What your favorite Christmas cookie says about you

This post originally appeared on this blog eight years ago, but I think it’s clever enough to serve again on a seasonally appropriate platter. Enjoy!

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It’s the time of year flour, sugar and butter manufacturers live for: Christmas cookie baking season. Bakers across the country (and the world) celebrate the season by assembling different combinations of these three ingredients (plus an assortment of others) to tempt the rest of us into gaining Christmas pounds so we can resolve to lose them in January.

Your favorite Christmas cookie can reveal your personality, but before we look deep into your psyche, a definition is in order: Christmas cookies may have chocolate chips, but chocolate chip cookies are not Christmas cookies! As I have ranted in the past, Christmas cookies are special, once-a-year ordeals. They use special ingredients — like crushed candy canes or chocolate extract or dried cranberries or apricot jam. Or they come in special shapes — like spritz cookies or gingerbread men. Or they require complicated assembly, like sandwich cookies or red-hot-nosed reindeer cookies or those tedious twisted candy canes made of vanilla and red-colored sugar cookie dough. Or they have special toppings like powdered sugar or frosting or crushed nuts.

Chocolate chip cookies are for every day – they’re not for Christmas!

So with that in mind, what’s the one Christmas cookie you never pass up when the cookie plate comes your way? The one you pray to see when the neighbors gift you a batch? The one kind you’d make if you had enough discipline to bake only one batch this season?

I Like To Help: Sugar Cookies

These sugar cookies have mini M&Ms (because they need help).

When I worked at Target long ago, my name tag (and everyone else’s) read “My Name is [insert first name here] & I Like To Help.” I was imbued with the servant heart I don’t possess, but if sugar cookies are your favorite, helpfulness probably comes naturally to you. Sugar cookies are the Mr. Rogers of the holiday neighborhood: Everyone likes them because they have no offensive qualities like nuts, foreign spices or messy powdered sugar. They offer sweetness and light time after time.

 

Look At Me: Spritz Cookies

Sylvester Stallone probably likes spritz cookies. Making them, too.

Your favorite Leo probably likes spritz cookies. The ingredients are plain vanilla (with a dash of almond flavoring), but their presentation is anything but. Sometimes food coloring is added to the dough, it’s tortured by being squeezed through a press and decorated with sprinkles. If you like spritz cookies, you’re popular, you work hard to distinguish yourself from others and you’re probably physically attractive. You’re the king of the jungle, and anyone who doesn’t believe that gets mauled and eaten.

 

 

Second Thoughts: Snowballs

Nutty on the inside, sweet on the outside.

These cookies go by a half-dozen different names: Mexican Wedding Cakes, Russian (or Polish) Tea Cakes, Butter Pecan Cookies, Snowballs, Crescents, Pecan Sandies or one of the five million names that come up when you enter the recipe into Google. Also known as Those Buttery Cookies With the Powdered Sugar that Make Such A Mess on My Sweater. Despite the coating, they’re distinctive because the dough has relatively little sugar. If snowballs are your favorite, you eat fudge when you want sugar; you eat snowballs when you want Christmas cookies. You think deep thoughts and might be considered eccentric or even radical. At your best, you’re a genius, at your worst, you’re schizophrenic (what name are you going by today?). You probably hate sugar cookies and when you do actually bake, you don’t like to share.

Hey, Man, Don’t Get Crazy on Me: Gingerbread

Everything about gingerbread says tradition. It’s been around for a thousand years in various incarnations; in contemporary times, it’s a handy building block: Think gingerbread men and gingerbread houses. If gingerbread is your favorite, you like a good rut, a good boss and good political party. Family and friends are important to you. Without people like you, the world is an anarchy of white chocolate bark, chocolate sprinkles and whole cloves.

