Losing Faith

How far would you travel to share a meal?

In my case, more than six hours by car, cruise control set at 74 miles per hour, stopping twice for Starbucks, a bio break and duck-like sprints to get the circulation back in my legs.  This is an every-other-week ritual, loading up after work on Friday to haul up and across the state from Longview to Spokane.  

The last 100 miles of the 386-mile trek on I-5, 18 and I-90 seem to take forever, partly because my internal drive clock has always been set on 280 miles, the distance between Spokane and Seattle, spanning just enough time to listen to a couple of choice podcasts, read aloud from my kindle and grab a quick bite, usually in Ellensburg, before zooming up the pass. Once over Snoqualmie, it would be time to see new things, visit friends or try a new restaurant.

On this new route, the four-hour cycle of canned entertainment runs its course and another good hour and half or two remains in the journey to the 509. I stare down my ticking mental clock, trying to invoke the patience of monks who chant for hours on a cold floor, bending their will to match the eternal now. At hour five my futile attempts at serenity have me fidgeting, playing with the temperature controls, adjusting the seats and mirrors, a wiggly worm in the passenger seat traveling on my own highway to hell.  Once in Spokane I’m so grateful to leap out that I make like the Pope deplaning and ceremoniously kiss the ground.

One of my weekend missions it to visit my mom Faith,who now lives in a house for residents with dementia and Alzheimer’s.  When we first moved her into the facility months ago, she was in an apartment where she could come and go, free to take advantage of the programmed frivolity known as leisurely assisted living. We took great care in picking a place close enough for her church friends to visit, as well as being across the street from the practice that housed her doctor, whom she counted as a friend.  He promised to walk over on occasion to visit her socially.

Understandably full of grief and anger after Dad died, Mom accused us of putting her in jail and locked herself away in her room, fuming at me all the while clutching her beloved Schnauzer.  She refused to participate in social activities and ordered meals in her room, to the tune of $3.50 per meal delivery charge, adding to her $6,000 a month baseline tab.

There was no way to reason with Mom to tell her that we were forced to move her because she tried to set the house afire and left her pills strewn about, leaving diabetes and kidney meds where her dog could get at them. It was my turn to be the parent and receive the wrath of a wronged, willful child-like ball of hate and bear it in the name of honoring my dad’s memory and stepping into his size 13 shoes as Mom’s protector.

One day we received an urgent call from the staff, who wanted Mom immediately moved to the dementia house after they found her on Nevada—a noisy, busy street—aimlessly pushing her walker, with her loyal dog sauntering behind, leash entangled around Mom’s ankles. The visual symmetry of a four-wheeled walker dragging a four-legged companion in a four-lane thoroughfare was oddly beautiful and horrifying at the same time. Was she trying to go home? Was she looking for Dad?

By the time the staff wrangled Mom away from her role as human traffic cone, she forgot she had gone AWOL so there was no use in berating or interrogating an unwitting victim of her own deteriorating brain.

Dementia comes in many forms, and in Mom it manifests as a sly, cruel thief who strips away the ability to learn new information or care for herself. Some become obsessed with food, as my mom has, so I’ve found sharing a meal as a gateway to the vibrant elements of Mom’s personality. The sight of Japanese takeout, including tempura vegetables, teriyaki chicken and sushi, sets her at ease. She flashes recognition of menu items imprinted on her during her youth in Hawai’i. As she gleefully reaches for a dumpling, I flash to second grade and an argument my mom is having with my new blonde, blue-eyed overnight guest who has never seen teriyaki before and is demanding sugar and milk for her boring white rice. Of course Mom’s will wins out over a tearful, hungry seven-year-old who would rather go without than try something new.   

Mom was the first to introduce Hawai’ian and Japanese food to my friends in Chewelah, decades before sushi bars became the staple of strip malls everywhere.  A fabulous cook, Mom would make gourmet meals even when we roughed it in the woods. While others roasted hot dogs over campfires, Mom toiled in our camper kitchen with her griddle and rice cooker, whipping up stir-fry beef, vegetables and Spam musubi. Curious campsite neighbors would crane their necks uncomprehendingly and ask about the evening fare as they munched their S’mores. She beamed with pride as she told them her recipes and lured them in with stories of the travels that helped her acquire an international palate and culinary aplomb.

