Friends, kiddos, teammates, countrymen:  Remember my earlier post about "fear"?  Well, I began this morning in fear, a fear that clanged like a bell against my guts and resonated through me in waves of panic.  What if there are complications?  What if a blood clot?  What if an embolism?  What if it’s weirder in there than the doctor imagines it will be and things go awry and what if, what if, what if… I die.  I am terrified of dying.  I am so terrified of dying that I assume everyone is as terrified as I am of dying but I’ve learned that this is not exactly the case.  Some people don’t seem as scared of it as I am.  

When I was younger, I had panic attacks.  They started when I was eight or nine but by the time I was 17, they were mostly brought on by birth control pills.  When I was on the pill, I got to the point where I had them daily.  Even after I got off the pill because a doctor told me that’s what was causing the panic, I still had them – only much less frequently.  They were always debilitating.  The only way I could calm down was to lie down quietly in a dark and quiet room where outside stimulus didn’t whip my panic into a frenzy – even then, they would pass through me like a freight train. During each of these panic attacks, I convinced myself I was dying.  I always knew exactly where this panic came from but where they come from doesn’t matter when you’re in the throes of them.  These panic attacks drove my first husband insane.  They made me needy and pathetic and whiny and they were all “in my mind” so he had no reason to believe I didn’t have complete control over them.  I never could make him understand that I had no control over them.  Ironically, when I listened to the gut that had been telling me to leave him for at least three years, I stopped having panic attacks almost completely.  I went from having at least one per month and sometimes per week, to having maybe one or two each year.  

And for a brief period of time, I was not afraid to die.  After I left my first husband, I became fearless for a short time.  This is interesting because in our relationship I was the big scaredy cat.  I was scared to fly.  I was scared to drive in the mountains.  I was even scared of the dark.  I remember distinctly thinking, as I took my first plane ride without my first husband, I’m not scared anymore.  If I die, so what, I die.  People die every single day.  It was a gloriously fun and reckless time in this way. 

When I met my current husband, he admitted to having horrific panic attacks from time to time.  But I still didn’t’ trust that he would understand mine until the first night I felt one coming on when we were together.  I hadn’t had a panic attack in so long I wasn’t even sure that’s what was happening.  We were lying in bed and I told him I thought I was beginning to have a panic attack.  He was not the slightest bit ruffled.  He calmly told me not to get up, to close my eyes and then he asked me a simple question.  Where do you feel the most calm?  Think of a place, he said, where you always feel calm, like everything is okay in the world.  My mind immediately went to the swimming pool at New Mexico State University.  It had only been a few months since I had graduated from there with my Master’s degree.  I swam in that outdoor pool regularly.  I especially liked doing backstroke and watching the birds flit back and forth between the flag-lines.  This is where my mind went as my new boyfriend lay quietly next to me telling me that I was okay and that I was going to be okay, that I knew what this was and I knew how to ride it out.  Stay in that same happy place, he said, until it passes.  And it did.

As I’m writing about this, I know absolutely why I panicked in that moment.  Falling in love again meant I no longer didn’t care if I died.  I was attaching myself to someone again.  The fear of that attachment being lost or changing or being damaged in anyway was already a little overwhelming.  I knew I wasn’t ready – and I really wasn’t.  But, we proceeded to fall in love anyway and very shortly after we met, I was pregnant with our first child.

This is another plane ride I remember well. I flew back home to Michigan, from Reno, NV (where I was working at my first official, salaried teaching gig at University of Nevada, Reno) all by myself for Thanksgiving.  Tim and I had known for about a month that I was pregnant.  I told him I had to make this trip alone because it was the last time I would ever get to be with my family by myself – from then on, it would always be me and this kid and… if we were lucky, it would be all three of us.  On the plane, I remember thinking about my last trip to Thanksgiving with my ex-husband.  It was an awful trip because we had already broken up but we were pretending to still be together so we didn’t ruin everyone’s Thanksgiving.  He held my hand when the plane took off (I know it’s a stupid Sinead O’Connor song but he really really did it) like he always did and I thought, I don’t need you to do that anymore.  I might have even said that out loud.  I wasn’t scared to fly anymore.  But, then, suddenly on this last trip alone back home to Thanksgiving, with a baby growing like a flame inside of me, I was terrified again.  I can’t die, I thought.  Now, I can’t die because I have a baby.  And my fear of death was thus reborn.    

And I make it through most of my days not fearing death.  But at the end of most days, when I’m lying in bed with Lucy (my second child), singing her to sleep and watching her eyes close and feeling her hands loosen on me, the gong rings in my ears again.  Death sucks, it says.  Someday death will take us from each other, it says.  And I can usually hold off the actual panic but the crushing pain of that realization is often breathtaking. 

