May you have warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon on a dark night,
And the road downhill all the way to your door.

(An Irish blessing from an Irish lass. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!)

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning;

and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain–not a single
answer has been found–
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems: Volume One
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two

Eden’s reaction when I told her they have to switch schools again because we couldn’t find a permanent apartment in our current neighborhood:

“I HATE God! Why God, why? Why would you make things work like this?!?!?!” (continued sobbing) “I would LITERALLY rather cut off my hands…cut off my ARMS than have to switch schools again.” (This went on for 20 minutes while we walked home from school.)

And here’s the email I sent Paul yesterday:

“It’s 6:35am and I am already prepared to beat the children.”

I love single parenting.

The lovely Elaine Eppler and I have developed quite an online crush. We surf back and forth to each other’s blogs, looking for a something delightful to brighten our day, or to find out what the other was up to the previous weekend.

Elaine has three blogs: Closely Observed always moves me towards gratitude; The Edible Balcony Garden inspires me to get creative about green living in an urban setting; and Berries and Greens gives us all a sneak peek into the health-full world of professional nutritionists.

It’s National Nutrition Month (who knew!) and Elaine is hosting a series of interviews about food attitudes over at B&G. We had fun doing an interview together via email, and she has it posted now. Hop over there and give it a look-see.

To celebrate our blogaffair (and of course National Nutrition Month) I’ve reviewed my favorite cook books for Wednesday Review.

Happy (and Healthy) Eating!

The New Moosewood Cookbook
The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest
Mollie Katzen

When I was 18 I moved out of state to attend college, and suddenly realized that my cooking repertoire didn’t go much past chocolate chip cookies and grilled cheese. True, I had helped my family cook dinners, but always as prep chef, never in a primary role. We were required to purchase a meal program at the school, but the food was so bad that the only thing you could eat was the quesadillas and the salad bar. This crisis of bad taste, plus the political fever most college students seem to catch, quickly converted me to vegetarianism and Mollie’s cookbooks became my guides.

From the The Moosewood Cookbook came a bevy of soup recipes, especially the veggie-rich Gypsy Soup and her never fail Minestrone. My books are on a slow ship from Seattle right now, but I’m pretty sure this is the cookbook with Montana Mama’s ricotta cheese cake with a lush, baked sour cream topping. It defines ‘decadent.’ And her chocolate brownies (with or without espresso) are also delish. There are handy tips for the beginner chef, including how to slice and dice various kinds of fruits and veggies. Without Molly, I still wouldn’t know how to section an orange.

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest offers the same kind of hearty, healthy goodness (all of Katzen’s recipes feed a good-sized crew.) In graduate school ours favorite thing to do was to host dinner parties and I often made the Indian Lentils with coconut and green apples. My former housemate Heidi swore by the broccoli casserole.

These aren’t the cookbooks to turn to when you’re in a rush. But if you’ve got time to dice awhile, either one of these charming, hand lettered cookbooks will keep you inspired with year round veggie goodness. Today’s Flavor: Hearty and Healthy.

When you order any of these books by clicking on the image or title, a portion of the proceeds supports this site. Find more great reads, music, and other treasures at Magpie Suggests. Thank You!

“Lie back, daughter, let your head be tipped back
in the cup of my hand.
Gently, I will hold you.
Spread your arms wide, lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls.

Phillip Booth, Words of Mouth

You know what would be really helpful? If every woman had a “cycle buddy” who would email them at certain points in their hormonal madness. For instance, if you were ovulating, your cycle buddy would email you and say:

Morning love! You are ovulating right now and all the evolutionary nerves in your body are on high alert. If you are feeling at all inclined to call up that man you know is positively toxic, but is sounding like such a good idea right now, for heaven’s sake DO NOT SLEEP WITH HIM. Also, if at this moment, you are suddenly aching for baby number three, you should BY NO MEANS forego your birth control tonight or anytime in the next week. Have a nice day!

-Your Cycle Buddy

Conversely, you would get something like this just before your period…

Hello dear. I promise you everything is going to feel much better in just a few days. You probably aren’t doing a terrible job at work. I’m sure your friends all love you. And no, I don’t think you look fat in those jeans. Repeat after me: “This too shall pass.“Now kindly get under the covers with a hot water bottle and eat some chocolate. There, there now, isn’t that much better?

