: a tall hot drink, peaceful music, and a few hours to shop and concentrate on some work. We are parents of three and do not go out much since it is expensive to hire a babysitter. Tonight, however, we were plagued by some of the worst holiday music I have ever heard. Mannheim Steamroller, of course, operatic renditions of "O Holy Night," and saccharine cooing of the most banal songs imaginable--all at high volume. I must say that we felt assaulted in a place that we usually love--it almost forced us out the door early. PLEASE tell your stores to choose their music more carefully, especially in the evening when one hopes for a more peaceful, contemplative experience--especially since we evening lingerers are looking for an escape from the tiresome soundtrack of most stores that dogs us through the season.

Thank you.

M______ C______

This morning my friend Sal drove up to the curb and I loaded four huge IKEA bags of recycling into her car. Someone who shall remain nameless had forgotten to rinse the black bean cans and there was a stench of rot hanging in the minivan air as we drove the two blocks to the recycling trailer.

A quick run into a packed post office to mail some late packages and we were on our way. . .but where? Let me give you a hint: I never go to this place, well, almost never. When we parked and walked in, Beatrix yelled, "Seattle!" because we only go to this place when we are on vacation.

Did you guess. . .the mall? If you did, pat yourself on the back. It was pretty empty today and the kids took off down the wide, gleaming aisles. Sal hitched up an ancient LL Bean backpack on her back and we felt just a bit out of place with all the Mall Moms. For us, the mall is a cross-cultural experience. I bought little gift for my mother (which shall remain unspecified in case she's reading), and I felt as though the woman across the counter with the thickly painted eyelashes who handed me my bag should have been speaking a different language. She asked for my phone number, which really baffles me, and I said, "Could I not give you that?" And then she asked for a contribution to St. Jude's, and I'm all for charity, but it feels a bit weird in the context of flashing cheap-but-expensive jewelry and headless manikins. So I said no.

Malls do something a bit funny to me, and it's not just sensory overload. I begin thinking maybe I'd like to buy things, a bunch of things. This consumerist urge is balanced by the absolute repulsion I feel when I walk by a store with banners of half-naked teenagers, reeking of cologne with a sign that says "Holiday Hookup." I mean, really. Martin and I did a mall crawl last year at Christmas. We went into a shop that I thought might have some nice clothes but the music was so loud that it actually bounced us back out of the door. "I don't think we're the intended demographic!" I yelled as Martin grasped the door jamb before we were blown away back to the food court and the immorally large pretzels.

Anyway, we had a good time nonetheless. There were some guys from a prison with dogs being trained for veterans who have suffered from PTSD, and we pet them for a while (the retrievers, that is). The kids played on some soft replicas of a stethoscope and a tongue depressor (the playground was financed by the hospital) and we bathed them in hand sanitizer before we fed them a picnic at the food court. Good time all around. I'm beat. Oh, and they went and stood mute in front of Santa Claus, who was so warm there was a fan trained on his bearded face.

By the way, click HERE to see the best thing that ever happened in a mall. One can only hope that the Christmas spirit surprises us like this.