I have attempted a few times in the past year to chronicle my “journey to wellness.”  So far, it’s a long boring story that basically begins at birth.  I have gone through many stages on my road to wellness.  This most recent stage feels definitive.  For the first time in my life, these past two or three years, I am finally putting what I have known about nutrition and eating for a long time, into actual practice.  My main motivation for staying healthy is to not die young.  But there are no guarantees.  Being fit and healthy is only one factor in many that help us get to a ripe old age.  This is THE factor that’s in our control – everything else is a crapshoot. The truth is,  I actually probably have more of a chance of dying in a car accident on my way to or from work – which I do every day – than dying from this surgery.  Why, though, does that fact not bring me any comfort at all?

One of my coaches sent me a great email about fear this past week:  “running from a fear is more harmful than facing it. Panic comes in waves, and those waves never lose their size if we don't push right through them. The idea is that, when we begin to feel panic about one particular thing, we should allow that panic to run its course. Let it scare the shit out of us. Let it overwhelm us. It will not kill us, and it will fade faster that way. That doesn't mean the fear won't return, but the next wave won't be as overwhelming. And the wave after that will be even less intimidating. Eventually, if you haven't rid yourself of the fear entirely, you will at least be a seasoned surfer.

Not facing the fear, on the other hand, allows the anxiety to follow you and hurts your health more than facing it would. You end up multiplying the fear because now you not only have the fear ... you have a fear of the fear. And you end up mythologizing those waves when, really, they're just finite fits of chemical turbulence in our brain.”  This is why "Fear is a Liar."  

So, I’m not sure if what I’m doing is facing the fear or not but it sort of feels like it.  If I’m saying it out loud, if I’m writing it down for the whole world to see, is that facing it?  I hope so.  I am definitely letting it scare the shit out of me.  I guess I just want to make it clear to the Universe – since, the Universe is in charge of how things go – that I’d like to live to be a very old lady.  I walked by a very old lady today raking the thatch from her yard today and I thought, “what a badass!”  When I’m that old, I want to be out raking the thatch from my yard too – except I’ll be wearing really cute yoga pants.

I also feel it’s very important to note that in case the very worst thing possible happens during or after this surgery, I want my talented friends Michelle Westkamper and Rebecca Dopart – who do not even know each other – to play and sing “For Good” from Wicked at my funeral.  I imagine Rebecca playing the piano and singing Glinda’s part and Michelle singing Elphaba’s part.  Since Michelle and Rebecca don’t know each other, they’ll have to plan to visit Michigan for at least a few days before the funeral.  My other friends wouldn’t want them to be lonely so everyone will come and it will turn into a gigantic party and, unlike my brother who didn’t want anyone to cry, I want to be clear that I am perfectly comfortable with y’all sobbing uncontrollably from time to time and in between that, soft whimpering cries will do. For god sakes, let there be plenty of chocolate.  And dance your asses off!

So, there, I’ve said that – to me, that feels a bit like facing my fear. Considering what I want the world to look like for a few days after I’m gone.  But, I’m not going anywhere.  Not yet.  What I’m doing is having this surgery which will enable me to continue to lead a healthy, active lifestyle so that in ten years, I can do an ironman so that my level of fitness will carry me through to the years it takes to get me to the point where I’m a fabulous super old little lady raking thatch in my front yard in super cute yoga pants. 

The waves of fear about this surgery are going to continue to come.  And I’m going to get very good at riding them.  Bring it, Universe!  I’m afraid but I’m still very much here and as long as I’m here, I’m surfing.

Fly, rake and keep on surfin’
with love!

namaste

This morning, I woke up at 4am, got dressed, brushed my teeth, put water on for tea, spread my (giant green circular) yoga mat over my kitchen floor, poured a cup of tea, turned on some music and started my yoga practice.  When I was done with my yoga practice, I meditated.  After I meditated, I drank my (cold) tea.  Now --- aaaaaaaah – I’m writing. 

If I were disciplined and consistent, this is exactly how every single morning for the rest of my life would go.  But I’m not either of those things.  And for the majority of my life I have shamed myself for that fact. I want to say because I’m 40, this is never going to change but I firmly believe that change is possible at any age so that’s silly.  The fact is, I don’t really enjoy discipline or consistency.  I prefer flexibility and spontaneity.   It’s taken me a great deal of time to realize and accept that flexibility and spontaneity are every bit as valuable as discipline and consistency.  This realization and acceptance has been monumental in my acceptance of self.  People who value discipline and consistency over flexibility and spontaneity eventually reach a point where they don’t like me much – if even only in a particular moment.  And it used to be very easy for people to make me feel bad about myself so their rigidity and judgment of me used to crush my spirit and flood me with self-doubt and shame.  Nope.  No thank you.  Not anymore.  