Just Wanna Have Fun: Peanut Blossoms

The No. 1 favorite cookie by many measures, peanut blossoms marry cookies with candy (and Hershey’s Kisses is forever grateful). And who can deny the appeal of peanut butter? If peanut blossoms are your favorite, you’re dazzlingly multitalented, uninhibited and enthusiastic. Haters call you hyperactive. What do they know? They probably like gingerbread.

 

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies or Macaroons

White chocolate cranberry cookies differentiate themselves from chocolate chip cookies with seasonally appropriate coloring that coordinates with Santa’s suit. And the crazy coconut of macaroons reflect his beard. If one of these types of cookies are your favorite, you’re courageous, possibly heroic, and entrepreneurial (how else could you deliver toys to two billion children every Christmas Eve?). At your worst, you’re a megalomaniac running an elf sweatshop in a country without income taxes.

Mr. Spock’s Favorite: Biscotti

Biscotti is both the bane and the savior of the holiday baker: It’s a pain in the arse to bake it twice, but once done, crisp biscotti lasts until the 12 days of Christmas are a faint memory. “Moist” and “soft” are insulting to biscotti. If you like biscotti best, you’re wise, ethical and humorless. Be honest: The only reason you even profess to like Christmas cookies is because they’re an excuse to drink coffee.

What’s In A Name: Snickerdoodle

Without the cinnamon coating and a name that’s as fun to say as boondoggle and dingus, snickerdoodles wouldn’t even qualify as Christmas cookies. If snickerdoodles are your favorite, you’re peace-loving and unpretentious, but whatever you do, don’t bring these to the Christmas cookie exchange: Your lack of flash will get the stink eye from the woman whose favorite cookie is in our final category.

Everything but a pageant sash: Cookie contest cookies and anything with pretzels

Photo by Six Sisters’ Stuff

Who needs flour, sugar and butter when there are so many other ingredients in the world?  If your favorite Christmas cookie is the one you’ve never seen before it appears on a plate from your familial gourmand, you’re creative and you know it, clap your hands. You are a romantic, possibly tortured and probably competitive. Aesthetics are important to you. And you probably play a mean game of Scrabble.

Daily newspapers across the Midwest hold Christmas cookie contests every year to inspire bakers to try new things, but that’s just a cover: Reporters like free cookies and Christmas cookie contests are a lot more delicious than lutefisk tasting contests. I devour the annual recipes with amused curiosity. Who has time for 16-step recipes and where can you find ground chipotlé pepper (don’t neglect the accent)? But these are my favorite cookies. Really, who can resist cookies with names that include chai latte, salted caramel and spiced something-r-other. In the past, my sister has taunted me on Pinterest with pins of elaborate cookies she thinks I should make in preparation for our family gathering, but this one she sent sounds divine despite the multi-step recipe: Chubby Hubby Buckeye Peanut Butter Truffles. Because it has peanut butter. And crushed pretzels.

I am an artiste.

How about you?

Perhaps observation rather than decadence on Fat Tuesday

In observance of Ash Wednesday tomorrow, I offer a little piece that is different from the philosophy of Fat Tuesday, during which we Christians indulge in every sort of craven desire before we sacrifice for Lent. Instead, in the midst of a brutal blast of winter and a worldwide pandemic, maybe a little Buddhist embrace of our joy and suffering is in order.

I wrote the following piece two years ago. The man mentioned in this piece recovered enough to live many more months, but last year, he went to heaven, a victim of COVID-19 here on earth.

Bearing witness

If you think meditation requires sitting cross-legged and chanting “Om,” you might be surprised to learn that’s only one way to practice meditation. Dozens of contemplative practices exist including everything from sitting in silence to dance and many acts in between. One of them is bearing witness, defined by Jules Shuzen Harris as “acknowledging that something exists or is true.” He suggests the Buddhist perspective of bearing witness “is to embrace both the joy and the suffering we encounter.”

For the past six months or so, I have been participating in a meditation practice with a small group of women at a nearby church. Last month, we met in my church (that is, my house, which used to be a church). After we rang the church bell, we meditated to the sound of bells. It was lovely.