-Your Cycle Buddy

What do you think? Could we write a little macro and start our own webpage to send out automated wisdom at just the right time?

Some people are natural parents. The children arrive, by blood or by adoption, and some deep seated knowledge kicks in.

I am not one of those people.

When my daughter final arrived, after a string of pregnancy disasters and difficulties, I found myself to be completely out of my depth. In infancy, I couldn’t tell whether a cry was for hunger or for tiredness. The hormones stew of pregnancy, delivery, and nursing left be adrift in depression. And when my next daughter unexpectedly arrived, leaving me home with two children aged two-and-under, I realized I disliked nearly all of the everyday tasks of parent (cooking, cleaning, dealing with toddler temper tantrums, endless hours of make believe…) In short, I felt like a TOTAL LOSER.

Thank God for these authors, who gave me companionship, laughter, and not a small amount of good advice for the journey. Give this collection as shower gifts, and your friends will love you forever. Or, stock your own shelves if you’re preparing for the onslaught of parenthood.

The Three-Martini Playdate: A practical guide to happy parenting
Christie Mellior

Already, you love the title, yes? Mellior’s basic premise that you were here first, and children should be seen only if they can be ever-so-helpful as to help Mommy pass out the cocktail napkins and crudities. Here’s an excerpt from the opening chapter:

Gone are the days when a small person of tender age would do as he or she was asked, good naturedly and obediently, and the rest of the time would sit quietly reading or practicing a simple cross stitch…One wasn’t required to transport the little children hither and tither, here to T-ball practice, there to a “playdate,” may the chipper mommy who coined that particular term forever rot in a hell of eternally colicky babies….
Let us be perfectly frank. You were here first. You are sharing your house with them, your food, your time, your books. Somewhere, in fairly recent memory, we have lost sight of that fact.

Oh, I hope you are ever so much in love! No one helped me take my parenting gig less seriously–something I was in deep need of after too many months of reading up on what to expect. So click here, and in a few days you could be sipping your favorite thing-made-with-gin with my soulsister and me. Cheers! Today’s Flavor: Pass the vodka.

The Girlfriends’ Guide to Surviving The First Year of Motherhood
Vicki Iovine

I like taking advice from former playboy models who have four children in six years (no, none of them are twins.) For instance, in regards to the many children, Iovine suggests not mixing red wine and your husband’s birthday. (Good point!)

Anyone with a sense of humor will enjoy this no-nonsense, practical, “we’ve been there” advice – including how to detect being postpartumish, a terrific term to help your friend identify when you need help with the post-delivery hormone stew. All of Iovine’s parenting books are helpful, but the first two: Pregnancy and First Year are are top notch. Today’s Flavor: Helps you out without stressing you out.

Operating Instructions
Anne Lamott

If you are a regularly reader of Magpie Girl, you already know that Anne is my priestess. My dear friend Wendy–mother of the adorable Rees, who we fully plan on marrying off to Eden–gave me this book shortly after the birth of my second child. More poetic than my other recommendations, but still deeply funny, Lamott’s story of adjusting to being the single mother to a baby boy is told with refreshing, and sometimes shockingly honesty. Once again, consumate story teller Lamott becomes an essential traveling companion, this time for those of us on the parenting road. Today’s Flavor: Real, with a touch of funny.

Order a book by clicking on one of the links above, and support this website! Find more books, music, and things I enjoy at Magpie Suggests. Tak!

Eden models the braided hat mommy finally finished.

It is zero degrees Celsius today, freezing point.

At 7:40am the taxi driver buzzes our front door, and Cate skips downstairs, bundled in long johns, a turtleneck, a hooded sweater, a fleece jacket layered into a ski jacket, a knit hat with earflaps and a pair of gloves. Ironically, she wears neither her rain boots nor her snow boots, opting instead for her brand new “professional sports” shoes – glorified sneakers that may or may not be waterproof.

Eden and I leave for our 15 minute walk to her school a few minutes later. We too are clad against the weather. Eden points out that in Denmark, you could wear a neon t-shirt covered with puff paint and sequins and it would not even matter, because all anyone ever sees is your coat. (Thankfully, I have a large collection of vintage outerwear – not that a true Dane would ever be seen in any of them. Not a single one is black.)