I am actually proud of my flexibility and spontaneity now.  Without these qualities, I wouldn’t be able to do half of the things I do on a daily basis.  I certainly wouldn’t be able to mother my two children whose personalities are so different it’s as if they are both aliens from two completely different planets.  I wouldn’t be able to respond with compassion and true interest and be completely engaged in the many “teachable moments” that crop up in my classroom every day.  I wouldn’t drop everything I’m doing for a friend or a family member who needs me, whether it’s to just talk on the phone or to hop on a plane and get to them as quickly as I can.  And more constantly that anything else, if I were not flexible and spontaneous, I would not have my writing.  As a full-time Professor, a mother to two children and a partnered person, if I did not respond flexibly and spontaneously to my urges to write, no writing would ever be done.  

Still, it’s not as if I possess absolutely NO discipline and NO consistency.  I am not a particularly disciplined person though it has taken some discipline to achieve the many things that I have.  I am not a particularly consistent person though it has required some consistency to get where I am today.  But I’m not one of those people you can say “always” does this or “always” does that.  And though for the most part, I can stick to a schedule and a plan, if I feel like chuckin’ that plan for the day because a friend invites me to do something else or because my daughter wants me to snuggle in bed for three more hours in the morning, well, as I’ve said before:  life is painfully short.  Fun and love win out over discipline and consistency any day.  

And yet, there is fun and there is love in discipline and consistency.  Well…at least love.  It would be loving towards myself to give myself my yoga practice and tea and meditation every single morning.  I also believe that the practices of yoga and meditation are not just gifts to ourselves but also to everyone around us and to the universe.  When we practice yoga and/or meditation, we are able to calm our own minds and become more rational, healthier people.  When we do this, we are helping to produce better, calmer, more rational, healthier relationships and therefore doing our part to create peace in the world.  So, this type of discipline contains an enormous amount of love, in fact.  

And…as I think about it… though it is important to respond with flexibility and spontenaity to my writing urges, it is the discipline and consistency of carving out time every single day to simply do the writing that helps me make true progress.  

The truth is, though I have come to understand and treasure these qualities that very much make me me – I guess I have always wanted to be able to cultivate more discipline and consistency in my life.  

This whole Team QueenPrincess endeavor is helping me do just that.  I have known for years – seriously, YEARS – that I need to practice yoga, meditate, eat healthy, write and exercise moderately-vigorously most days in order to be a sane, productive person.  For years, I have listened to a culture that tells me, “That’s crazy! You can’t have all of those things! When will you work?  When will you sleep?”  But if I don’t give myself all of these things, my work sucks and I can’t sleep.  

When I finally accepted a few weeks ago that I really did have to have this upcoming surgery, I realized I needed some tools to mentally and physically prepare myself for it.  Then, it quickly dawned on me that I already have all of those tools.  I knew what I needed to cultivate happiness and health in my life because I’ve essentially been studying this for the past fourteen years.  The trick is, I needed to APPLY all of these tools.  My flexibility allowed me to accept the fact of the surgery.  Now, I have to cultivate discipline and consistency.  

Everyone on Team QueenPrincess is helping me do this.  I feel beholden to you to do the happy practices – especially to my teammates who are doing the happy practices with me!  I feel responsible for responding to your messages and posts because they are often so personal and so important and so… such a…a, gift.  I have to exercise and meditate and consciously be kind and write every day for this project – for the first few days, I was moving through the project on solid Dragon energy (see earlier post about my totems to fully understand this)  -- that is, my spontaneity and flexibility and pure zest for life was practically pulling me along.  But, Dragon often does not realize that sleep needs to be had or else Dragon will crash – and frequently does.  So, last night, Bear gently took the phone and the computer out of Dragon’s scaly little hands and looked him right in the eye and said, “Dragon, if you don’t sleep, I’m going to eat you.”  

Then, this morning, when Wolf’s beady little eyes blinked open at 3:55am and Bear was saying, “aaaw shucks, I only got SEVEN hours of sleep.  I need at least three or four more!” Dragon roared “his terrible roar” and said, “get your ass out of bed” then Mermaid was like, “Yes, it’s time to do Yoga and Meditate. I need to streeeeeetch out.”  Then Wolf prowled around the house preparing while Mermaid combed her hair, Dragon did jumping jacks and Bear rubbed his eyes.  Then, we all settled in together and started with sun salutations…

This is to say, I am realizing today that I will not get through the next 21 days without discipline and consistency.  But, I have to keep reminding myself that this discipline and consistency will give me clarity and calm and will help me cultivate the happiness advantage and community I need to face this surgery and my recovery triumphantly.  