But today I’m thinking of bearing witness as a meditation because I did so earlier this week when I spent a few minutes in silence holding a dying man’s hand. Without getting into the sticky HIPAA details of who this man is and whether or not he is actually dying, let’s just stipulate we all are dying. But we’re not all breathing with a ventilator in the critical care unit of a hospital. This man was. If you’re a more hopeful sort, you might argue this man was recovering, not dying. To-may-to, to-mah-to. Unless you’re a baby, we’re all in some state of disintegration.

This experience has clung to my consciousness like Pig-pen’s dust cloud, not in a haunting way but in a solemn, reverential way; it seems appropriate with the observance tomorrow of Ash Wednesday, which I associate with one’s path to death and resurrection. “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. For dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”

In between the hullabaloo of a number of visitors checking on this man’s well-being and the nurse washing his face and pressing various buttons on his monitors and intravenous drips, I was left alone in the room with him for about 20 minutes. Cell phones were not allowed in the ward. Food wasn’t permitted. There wasn’t a TV in the room. Only the man, carefully arranged in a hospital bed, and an array of machinery. Instead of seeking a distraction, I paid attention to the moment.

I took the man’s hand and was surprised to find it warmer than my own. I held it gently because he was so frail.

I considered singing a lullaby, but he is hearing impaired and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be heard by anyone else or that I could remember whole verses. So I sat in silence listening to the ventilator do its work.

Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out.

Every breath is a miracle if you think about it, but it was even more special in this setting. This is exactly what one might do to center one’s mind during meditation, only one would be concentrating on one’s own breath instead of someone else’s.

Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out.

Though mostly unconscious, it was clear this man was suffering. Occasionally, he would open his mouth and grimace. But he would also sometimes turn his head and smile. There was small but real joy in these fleeting moments. He was warm. He was breathing. He was alive. Life, being a gift, should be celebrated even in the midst of pain, I believe. Sitting there with him, this is what I bore witness to.

Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out.

I did not consider the future. I have the luxury of being emotionally separated enough from the man that his state did not disturb or worry me. I was in no position to help the situation or control it or even speak words of comfort (he couldn’t hear me anyway and with a tracheotomy, he couldn’t speak either so conversation was not an option). I could just be. Holding his hand. And bearing witness. See him in the moment instead his past mistakes or all the machines in the present or what the future might hold.

According to Harris, bearing witness has psychological and spiritual benefits for the bearer: “It enables us to connect with a place of real empathy. It also provides a kind of catharsis, a release from our emotional reactions of pity, shame, or fear. Spiritually, bearing witness invokes a sense of interconnectedness, of oneness, a direct realization of the wholeness of life.”

I felt these benefits while sitting with this man. For a few minutes, I let go of my shame and pity, and in bearing witness to his joy and suffering, I felt fortunate. My private moments in that room were a blessing to him, I hope, and to me. It’s not every day one observes so intimately the process of living and dying.

How do I love thee, summer

We’re nearly a third of the way through summer, by Minnesota Transplant’s accounting (I mark the first day of summer as the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend), and here are dozen more ways I’ve been savoring this sweet season.

June 8: Eat fresh walleye.

Somehow, I missed listing this flavor of summer on my original list, but of course, dining on walleye is a summer-must in Minnesota. Earlier this month, we drove waaaaay up north to see my parents. My father shared his hard-won bounty with us and fried it up in a pan (he is a master at frying good food; read about his fried eggs here). My Beloved and I gobbled up more than our fair share.

June 8: Eat rhubarb something.

After our walleye feast, Mom served up bowls of gluten-free rhubarb crisp topped with vanilla ice cream. So sweet and tangy! You should have seen all the rhubarb in her garden! She had a bumper crop.

June 9: Dip a fresh radish in salt.