The streets have thin sheet of black ice, which reminds Eden of the time she and Rosie slid around on black ice in front of her old school. (She is ever so knowledgeable about its dangers.)

Our sidewalks here are crystalline now, powdered with something that falls between snow and hail. Eden is captivated by the swirling ice patterns on the car hoods – for some reason the ice has frozen itself into a peacock fan on each one. By the time we get to school the church bells are ringing-out 8am, and we are rosy-cheeked from the weather.

It was sunny on the way to the skole, but as I walk back home the clouds roll in. By the time I hit the front door, hail is coming down in angled sheets.

Now, after a long cold day, it’s 18:00. The Mediterranean White Bean Soup is on the stove, the pull apart rolls are in the oven, and everyone is reading in the living room. Outside the window, in the light of the streetlamp, I can see that the snow is blowing exactly parallel to the streets, and I am glad to be inside surrounded by warmth.

…and here’s a funny photo to warm the cockles of your heart :-).

my faithful prayer beads from Church of the Apostles in Seattle, WA.

This morning we went to church. I know, I know. I never thought I’d be there again either. But there’s a nice International Church here where every week we get to sit in a historic sanctuary and take Communion in a circle while everyone prays the Lord’s Prayer in their mother tongue. (I want to say it in French, just to show off, but I resist and stick with the formal version I learned in catechism.)

I have a dear friend who’s a long term ex pat in Thailand and he says, “Look, if it hasn’t sunk in over the past 20 years of church, I doubt we’ll ever learn it. So at this point in our lives, I think we should just go to a church because we like the community.” I think maybe he’s right. So after the service we go eat cheese with caraway seeds in the kaffe hall, and have conversations with people from all over the world. Last week we met our first Danish acquaintance, Anne-Mette, who wrote down the address of a museum where we could see her grandmother’s doll houses. Today I had tea with Alex, from Armenia, whose uncle happens to live in Seattle. Alex plays the piano, and the organ. When I bemoaned the fact that our children are so much louder than Danish kids, he says, directly to Eden, “This is good, that you have passion! This will make you a marvelous musician when you master the piano.” That’s pretty good stuff, right, to have someone affirm your nine year old like that? I think this one might be worth it.

Still, today as I sat in front of the huge gold crucifix with its weighty, anguished Christ, I had second thoughts about bringing my children to this place. You see, I believe you have to use art to preach. I believe that for a post-modern generation image is often, maybe always, more powerful than words. And this art, this occupied cross, is screaming “YOU stuck me up here and I’m never EVER coming down.”

I don’t want to indoctrinate my children with that kind of passive aggressive Jesus. I don’t want them to bear the incessant guilt, to always see an image of pain crowning their holy space. I don’t think the good news of Christ is that we get to soak in scenes from a Mel Gibson movie for the rest of our lives. I’m pretty sure Jesus never said the good news was, “I’m going to die on the cross and you get to look at that for the rest of your lives.” I’m pretty sure what he said was, “Woo Hoo! The kingdom of God is at hand!”

Somehow we didn’t keep up with that reality. We got stuck in the pain, in the bleeding. Here, my children will never see the cross bare. They will never get a visual celebration of new life, of new chances–of resurrection. Not even for a season, not even for one Easter day. He’s always up there, suffering. And while the potato the children are growing in the pot on the church steps is a lovely illustration of emerging life, somehow it doesn’t have the same impact of a life-size statue ripped full of wounds and shining in the winter sunlight.

Can you combat this golden year-round image with a few well-timed words? Can you redirect your children’s malleable minds to the potato? Can you help them focus on the shared loaf; the ring of candles ignited from one common light; the cup that never runs out? Or will they primarily remember the bleeding cross and the man who will never climb down?

Oh how I wish this congregation of nations could gather in the chancel, not just to pass around bread and wine, but also to share the task of taking Christ down from the cross. If only our many hands could lower him with ropes and pulleys; carry his weight away from that place of torture. If only we could leave the beams bare, clean-scrubbed and oiled. If only it could shine there on Easter day, and empty, carry us into the forgiven reality of Eastertide.

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