I know what I need to do.  I just need to do it.  

Thank you thank you thank you for doing it with me!

Cook, eat, do your yoga, drink tea, do your happy practices (always) with love,

Namaste

The quote above was taken from a TED talk one of my cheerleaders sent me.  Though it seems counterintuitive, I feel like making the decision to have this surgery is getting "into partnership with" my body.  

One of my coaches told me that Friday is my birthday and I should act accordingly and urged me to commemorate this 24 days with a soundtrack of my own making.  So, wow, this is turning out to not only be inspirational but fun!

Another coach shared her story of going through the same surgical procedure that I am facing. NOTHING is more helpful and reassuring than knowing other people have gone through and survived what you've gone through.  

A new cheerleader told her story of battling uterine cancer – surgery, chemo, radiation, the whole nine. An amazing woman that I'm just having the pleasure of meeting and getting to know, in some ways, because of THIS project!

A cheerleader reminded me that the weather is gorgeous right now in Michigan.  Never a topic to be forgotten or taken lightly.

A teammate reminded me that just stopping to talk to your neighbors without worrying about the time is expressing kindness -- to everyone involved!

A fan and I reconnected after years of working together without giving ourselves time to be the friends that we so naturally are. 

Several members of Team QueenPrincess shared MoJo’s Kitchen on their own facebook pages which makes me feel… I don’t know… like I’m finally doing something right?  Or like they love me too much to tell me I'm really not.  haha!

Some teammates only exercised today because they knew they had to post about it! Word.

One teammate decided it was time to stop body-shaming herself.  Amen! & Hallelujah! To THAT!

One teammate took time to tell her daughter how smart and beautiful she is.  And I bet she's strong as hell too, considering her strong mother!

One teammate gave himself permission to suck while he was writing today.  That’s the ultimate gift for a writer!  

You wouldn’t believe all the Mojo that’s flying around MoJo’s Kitchen these days!

Keep.  It.  Coming.  It’ll all come right back at you when you need it most.

Go Team QueenPrincess!

Giving Mojo freely, with love
Namaste

I have just been re-reading and organizing all of the many responses I have received to my call for participants in Project:  Team QueenPrincess.  In short, I have the most amazing family and friends anyone has the right to ask for.  

In less than 24 hours since I launched this crazy mojo-seeking campaign, I have FOUR coaches, EIGHT teammates, EIGHT cheerleaders, and TWO fans.  Wow.  Wow.  Wow.  Not sure what I expected, but not this!

No one officially signed up to be a “Booster” but… if you sent me a word of encouragement without noting your level of involvement, I made you a Booster.  This just means you support Team QueenPrincess but don’t necessarily assume additional responsibility for future posting.  So, no pressure.  I hope it’s okay that I just assumed I could make you a booster.  I wanted to acknowledge your awesomeness!

If anyone feels like they’ve been placed on Team QueenPrincess in error, please let me know and I’ll get your name taken off the list.  I will continue adding to the list (which is right there in the blog sidebar on the right of the screen…see it?) through the next 24 days, as more people jump on board.

I have just posted a shot of encouragement on each of my teammates’ walls.  The deal with teammates is that they share with me (usually privately but some have decided to share publicly) one of their own personal goals over the next 24 days.  They engage in the happy practices with me and post about it and my job, as their teammate, is to coach them and send some Mojo back their way.  Each message I sent out to my teammates, I need to send right back to myself.  Human beings are funny that way.  We depend on each other to remind us of all the most fundamental truths.  We matter.  We do the best we can.  We can be what we want to be.  We won’t feel this way forever.  We only have this moment.  Already this project is reassuring me of these fundamentals, by giving me the chance to reassure others.

One of my coaches – John Tuttle – wrote this to me today:  “There are mojo stealing, good time killing, happiness altering individuals we have to deal with each and everyday. 
Don't let these killjoys affect you. Put on that smile, stay upbeat no matter the situation and be a love producing, happy thought shouting machine.”  This immediately reminded me of my brother, Mitch’s “Positive Mental Attitude” mantra.  Our minds are so enormously powerful and, just like our bodies, we get to decide what gets into them and what we can keep out.  And with as much Mojo as y’all have sent me today, there’s not going to be room for anything but pure light and love in my mind.  