Mom gave us a tour of her garden, and while we were admiring her rhubarb, she picked a bunch of radishes. This snack was a crunchy treat.

June 9: Watch a bumble bee work.

This noisy insect buzzed around sipping nectar and spreading pollen while we were traipsing around the garden.

June 9: Eat watermelon.

Are you sensing a food theme during our visit to the ‘rents? Mom dressed up lunch with a fruit and cheese tray.

June 9: Place flowers on a grave.

It wasn’t actually me who placed flowers on my brother’s grave when we visited; Mom watered the flowers she had placed there earlier this summer.

June 10: Eat a freshly grilled steak.

On our return journey south to home, we stopped at my sister’s house and celebrated being carnivores. Check out those grill marks!

June 11: Listen for a loon.

This bird’s call wasn’t on my original list either, but hearing the distinct, eerie call of a loon is somehow built in a Minnesotan’s DNA. It says home (and also, maybe, buy a lottery ticket). A pair of loons live on lake outside my sister’s house, and this one was making a racket when an eagle threatened her baby.

June 13: Dine al fresco.

My Beloved and I relished in a special occasion: meeting my stepson’s fiancée’s parents for the first time. We dined beneath a tiki hut outside of a Caribbean fusion restaurant. Minnesota was just opening its restaurants more widely after months of pandemic-related closures, so eating out was a real treat (as was meeting my stepson’s future in-laws).

June 15: Appreciate marigolds.

Marigolds’ unpleasant musky odor doesn’t excite the nose, but their bright color demands attention. On a walk to the post office, I admired my neighbor’s marigold presentation in a front yard caldron.

June 20: Arrange a bouquet of fresh flowers.

I can take no credit for creating this lovely crown of fresh daisies and baby’s breath beyond making a phone call to the local florist. She was delighted to create it for me since so many brides have canceled their bloom-festooned occasions this summer. I indulged in this adornment to celebrate the summer solstice, the longest day of the year (and to wear to a very small dinner party we hosted last night).

After our guests departed, I wanted to dance around a bonfire in the back yard, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” style. Alas, it was raining, so we lit some candles under the picnic table umbrella and toasted with a shot of tequila as a nightcap.

June 20: Light a sparkler.

I bet you assumed lighting a sparkler was meant for Fourth of July. Well, I might do that, too, but as a final welcome to the official first day of summer, I lit a sparkler and twirled around the patio, avoiding raindrops. Here’s to squeezing every last bit of joy out of summer, folks!

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

~Puck, in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

 

Mothers as ghost busters

Last year’s Mother Day sign at ye olde Church Sweet Home.

It’s Mother’s Day. Despite how weird it will be in the middle of a pandemic, whether you’re with or away from your children, I’m wishing you as much happiness as you can squeeze out of this lemonade situation.

As I casted about for a good topic for a holiday like today, I thought, of course, about writing about my mother, whom I won’t get to celebrate with but cherish especially now after a little health scare earlier this year and now a novel coronavirus that is especially harsh on people of my mother’s generation. But I’ve written about her many times, including this post on another Mother’s Day.

As I pondered alternative subject matter, I thought of a This American Life episode I listened to a couple of weeks ago. In the “Call Me Maybe” segment of Episode 697: “Alone Together,” contributor Sean Cole talks about the relationship he’s refined, mostly through weekly phone calls, with his stepfather Ed after his mother died.

“I call Ed. We talk,” Cole says. “For this specific need I have [a ritual to remember Mom], it turns out he’s the perfect person to call. Maybe you’ve got somebody like that. A personal ghost buster when there’s something strange in the neighborhood, when things are looking their worst. That person who will know what you’re talking about even if they can’t understand what you’re saying. And all you’ve got to do is call.”