A loud moaning interrupts my reverie as one of the house residents slumps forward in his wheelchair. Unfazed by the noise, my mom deliberately picks up each piece of sushi and stuffs them into her cheeks.  We fall into our own version of Groundhog Day, with her asking about my job, family and health, with me answering, and back and forth until we circle the same topics at least seven times. As she finishes her last piece of tempura, she grabs the bowl of dipping sauce with both hands ready to slurp the remains, thinking it is soup. I distract her with an offer of water and toss the sauce in the garbage.

Mastering little acts of legerdemain is my way of allowing her to keep her dignity, preventing her from  realizing what she cannot do in those moments of near misses. It’s also a quiet apology for being away, chasing phantom career glory as she sits wiling away the hours, alternating between benign confusion and melancholy awareness of her descent. I clean up around her and promise to do lunch again soon, which makes her smile a rice-dotted smile.  

Of Life Indeed

It’s a gift to find a transcendent being who shows you how to find the mystical in the ordinary and whose presence actually transforms a physical space into a calmer, more grounded reality. You find yourself breathing into the moment, racing thoughts slowing to the rhythms of conscious imagining.

Martin Buber’s concept of I and Thou, an authentic relationship that leads to an experience of God, is lived out in interacting with D, whose chosen last name means “of life”. It is in a particular mid-20^th century life that D forged a pioneer’s path, journeying from a “bag lady inspecting glued bottoms” at the local paper mill to a highly trained naval technician in an age that painted the female ideal as a well-heeled, post-war consumer of manufactured goods for the Good Life.

While others were shrieking at Elvis concerts, singing along to one of his 170 hits, D toiled quietly, untangling wires and code, acquiring electronics and computer savvy as a Navy recruit. The only intrepid woman among 401 graduates at a special Naval ceremony, D eventually left the service and tried on big city life in LA. Living in the City of Angels was anything but heavenly, and the solitary sojourner, who longed for the quiet trails of southwestern Washington, returned home.

Home is a tiny port and mill town where old-money mill owners mingle with a class of transplanted doctors, lawyers and engineering managers who enjoy a comfortable living, able to afford membership at the country club and the cultural amenities of two cities less than an hour's drive away.

“The best place to eat in Longview is Portland,” I heard a local foodie sputter.

Culinary wasteland notwithstanding, D’s life is rich. Her daily practice is balanced, thoughtful and joyous. Her bearing is peaceful and centered. Her scenic tour of careers led her to teaching computer technology at the local college. D finds herself teaching courses even now—seven years after her official retirement date. A perfect Jedi master for the frightened technophobe, D views teaching as a “daily lesson in humility,” acknowledging that some of her younger students probably know more about computers than she does, but feels called to stay for those who “don’t know what they don’t know and may never have been exposed because of poverty.”

At 76, D has taught a large number of the college’s faculty, office staff and town residents. I’ve only known her for three months, surreptitiously exchanging book titles and a few passing emails, but she has had a profound impact on me in a way that truly matters. I can only imagine that for those who spend more quality time with D, her sly wit and sprightly optimism burrow into her students’ very core, and that the days are just a bit brighter and their life visions expanded.

In sharing a simple meal of salad and bread with this formidable techie cum Buddhist, I am wrapped in a stillness that keeps the rest of the workaday hassles at bay for that one great hour.

This Little Piggy Went to Portland

I scheduled our first outing to Portland for February 1, weeks in advance, to coincide with a hair appointment at a salon that carried my products. At my age I unapologetically allow myself the indulgences of a self-care day on occasion and good food whenever possible. On this day, we hit the jackpot.

We had just enough time to grab an early lunch before my much anticipated hair appointment aka salon audition of the century. If you don't get why a good salon is important, I don't have to time explain it here. That's the topic of its own blog entry and many a therapy session. Suffice it to say I was much relieved to come out with good hair and not, like in 1990, a butch cut that made me, with my chipmunk cheeks and round face, resemble Eric Cartman from South Park.