My first day of happy practices went very well.  The only thing I missed was meditation.  Meditation is a big one.  I’m lazy about taking time for it.  Ha!  I even lead one of my classes through some meditation today but didn’t take the time to do my own.  And, of course, meditation is probably the one happy practice I need to cultivate the most.  Like exercise, I feel the effects of meditation almost immediately.  I’m calmer.  Definitely more present.  And we all need to be more present.  So, tomorrow the meditation comes FIRST.  

For now, a decent night of sleep needs to be had (fell asleep, as usual, with my Luberry, and woke back up to take care of Team QueenPrincess stuff! – and that’s okay because this stuff is feeding my soul big time right now!).  I will check in with my cheerleaders and fans later on this week.  Keep that Mojo coming!  And keep cooking, eating, facebooking, emailing, reading, gardening, driving, dancing, smiling, job-hunting, parenting, training, and whatever else y’all are doing out there WITH LOVE.  

Namaste

Vaya Con Dios!

I’m just going to come right out and say it.  On June 25th, I am having an abdominal, partial hysterectomy.  They’re taking my uterus.  I’m keeping my ovaries – that part is the good news.  

This is happening because I have a fibroid the size of a 4-month-old fetus in my uterus which is really bad enough but… is also causing insanely heavy periods and uterine prolapse – which is all exactly about as much fun as it sounds.

This is also happening because I have two choices:  don’t have surgery or have surgery.  If I don’t have surgery, the fibroid will likely continue to grow, the prolapse will never reverse itself and the bad periods will continue and likely get worse until menopause.  Yay! Go being a lady!  If I DO have the surgery, it’s all gone – the fibroid, the prolapse, the periods.

Right now, the fibroid, the prolapse and the periods are seriously (and have been for about a year) interfering with my training.  I can’t run comfortably for long distances.  I can’t bike without literally pinching my uterus inside of my vagina – how about some of that?  You like that idea?  Ya, it super sucks.  I haven’t tried swimming yet (since the prolapse became seriously noticeable – not to other people, silly!  I mean, noticeable to me – inside of me) but I’m going to cross that bridge on Tuesday night.  Shouldn’t be too impossible but still not comfortable.  And… these days when I’m lifting, it literally feels like my uterus is going to pop out of me.  Okay, I just used the word “literally” a lot – but it bears repeating.  I’m not just using a figure of speech.  It IS literal. 

It has been so difficult to be completely out of the training game this year.  I had set so many good goals for myself this season and was unable to accomplish any of them.  I was really looking forward to doing XMR (Xtreme Muck Ruck) in Copemish which would have been my first obstacle course.  I was also psyched to do the Hit & Run 5K in Grand Rapids and the Hot Cocoa Classic near Detroit.  Neither happened.  All because of this fibroid and all the other problems that it’s been causing. 

I could bury my head in the sand and not have this surgery right now.  I’m really that terrified of it that I did consider it.  The idea of having this surgery super sucks.  I am going to be recovering for at least six weeks.  They have to do an abdominal incision which is about the most invasive kind of hysterectomy you can get.  I will have a terrible scar.  I will be risking complications.  If everything goes fabulously, it will take me another – at least – eight weeks after my six week recovery period just to work up to a 5K  (That’s my goal – a 5K by Halloween).  But, I’m not going to avoid all of that and I’m not going to bury my head in the sand because…

training, running, lifting, biking, swimming, dancing, working out, being active with my kids, moving my body as much as my body wants to move (which is a hell of a lot) has become MY lifestyle.  And it has taken me forty years to get here and I refuse to give it up now. 

So, here’s the plan:  a  fabulous, complication-free surgery,   a fabulous, complication-free and fast recovery (my doctor will be stunned at how well I’m doing!), the C25K program as soon as I’m cleared to start running again – which will be 6 weeks, a 5K by Halloween, back into tri-training by Christmas, participate in Delta College’s indoor tri again in April, be ready for the Hawk-I sprint tri in Lansing by June and the Sanford & Sun sprint tri by August.  From there, I will build up to an Olympic aquabike, then eventually a half-marathon, a marathon, a few centuries, a few big swims (I want to do big swims in all of the great lakes by the summer of 2016!) and eventually eventually eventually a half ironman and then eventually eventually eventually, by the time I’m 50, an ironman.  That gives me ten years to do it all.  I once heard someone say that when you start making plans, the universe just  starts laughing.  But I believe that sometimes when you start making plans, the universe simply says, “okay… it’s about time” then does whatever the universe can to help you out. 