I admire that “personal ghost buster” line because:

• a) it’s a great veiled reference to Ray Parker Jr.’s lyrics for the movie that only kids of the ’80s would get,
• b) it’s a good description of everything a good mom should be,
• c) that’s what my own mother is, especially in these ghostly times,
• d) and yet Cole is describing his stepfather. As a stepparent myself, I aspire to such lofty heights.

I hope I am someone to call now who will know what you’re talking about even if I can’t understand what you’re saying (though I know very well my talkative and charismatic husband spends the lion’s share of phone time with my stepchildren, and I can hardly get a word in edgewise). And naturally, I wonder what role I’ll play in the future in my stepchildren’s lives if I should outlive their father. Sean Cole’s story of Ed gives me hope that I might be remembered and called on Mother’s Day and other days.

“If you’re seeing things running through your head,
Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!”

~ Ray Parker Jr., the songwriter (and philosopher)

 

Happy Easter!

“I Know That My Redeemer Lives” was written in the 18th century by Samuel Medley, a Baptist minister. I grew up attending a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, and this hymn was a staple on Easter Sunday.

But it became most meaningful when the congregation sang it at the funeral of its pastor.
I was in fifth grade, and I initially thought it strange to sing such a joyful hymn at a funeral. But the pastor had chosen it for his funeral, probably because of the lines I featured on our church sign (to be clear, it used to be a church sign; now it’s a former church sign outside my house). The pastor considered his funeral to be a joyful occasion, not a sad one.

I reached into the archive to find this Happy Easter reference for you today. Happy Easter! I chose the mansion reference during reconstruction for obvious reasons, but perhaps during the chaos of a pandemic, the following verse is better:

He lives to silence all my fears,
He lives to wipe away my tears.
He lives to calm my troubled heart,
He lives all blessings to impart.

Success in stepmotherhood is like success in ‘Survivor’

I was remembered today on Mother’s Day with a phone call, a card and a Facetime connection that included both stepchildren, my granddaughter and both granddogs. Lucky me.

I survived 40 years without giving Mother’s Day a second thought (other than to thank my own mother), so I’m still a little surprised—and pleased—when I’m thought of on Mother’s Day. Far beyond just being remembered on a Hallmark holiday, I’m fortunate to have two wonderful stepchildren with whom I get along well. Stepping into the role of stepmother hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes, it has been … well … how do I say this … bang-my-head-against-a-wall, heartbreakingly difficult. Days like today make all those other, less satisfying moments worth it.

In honor of Mother’s Day, I’ve updated a post I first wrote six years ago. “Survivor” is still around and so am I, so it’s worth pondering again, updated for this season’s “Survivor: Edge of Extinction.”

How being a stepmother is like “Survivor”

1. Outwit, outplay, outlast. If you can’t outwit and outplay a 13-year-old, you’ll never outlast one.

2. Do not be the leader. Leaders get voted out of “Survivor” (look how it turned out for Reem), and bossy stepmothers are unlikable all the way around. I learned early on that I had no role as disciplinarian, and thank goodness, my Beloved was up to the task.

3. Don’t be a follower either. Children—biological or step—learn how to push their parents’ buttons. If you let them get to you, they win.

4. Be nice but don’t be too young, too pretty or too stupid. Having to compete for your spouse’s attention helps no one. Be yourself. Be sincere. Help with homework. Care.

5. Keep your emotions in check. The frequent tears on this season’s “Survivor” are a little too much; methinks Jeff Probst might be pushing the contestants a little too far in the pursuit of TV drama. Yes, the actions of my stepchildren have made me cry. Crying is good sometimes. But not on camera or under the hot lights.

6. Being a good cook helps. If you can’t be a good cook, tend the fire. My tastes and my stepson’s tastes do not jive. Thankfully, my Beloved is a good cook. And I clean up after him well.

7. Lighten up. On “Survivor,” lunatics get voted out (hello, Wendy) but people like to keep funnymen around. In the end, the comedians are often the “fan favorites.” In my step-dynamic, Caswell tells the jokes and I laugh at them. In the words of Martha Stewart, this is a very good thing.