My stylist is a Texas transplant with a stint working for the Spanish Royal Family on her resume. Married to a chef, she and her wife, will be a source of all good foodie referrals yet to come. A reader of perfume blogs and observer of the human condition, my stylist at http://www.arabellasalon.com/ made for a great first ambassador of Portland.

The magic of this day was amplified by the fact that the sun was shining, and it lifted the moods of Portlandians everywhere, so much so that we were heartily greeted with smiles and hellos when we walked into the restaurant http://russellstreetbbq.com/. The Russell Street BBQ was a half block around the corner from my hair destination, a perfect place to soak in the sun streaming through the window, to watch the honey drizzle onto the triangle of cornbread and to wait for the butter to soften in the noonday warmth. If I were a cat, I'd have been purring as I basked in the heat. The smoky, earthy scent of barbecue, with just enough of a hint of vinegar to make your mouth water, wafted through the air.

Funky roots and jazz music playing on the radio, an eclectic staff with piercings, tattoos, mohawks and skinny jeans made this place anything but redneck. It is what outsiders might imagine an eatery in Portlandia might look like, complete with a statement on the menu that food was seasonal, locally sourced and antibiotic free. We refrained from asking whether our piggy had a name or whether it had been read bed-time stories before giving its life over to the magic butcher in the sky. Plating was no nonsense, but the yams, coleslaw and half rack were to die for.

Just that morning we had bid farewell to our big green egg barbecue because the will of condo fascism prevailed and we were forbidden to use our charcoal chamber of goodness ever again. This lunch definitely softened the blow of involuntary simplicity made real by a letter from the Home Owner's Association. Guess if we get a hankerin' for some home-style pork, we'll just hop in the car and wend our way to the city and the delights of Russell Street.

At The Table

In Spokane people called me the Welcome Wagon, the person people looked to for help settling into a new life in a new city. I reveled in the role and saw it as a sort of mini-ministry.

I could rattle off my list of favorite restaurants (Gordy's, Clover and Twigs, for those of you keeping score at home), family activities and outings, and useless and slightly interesting trivia.

For example, did you know that Bing Crosby's boyhood home, now the Gonzaga Alumni Center, had for the longest time a hole in the window where he had shot a bb through the glass? Recent beautification efforts have done away with the fabled remnants of a time gone by. And did you know that the crooner's Oscar for "Going My Way" is a part of GU's holdings? Pulling from my grab-bag of conversation fillers was all in a day's work as the head of campus visits and ambassador advisor at GU. Even after I left GU for the community colleges, I continued to acquire more Spokane tidbits to bolster my pride of the city called home by nearly 200,000 residents.  

Strange, not-quite-A-list celebrities like actor Craig T. Nelson and Broadway star Cheyenne Jackson hail from the Lilac City. Okay, Newport for the second one, but you get the idea. If there's an obscure tidbit that will spice up an exchange with a newcomer or a passerby, I had it at the ready. All in the name of making connections with people who just hit town for a new job or were suspended in place and time, sometimes not of their own volition. If someone started a job with our colleges, I made sure to host a dinner so a person could meet people like themselves. It was my quest to help them answer their own unspoken question, "Is it safe to be me here?" I mentally filled in the blanks for others without thinking that someday I would be the one asking the question.

It wasn't until I was on the receiving end of a connector's gifts that I realized what a powerful act of service it is to gather people at the table for the first time. Seven days into our new life in Longview, a colleague organized a dinner out with four couples, including my husband Rick and me. After a long, intense first week on the job spent drinking from the proverbial fire hose, I pushed myself past the impulse to collapse on the couch and changed for dinner. I had no names or faces to look for, just instructions to go to the Bistro (http://www.thebistrobuzz.com/) at 6:45 with reservations under the name of Ted.

Within a matter of minutes of being seated and exchanging names, we found commonalities in where we went to school, our fears and hopes for our children, our long-standing optimistic fatalism about the Cougs and the desire to make this town a better place.