If I don’t have this surgery, the training will have to stop.  If the training stops, none of these goals can be achieved and what I’ve been steadily working so hard for so long on will just unravel.  The emotional stability and happiness that exercise and good nutrition supply me with will begin to dissipate which would eventually begin to affect my relationships with the people I love.  So, I’m having the surgery.  

I’m posting all of this because I’m hoping it helps other people to hear.  I’m hoping it makes someone feel less alone.  The first fitness facebook page I started to follow just about six months ago is called “Fit & Fierce” and it is written by a completely bad-ass volunteer firewoman (I think?) – anyway, she’s always doing crazy badass stuff and she trains and lifts hard and eats well.  Her facebook page posts were mostly of the inspirational variety and everything she wrote always made sense to me.  It was all a message of self-love and self-care.  The very things MoJo’s Kitchen believes health starts with.  

A couple of weeks ago, “Fit & Fierce” wrote a post apologizing for being AWOL for several weeks.  She pointed to the complicated connection between mind and body and explained that she was battling a bout of depression.  Like all her posts, it was brave and honest.  The truth is no one approaches fitness or good nutrition with a blank slate.  We all carry everything we’ve been given or taken up our whole lives into the kitchen, onto the table, into the gym.  Sometimes all of that shit keeps us lying in bed, unable to move.  Sometimes it gets us punching a bag so hard, we’re awed by our own power.  But it’s all connected.  

What’s been happening to my body over the past several months and what is about to happen to my body has definitely affected my behavior in the kitchen.  Once again, I have been neglecting, many days, to cook and eat with love.  I haven’t been sleeping well so my workouts are sporadic and sometimes I push through them despite the fact that I feel utterly drained of energy.  Those are the bad days.  Some days, everything feels right back in place – those are usually days I’m avoiding thinking about the current state of my body or the upcoming surgery, when I’ve had enough sleep and eaten well the day before.  But good or bad, it’s always complicated.  It’s always about my mind and my body meeting someplace or refusing to meet in another place.  

But a commitment to this life is a commitment to those exact ups and downs.  It is knowing that some days the connection will be sharp, the road will unwind in front of me like a red carpet and I’ll glide along it.  Other days, the road will seem too long to even step foot on.  Neither road is wrong.  Both contain valuable information about all the other roads ahead.  

The road I’m on that’s leading me steadily and quickly to this hysterectomy is scary and lonely but knowing I’m walking it intentionally to get to the other side of healthy where I can once again begin working toward my fitness goals, makes it alright.  

And maybe this is the strangest MoJo’s Kitchen post yet but I stand by the fact that EVERYTHING happens in the kitchen – maybe, even especially, intimate conversations about our fears and our va-jay-jays.  

May yours (or the one you love’s) be healthy!

& May you cook and eat with love

& NOT with fear. 

Namaste

Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote, “not people die/ but worlds die in them.”  Each person we lose is a universe unto themselves, filled mostly with stories and elements we never knew.  All people create works that live outside of themselves that tell pieces of their stories and manifest shadows of their brilliant elements.  Sometimes those works are stories, poems, memoirs, essays, paintings, sculptures and sometimes those works are children, homes, recipes, memories.

I am keenly aware now that I began looking for mother and father figures at any early age.  Teachers fit the bill beautifully.  My third grade teacher, Mrs. Levine.  My seventh grade teacher, Mr. Sutherland.  Then poets began widening that circle when I was fourteen and hiding in the library every day during lunch at my new school – to avoid the practically cinematic “new kid” bullying.   Anne Sexton.  e.e. cummings.  Strange parental figures, perhaps, but nonetheless…

The year my mother died, I was asked to read two poems at the Peace Pole Dedication Ceremony at the College where I teach. One of the poems I read was the one I mention above, “People” by Yevtushenko.  There was another woman at the ceremony who was widely known for her long-term volunteer work in our communities.  She had my mother’s face.  She had my mother’s smile.  When she spoke, it seemed to me, she had my mother’s voice.  She spoke about the importance of community and helping one another. I thought about my mother’s volunteer work throughout her life.  Soup Kitchens.  Elementary school reading programs.  I thought about how my mother most likely would not be asked to speak publicly at a Dedication Ceremony.  It hit me that the major difference between this woman speaking and my mother was self-love and self-confidence.  I thought about how quietly my mother’s own personal story moved through the world, not demanding or commanding much attention – and yet… how important she was to me, how powerful, how gracious, how beautiful.  I wished desperately that she could feel those things about herself. 