8. Avoid lying. Blindsides make for good tribal councils, but blindsided contestants tend to hold grudges when it comes time for the final vote. That goes double for stepchildren.

9. Win immunity challenges at any cost! There have been a lot of challenges in this season’s survivor requiring contestants to stand, balance, figure out puzzles or hold on the longest (even if it means passing out). Similarly, sometimes the best tactic for a stepmother is hold on longer than she ever thought she could.

10. Don’t monopolize the challenges either. If you’re seen as huge threat, you’ll be voted off (can you hear me, Joe?). Stepchildren don’t like threats to their security either.

Enjoy the “Survivor” finale this week! And happy (step)Mother’s Day!

Potluck dessert

Looking for a delicious dessert to bring to the Easter potluck this weekend?

How about S’mores Cream Dessert with No-Bake Graham Cracker Crust?

I created this dish from three different recipes for an event this past summer, and it delivered on a promise to look like a show-stopper and taste as good as it looks.

Enjoy!

S’mores Cream Dessert with No-Bake Graham Crust

Ingredients:

Crust

• 2 cups crushed graham crackers
• 8 tablespoons butter, melted
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar

Cream Cheese Layer

• 12 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1-1/2 cups Cool Whip

Pudding Layer

• 2 boxes (3.9-ounce size) chocolate fudge instant pudding & pie filling
• 4 cups cold whole milk

Topping

• 8 ounces Cool Whip
• 1 7-ounce jar marshmallow cream
• 3 Special Dark Hershey’s chocolate candy bars, chopped up
• 1 cup mini marshmallows
• 1 cup graham cracker chunks

Directions:

1. Crush the graham crackers with a rolling pin. Melt stick of butter in a bowl in the microwave (on high about 15 seconds at a time). Add crushed crackers and granulated sugar to the bowl and mix. Press into the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch pan.
2. With a hand mixer or strong arm, combine cream cheese and powdered sugar. When smooth, use a rubber spatula to fold in Cool Whip. Spread mixture onto graham cracker crust.
3. In large bowl, whisk pudding with milk for two minutes. Let it sit for three minutes to thicken, then spread evenly over cream cheese layer.
4. Gently stir together Cool Whip and marshmallow cream. Spread evenly over pudding layer. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Just before serving (so graham crackers don’t get soggy), top with chopped candy bars, marshmallows and graham cracker chunks. Serves 15.

 

 

Happy Irrelevant Cultural Holiday

When I was growing up—in Minnesota, nearly 40 years ago—St. Patrick’s Day meant wearing green or risk getting pinched. I remember one year in high school—probably about ninth grade—I was late for school because I couldn’t find something both green and flattering to wear on St. Patrick’s Day. And I really didn’t want to get pinched.

Finally, I decided to wear a necklace with light green beads. Weak, very weak showing on St. Patrick’s Day. I probably got pinched anyway.

About a decade ago, I moved to Illinois and I was astounded by what St. Patrick’s Day meant to people. Sure, some of the folks here wear green and Chicagoans dye the Chicago River green, but if you’re observing this patron saint’s day properly in Chicagoland, you better be toasting with a foamy green beer and a plate of corned beef.

Ah, green, a reminder of spring. Not beer.

Just about every restaurant around here has a St. Patrick’s Day special that includes corned beef and sometimes cabbage or soda bread. Maybe Chicago is particularly merry about this holiday, but I think this secular fascination with all things green on St. Patrick’s Day has spread across the country. I blame lazy marketers who run every great religious holiday straight into the ground by starting too early, going too literal and turning it into a secular excuse to drink alcohol.

If it’s Irish, it has to be green? Really? St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish. He was born in England and brought by pirates to Ireland as a slave. He eventually escaped, found God and returned to Ireland as a missionary.

