Like Nacha for Tita; or, Just Do It (Getting Over Yourself)

Those happy days when Nacha was with her seemed so distant now. Nacha! The smells: her noodle soup, her chilaquiles, her champurrado, her molcajete sauce, her bread with cream, all were far away in a distant past. They could never be surpassed, her seasoning, her atole drinks, her teas, her laugh, her herbal remedies, the way she braided her hair and tucked Tita in at night, took care of her when she was sick, and cooked what she craved and whipped the chocolate! If she could bring back a single moment from that time, a little of the happiness from those days, she could prepare the King's Day bread with the same enthusiasm she had felt then!---Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate




One of the reasons for my procrastination of yesterday's homework was my feeling of intimidation. Or, to put it into behavioral terms: I engaged in procrastinating behavior (form) to avoid my feelings of inadequacy and intimidation (function).
This is a pattern that sometimes emerges for me. It's an old monkey that, though banished, will sometimes attempt to drop out of a a tree, and land squarely on my back. Every now and again, he'll try to keep a hold, but usually slides off and hits the dirt in short order; and by that time, my coordinates have already changed. As monkeys-on-the-back are, he's a lazy sort; so he'll take his time getting back up into the tree. The other side to that particular coin is that one never knows when he'll drop out of the trees again. So being ready for it is essential.

To deal with this particular monkey-on-the-back, I need to employ tactics which will decrease my thoughts of inadequacy and intimidation, and therefore my behavior to avoid the task and the situation triggering these behaviors.
The best tool in the toolkit for me when this occurs is a tandem one: the one-two punch of dedicating the merit of others (the "rejoicing" limb of 7-limb practice) and mudita. Quite simply, I contemplate upon the good qualities in the people that seem to trigger my intimidation. I think about how these qualities are not cause for anxiety, but rather, for real joy and excitement. And just as Gardner's MI theory or Shantideva's Engaging in Boddhisattva Behavior or the New Testament would tell us, that good stuff that we recognize and rejoice in others is also ours. We all have the good stuff: how we manifest it to ourselves and to the world is what matters.

I use this tandem tool for all manner of situations. For example, on one of the most hot and humid days of the summer thus far, Little Guy and I picked cherries. Upon returning home, LG asked for a cherry pie. I must tell you that the making of the pastry for pie has always been an undertaking with uncertain results in my hands. Though I have been enjoying more consistent results since using my long-gone grandmother's recipe, hand-written, well-worn, the results are never completely assured. As it should be, I suppose, in life and pastry; and there's some joy to that.
With my love for LG as primary agent, I began to think about my grandmother, my Almeda, and how well she loved us: how she taught us to bake, to do needlework; how she let us fill her bathtub to the brim and soak until we were wrinkled as raisins; how from her hands we received cakes, and pies, those plump cookies pressed together like hands in namaste: how, Almeda, can I make pie dough on such an infernal day?

With clarity, I unfolded her tattered recipe. I placed a metal tray into the freezer to roll the dough out when it was complete; I filled an enamel roaster with ice and placed the mixing bowl into it. Without thinking, I measured out proportions of white cake flour, whole wheat flour, and chappatti flour into the freezing bowl, as we were out of our usual pastry flour.
As I pressed the tines of my pastry fork against the sides of the frosty mixing bowl, smashing the butter into the flour, the gentle insistence, that scritch-scritch-swish sound of the fork, bowl, and mealy-butter-flour-meal that was to become dough was as sweet as if I had heard Almeda speaking to me. The pastry began to come together, just so.
Chill for fifteen minutes, Almeda wrote in her recipe.
After rolling out the pastry and assembling the pie, I took a little paring knife to cut vents into the top crust. I cut a heart-shape in the middle, with lines radiating out from it in all directions, Radiant Baby-style, and put the pie into the oven.
It was so very beautiful and good when it came out, and we devoured every juicy bite.

After my procrastinating behavior yesterday, I finally returned home and seriously turned my mind to work. I thought about the wonderful qualities of the people I've just met. I thought about how LG and BG were so happy that afternoon. I thought about the wonderful qualities of my grandmother, my Almeda, and how they made themselves present for me in the here-and-now in the making of LG's cherry pie. And how we did benefit from the sweetness!
I gathered all these things together, whipped the chocolate in my Chocolate Mainline, and did my homework. And that, dear reader, is How I Got Over Myself.
Thank you so much, dear reader, for your kindness.


Have a wonderful day.

------------------------
Almeda's Pie Crust

Sift together:
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon of sugar
3/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
Cut in:
1 1/4 cup shortening
Combine:
1 beaten egg
5 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon vinegar
Sprinkle:
4 tablespoons of mixture
Mix with fork
add 4 more
continue till
pastry holds
chill 15 minutes

Ten Pounds of Cherries on a Hot Summer Day; or, What the Great Pumpkin and Easter Bunny Left Us

I realize that it is indeed a luxury for me to choose to abstain from eating meat: to be able to say, yes, I want this to some things; no, I don't want that to others.
I am reminded of such things when the boys and I go to pick fruit from local orchards, as Little Guy and I did yesterday. The party of two is new for us, for although Big Guy is an excellent fruit picker, he was at work in his new job at a local restaurant. (More on that happy news in a later post.)
LG is enamored of cherries. I had promised cherry-picking, and had scanned the papers religiously for the orchard that we frequent in the summers to advertise the opening of cherry season, and I had seen none. Yesterday I called the orchard; they told me that their cherries were gone. I had promised cherry-picking, and after some telephoning about, and finding either sellouts or slim pickings, I found an orchard in the next county that had cherries.
LG and I each took a small bucket and set off. I was telling myself that though every other orchard had been well-picked, at least here, at this place, at least we would be able to find enough for one cherry cobbler. Just one, and one is enough; one is just so.
We arrived at the orchard after a half-hour drive. We went into the stand to receive directions to the trees and to have our buckets --- an Easter bucket and a grinning jack-o-lantern from trick-or-treat--- weighed. We drove to the part of the orchard where the cherries were to be found. And then here--- here comes the good stuff, dear reader.
Tree after tree after tree, these beautiful graceful trees, tended just so: not so high, so that one needed no ladder; with branches arching up and out and down from the trunk, so that one could stand beneath the umbrella of the tree, in the shade, and reach out, without stretching, and find fruit; and such fruit. Bright red, cherry-red cherries, shining, glowing, warm-in-the-sun. Everywhere in abundance: literally, just every place one could reach and touch and take. So much abundance, and so one could "cherry-pick:" yes, I'll take this one; no, I'll leave that one.
And so we did.
There's just something to that, dear reader, that is so powerful and so good. To be guests of such abundance, to know that now, here and now, in the beating of the heat and the drone of insects and the shelter of swirls of leaves, that we can simply reach and take and choose: we can simply say yes, I'll take it, it is good.
There's something to that to know in saying yes that now is the time for doing so. It makes the goodness we receive even more sweet when we know that, say, this orchard that is bursting with heat and fruit and life will be dormant and white and cold and silent in Nature's short order. It endears us to the saying of yes, of yes to abundance, when we know we will return again to this place, when the time for giving and taking comes again, in the heat and the green and the humming of insects.
That's the good stuff, dear reader. Reach out for it whenever you see it. Say yes.
Be abundant.
Just so.