When I was in my first year at college, I found a book in the poetry section at a bookstore called I Shall Not Be Moved.  I have no idea what attracted me to it.  Probably the same thing that used to make me buy albums: the shiny interesting cover.  I had already immersed myself in so much poetry but as I began reading Maya Angelou’s poems, I heard a slightly different, more secure, more forthright voice that wasn’t just “powerful” but literally full of some kind of power that felt to me like magic.  At that time, it was my habit to read most (and sometimes all) of a book of poetry right in the store before I bought it.  I stood between the shelves with Angelou’s book in my hands and I began reading.  When I had made my way through every poem in that book, I found another And Still I Rise.  I felt hungry for more of this poet’s words.  I couldn’t have said why then.  What attracts us to certain words is the same thing that attracts us to certain music or certain faces or certain bodies.  There is something we need in them, something that comes from someplace inside of us that we are usually not even aware of at the time.  I kept reading.  By the time I was done reading the poem, “Still I Rise,”, I had found yet another mother. 

“Still I Rise” is a poem spoken in the face of the oppressor, the person who wants to see you down, who wants to see you broken.  For me, that “oppressor” was a ferocious self-hatred created by years of abuse – some physical but mostly emotional and sexual – that had left me full of misdirected rage, an amorphous and constant terror, and plain-old confusion.  And into that face, that presence, Angelou declares an immovable self-love and refuses to be a victim.  There was so much in me I was utterly unaware of when I began reading that poem, so much that brought me to that poem and through that poem that once I read I could no longer ignore.  It was the moment Ranier Maria Rilke describes in his poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” “for here there is no place / that does not see you.  You must change your life.”  I felt seen.  I felt spoken for.  Angelou’s voice grabbed me by the chin and lifted up my head and said, “stop letting anyone or anything steal your joy, baby.”  And I finally started listening.

What I didn’t realize until only recently is that my real mother’s messages were not so very different than Angelou’s.  My mother wanted me to love myself and be strong and “rise.”  She wanted this for all of her children.  Any decent mother (I know there are plenty of indecent ones) – if given the chance to access her highest self-- does.  But some mothers are so deep down in their own self-hatred that the message doesn’t get through.  My mother was wise. She possessed a wisdom that I almost always overlooked.  She possessed a strength and perseverance that I grossly underestimated while she was still alive. I connect most viscerally to this strength, this unwavering spirit and the love my mother wanted me to feel when I am in the kitchen with her. 

And so here we are, in the kitchen, beautiful Ramona and I, unashamedly shedding tears for the passing of another beautiful mother.  There has been and will continue to be an outpouring of grief and mourning for Maya Angelou (let this be a lesson to the critics and uptight, pretentious academics who failed – and still fail-- to see the value in Angelou’s work – your opinion is small and insignificant and rooted in your own inability to feel compassion for the world around you or understand those people living outside your limited, privileged sphere) and, though the social-network-media-circus web we communicate in will undoubtedly annoy many of us (this blog post is no exception, I realize), I believe this outpouring of grief and mourning is natural and reasonable for a woman who was able to reach across every possible boundary and “mother” us all. 

It is, of course, Angelou’s own, biological family that has the worst work to do now.  This morning, while the birds are waking in darkness and my own daughter stirs and calls me away from the kitchen, I am adding my prayers to the universe that their grief is softened in some small way by the profound light their Maya offered the world. 

Namaste.

And with love.

The summer after my father died, my siblings and I held an estate sale to get rid of all of the things he and my mother had accumulated through the years. If you've never done this, you might be surprised to hear how emotionally charged this kind of thing is. It is just the strangest tug on your heart & belly when some stranger picks up some little knick-knack-- one you've always thought was hideous even -- and judges it, deciding whether they will take it or not. There were at least two situations where I would not take someone's offer because I couldn't let the stranger in question have the item. For example, one woman wanted to buy all of my mother's teddy bears for her dogs to play with and destroy! I just couldn't allow it. There were many items I decided I must have, they were too full of memory or some other kind of sweetness that I couldn't quite name. I kept so many bizarre items. My father's work boots. My mother's Saint Francis statue. I just couldn't part with these things yet.

Most important of all to me were my mother's cookbooks and folders full of clipped recipes. In fact, these became the birth of MoJo's Kitchen. My original idea was to gather all of the recipes into a book then blog my way through that book, making each recipe one by one. This plan never materialized because MoJo's Kitchen became something other than a "cooking blog." There were other more important matters to tend to for a while there. But today I got it into my head that I would fulfill this original plan so I began on page one. Shrimp with Chesapeake dipping sauce & crispy scallops with chipotle tartar sauce.