When we should be remembering his courage and benevolence, we’re honoring St. Patrick by wearing dorky four-leaf-clover hats and complaining about how gassy cabbage makes us.

Most of us wouldn’t know even his first name without the green beer. All we Americans need to twist the meaning of a solemn holiday is liquor, a three-day weekend and fireworks (see: Independence Day). Because newspapers/magazines/bars/TV newscasters need a hook to get our attention, we’re all celebrating a holiday that means nothing to most of us because it’s an excuse to get drunk. Yes, I get curmudgeonly about it.

If you like corned beef, you can eat it any day of the year. And if you like green beer or Irish coffee, you should examine your excuses for imbibing at 10 a.m. You may have a problem that can only be solved with a 12-step program.

Wikipedia now defines St. Patrick’s Day as a cultural and religious holiday honoring Irish heritage. OK, this is nice for the Irish, if not St. Patrick, but one has to dig pretty deep in Google results to find holidays honoring Nigerian or Japanese heritage.

Since I am a little bit Scotch-Irish (which means I could be Irish but it also means I could be Scottish), I am wearing green today in honor of St. Patrick, not St. Patrick’s Day (and also, to guard against getting pinched). And I might enjoy some corned beef because it’s delicious and plentiful. I’m passing on the green beer (though I might quaff an amber one). My advice? You do you.

I’m also sharing a little bit of St. Patrick’s Breastplate, a popular prayer attributed to the patron saint which was shared in church today. This is the most secular bit of it, and it’s quite beautiful whether you believe in St. Patrick or God or green beer:

I arise today, through
The strength of heaven,
The light of the sun,
The radiance of the moon,
The splendor of fire,
The speed of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of the sea,
The stability of the earth,
The firmness of rock.

Thank you, St. Patrick, for inspiring today’s blog post. God rest your eternal soul.

Throwback Thursday: Memories as clear as smudge

In honor of Ash Wednesday this week, I’m dredging up this semi-entertaining entry first published Feb. 22, 2012. Seven years ago? Only? If you’d like to read the original entry, complete with an image of my ash-strewn forehead, click here.

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Music is a powerful catalyst to evoking a memory.

Someday, when I’m 102 and sitting around the social hall at the nursing home, some old fogey who’s retired and out volunteering but not yet old enough for my chair will come in with an antique electric guitar and start playing “Beth” by Kiss, and I’ll start chattering on and on about some short boy named Chris and how I slow-danced with him while he stood on a chair in the junior high cafeteria during a Friday night dance in seventh grade. “Where’s Chris? I don’t want to dance with a short boy. And why are the lights on? Turn off the lights!” And then I’ll start singing along: “Beth, I hear you calling but I can’t come home right now. …”

And the nurse’s aides, who are 20something and standing around eldersitting us, will roll their genetically engineered eyes and text to each other, “God, I hate it when we play the oldies around here and the old ladies just won’t shut up.”

Something like that anyway.

While I was sitting in Ash Wednesday service tonight, we sang “Just As I Am, Without One Plea” and I was suddenly struck with thoughts of my sister. Not sure why that hymn reminds me of my sister who I would describe as a God-loving Christian who is, at best, lukewarm about going to church.

I think she had to learn that hymn as a child for some public event having to do with church or school, and she wandered around the house for weeks singing those lyrics. I called her to get the 411 (“Good for you for going to church,” she said), and she can’t remember either, but she immediately started reciting the lyrics.

Music is like that. I can remember all 50 U.S. states because of a song. I know the words to 1 John 4: 7-8 because I learned the verses set to music at Lutheran Island Camp when I was 12. And I think of a freakishly short kid named Chris when I hear Kiss.

At least I think his name was Chris.

Just as I am, without one plea,
but that thy blood was shed for me,
and that thou bidst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

~ Charlotte Eliot

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In observance of Ash Wednesday, I’m asking big questions about life and death this week on Minnesota Transplant. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a six-week season during which Christians focus on the life and, in particular, the death of Jesus Christ. Tomorrow, a celebration of a life.