Wine, beer and conversation flowed freely. I refrained (never again!) from busting out my iPhone to reflexively take pictures of my food as I am so wont to do at new eateries, especially if they are to my liking. And this one was. The osso bucco was a work of art, as was the the melodic manner in which the waitress sold the dish as a special, nay life-changing opportunity, not to be missed. The plating was nearly as dramatic as the polished promise of the chef's offerings. For me this was a tableau made in heaven. I went with the mussels and clams in a butter wine broth, but the men who fell under the spell of the menu whisperer were not disappointed. The gusto with which they dove in added to the vibrance of the evening. A toast was offered by eldest and most gregarious, and we felt a sense of welcome wash over us.

The Greek word for hospitality, xenophilia, literally means "love of strangers". I often strive to be the host and extend hospitality to others. The giving has been easy. The receiving, on the other hand, is where the opportunity for true spiritual practice lies for me. To receive graciously the gifts of another who is expressing a love of strangers in the hopes of rendering them no longer strangers in their midst, has been my challenge.

Until I could do so with unqualified gratitude and humility, however, I couldn't lay claim to have mastered the virtue of hospitality. On this Muscato and Malbec marinated evening, I came closer than ever before.  


 

Daring Greatly

My worldly possessions are in a newly built condo, awaiting my arrival in a new town six and a half hours from my current house. Before I leave the city I've called home since 1989, I'm compelled to take a picture of my walk-in closet, emptied and ready for the next inhabitant. The person who occupies this space will never know that this functional, fashionista's paradise is larger than the last place I lived with my birth mom in Korea, before I was whisked off at age 6 to be adopted by American parents.

My birth mom's few possessions--two metal rice bowls and chopsticks, a couple of pans and one change of clothes--were stacked on a rickety shelf attached to a rotting wall.  This immovable fixture took up half of the hovel we were forced to call home. My mom and I slept on our sides on the other half of the floor, lined up like Dominoes because there was no room to lie flat. We alternated whose back would be wedged against the shelf and who would face the outer wall. Our arms, crooked at the elbow, served as our pillows as we shivered through the windswept nights.

The image of that dirty den, and the haunting feelings accompanying that time period, remained buried deep in my psyche until I began prepping to move. My clean closet ala Carrie Bradshaw transformed into a Star Trek holodeck where images of my first life were superimposed on its walls. My mental slide show flashed me back to a life of scarcity, where I battled the soul-crushing effects of constant hunger, want and fear. A yearning to escape the endless sameness was outweighed only by my desperate desire to cling to my mom, the center of my steadily crumbling universe.

My life changed forever when my mom reluctantly relinquished me to worldly, teacher parents who would fill my stomach and mind with gifts from a horn of culinary and intellectual plenty. The promise of prosperity would be fulfilled but not without cost. It's always been easy to acknowledge how brave my mom was to walk away from a child she had worried about, and apologized to, for being inadequate (her words) for more than six years. But what I've never steeped in is the reality of a six year old's sense of emotional free-fall as she was stripped of her language, her primary relationship, fragile identity and street-savvy culture in one seemingly innocuous transaction--the transfer of custody from one party to another.

Not until I began my recent month-long farewell tour of lunches, dinners and parties with my current friends and colleagues did I truly process my dormant yet real need for transition from my third-world circumstances to my first-world, technicolor residency in the states. Our culture loves the before, or back story, so long as the after is triumphant or transcendent. I'm too young to declare victory on my social evolution, so there is no after just yet. Where I am, though, is at a place willing to acknowledge but not surrender to, my primal sense of abandonment, grief and ambivalence over the change that altered the trajectory of my life. I'm learning to ride a wave of liminality to a stronger place of self acceptance, and to have compassion for others in the grip of their own transitions.

In Daring Greatly, Brene Brown reminds us that "courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen” in a state of vulnerability.  “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness,” Brown continues.


I registered this blog with the intent to wax rhapsodic about the feasts of the senses and of the spirit in my new hometown. I realize that I can only begin to celebrate the abundance of movable feasts yet to manifest if I am unabashedly honest with myself about my shadow side and all that transition demands of me. 

"Numb the dark and you numb the light," Brown assures us. I have felt the dark, and now I embrace the light that is to come.