Gathering the ingredients for this tapas-style menu was fun. I discovered a super cool fish market in Saginaw that sells just about anything that lives in water. No kidding. I saw "turtle" on the fresh catch board!. I finally went inside Mercato di O&V -- a little oil & vinegar shop downtown midland-- and discovered their fun assortment of delicious salts. One was "bonfire-smoked" flavor. Yummy! And I went to a whole new grocery store in Auburn while my daughter was at her tumbling class.

I threw these dishes together in between carting Lucy to tumbling, driving Estlin to swimming, and watching a friend's son after school for an hour or so. They were crazy easy -- even with some of the tweaks I made. The shrimp, for example, turned out to be the wrong size for dipping (They look bigger before they're cooked) so instead I came up with a kind of shrimp & Parmesan bruschetta-type-thingy.

And though these little toasts look like they'd be tasty, I have to admit that these recipes were a failure. Essentially both of the recipes hinge on tartar sauce and/or mayonnaise. The shrimp sauce was basically a creamy cocktail sauce, loaded with horseradish. The sauce for the scallops was just tartar sauce spiced up with chipotle salsa, for the most part. And, friends, I'm not a big mayo-or-tartar-sauce-eating kind of gal anymore. I don't know that anyone really likes these nasty fat-laden sauces with food as light and simple as shrimp & scallops. If I had to think of a hundred ways to prepare & eat shrimp & scallops, these ways would be last on the list.

Still...my mother kept these recipes. There must be something special or even magical about them, right? Hhmmmm...not necessarily. This whole endeavor got me thinking. Maybe my mother's clipped recipes aren't all that special. Maybe the fact that one day while out at the grocery store she grabbed two recipes from the seafood counter that looked mildly yummy isn't all that earth-shatteringly important. Maybe like my father's work boots and broken, old boom box, I don't really need to keep these recipes around or honor & cherish them as much as I have these past two years. Looking around my kitchen, my office, my room, I certainly have a fair amount of things that certainly are not sacred to me in any way. Our lives are filled with that kind of junk. It's only when we die that the people we leave behind imbue our junk with all kinds of precious meaning.

Above all of this, most of the recipes my mother clipped were not healthy. In fact, what I have gathered in this notebook were the healthiest ones of the bunch. I specifically did not keep ridiculously high fat or high calorie recipes. But...these first recipes prove, I didn't weed out enough. My mother's eating habits were the absolute model of the typical American diet -- high fat, high calorie, processed, processed, processed. Many of these recipes were clipped from those homemaker magazines that are always promising dinner in less than 5 minutes. Many of these 5 minute dinners rely on heavy doses of processed ingredients. Today's recipes are no exception.

Despite discovering a couple of great local places and meeting one very cool store owner (Mercato), it occurs to me that this plan to make all of the recipes my mother clipped but didn't necessarily have the chance to make (at least not for me) really threw my day out of balance. Instead of focusing on what I could do to be healthier, instead of creating a balanced dinner with plenty of vegetables and good, whole grains, I spent most of my day making junk food. Instead of using the cooking skills my mother taught me for good, I allowed myself to be sucked into the unhealthy choices my mother made in her diet that eventually contributed to her untimely demise. That's not what MoJo's Kitchen is all about. I mean, I know this place is often a jumbled mess but I at least know that much. Health is central. Health is key.

So...I am once again, plan-less with no structure to pull this blog along in a direction that makes any real sense. But, I've recently been told many times that the way through grief is unpredictable and often winding. It's only recently occurred to me that I am still very much grieving my mother. Of course, part of me will always be grieving my mother. Always. But...since my mother's death, so many things have happened to distract me from the process of mourning her loss. My sister-in-law died just two weeks after my mother, leaving a much larger part of my brain and heart concerned about my nieces and nephew than my own grief. My husband and I decided to split up then decided to not split up then he left then we got back together then we moved three times. In the meantime, my father died. Then this past summer happened and I am still very much reeling from that. In short, there has not been time to mourn my mother properly. I thought that perhaps making one of her clipped recipes every day would help me hold to that process more firmly. Now I realize that project may just be another way to distract myself from the mourning process--again.

On the other hand, we had fun today in MoJo's Kitchen, Mo & I. We listened to "Having A Party" and "That's Where It's At" by Sam Cooke and "Looking for a Boy" by Ella Fitzgerald and "Just My Soul Responding" by Smokey Robinson and then, of course, "Someday, We'll be Together" by The Supremes. We enjoyed our little drive to Saginaw (we LOVE to drive!) and the feeling that we were on a secret mission. So, even though the food wasn't good, the company was.

Tomorrow, MoJo's Kitchen will refrain from using mayonnaise in any way. In this way, we will repent for tonight's tartar sauce orgy.

Namaste & Vaya Con Dios.