Bearing witness

If you think meditation requires sitting cross-legged and chanting “Om,” you might be surprised to learn that’s only one way to practice meditation. Dozens of contemplative practices exist including everything from sitting in silence to dance and many acts in between. One of them is bearing witness, defined by Jules Shuzen Harris as “acknowledging that something exists or is true.” He suggests the Buddhist perspective of bearing witness “is to embrace both the joy and the suffering we encounter.”

For the past six months or so, I have been participating in a meditation practice with a small group of women at a nearby church. Last month, we met in my church (that is, my house, which used to be a church). After we rang the church bell, we meditated to the sound of bells. It was lovely.

But today I’m thinking of bearing witness as a meditation because I did so earlier this week when I spent a few minutes in silence holding a dying man’s hand. Without getting into the sticky HIPAA details of who this man is and whether or not he is actually dying, let’s just stipulate we all are dying. But we’re not all breathing with a ventilator in the critical care unit of a hospital. This man was. If you’re a more hopeful sort, you might argue this man was recovering, not dying. To-may-to, to-mah-to. Unless you’re a baby, we’re all in some state of disintegration.

This experience has clung to my consciousness like Pig-pen’s dust cloud, not in a haunting way but in a solemn, reverential way; it seems appropriate with the observance today of Ash Wednesday, which I associate with one’s path to death and resurrection. “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. For dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”

In between the hullabaloo of a number of visitors checking on this man’s well-being and the nurse washing his face and pressing various buttons on his monitors and intravenous drips, I was left alone in the room with him for about 20 minutes. Cell phones were not allowed in the ward. Food wasn’t permitted. There wasn’t a TV in the room. Only the man, carefully arranged in a hospital bed, and an array of machinery. Instead of seeking a distraction, I paid attention to the moment.

I took the man’s hand and was surprised to find it warmer than my own. I held it gently because he was so frail.

I considered singing a lullaby, but he is hearing impaired and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be heard by anyone else or that I could remember whole verses. So I sat in silence listening to the ventilator do its work.

Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out.

Every breath is a miracle if you think about it, but it was even more special in this setting. This is exactly what one might do to center one’s mind during meditation, only one would be concentrating on one’s own breath instead of someone else’s.

Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out.

Though mostly unconscious, it was clear this man was suffering. Occasionally, he would open his mouth and grimace. But he would also sometimes turn his head and smile. There was small but real joy in these fleeting moments. He was warm. He was breathing. He was alive. Life, being a gift, should be celebrated even in the midst of pain, I believe. Sitting there with him, this is what I bore witness to.

Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out. Air in. Breath out.

I did not consider the future. I have the luxury of being emotionally separated enough from the man that his state did not disturb or worry me. I was in no position to help the situation or control it or even speak words of comfort (he couldn’t hear me anyway and with a tracheotomy, he couldn’t speak either so conversation was not an option). I could just be. Holding his hand. And bearing witness. See him in the moment instead his past mistakes or all the machines in the present or what the future might hold.

According to Harris, bearing witness has psychological and spiritual benefits for the bearer: “It enables us to connect with a place of real empathy. It also provides a kind of catharsis, a release from our emotional reactions of pity, shame, or fear. Spiritually, bearing witness invokes a sense of interconnectedness, of oneness, a direct realization of the wholeness of life.”

I felt these benefits while sitting with this man. For a few minutes, I let go of my shame and pity, and in bearing witness to his joy and suffering, I felt fortunate. My private moments in that room were a blessing to him, I hope, and to me. It’s not every day one observes so intimately the process of living and dying.

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In observance of Ash Wednesday, I’m asking big questions about life and death this week on Minnesota Transplant. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a six-week season during which Christians focus on the life and, in particular, the death of Jesus Christ. Tomorrow, a throwback with a lighter perspective.