The Stuffing Bowl

On days when I work all day, my mom usually makes dinner for us. I used to feel guilty about it, but then I realized two things. First, it gives her an opportunity to help me in a meaningful way - a need no mother ever outgrows. Plus, it means she herself gets a good meal where she might otherwise settle for cereal and toast.

Many times she makes a casserole, or something that can be reheated in one dish, and sends it home with me. Often, it’s in this dish, the one I fondly call The Stuffing Bowl.

The Stuffing Bowl has been in our family for 98 years. It was wedding present given to my maternal grandmother by her younger sister. My Aunt Lil would have been about 16 when my grandmother got married, and according to legend, she went into town to the local mercantile and purchased the bowl with money saved from selling eggs.

So the bowl went with my grandparents to their first home in Millwood, Kentucky in 1924. It came with them when they packed up their household and moved to Detroit in 1940. It came to Redford when they moved in with my parents in 1962. And of course it stayed in my mother’s kitchen after my grandmother died in 1992.

My grandmother’s famous cornbread stuffing was always served in this bowl on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hence, The Stuffing Bowl. Which for the past 10 years has been carted back and forth between my house and my mother’s on the average of twice a week.

I always handle The Stuffing Bowl ever SO carefully. I am a notorious bull in a china shop, and I cannot imagine my devastation were I to break it. Every time I look at it, I imagine my Aunt riding into town on her horse (which is really how they got around and about in central Kentucky in the early 1920’s) and getting that bowl at her cousin Buck Crawford’s dark little general store. I imagine my grandmother as a young bride, placing it carefully in her first kitchen’s cupboard. I picture her in my memory spooning great dollops of fragrant, seasoned turkey dressing into it and placing it in the center of our dining room table.

I’ve been meaning to write about The Stuffing Bowl for a long time. But I was finally inspired to do it after reading a book called Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay. Author Christopher Benefy writes quite a bit about the beauty of everyday objects. He refers to the way a piece of pottery “stands in two worlds at one and the same time.” Pottery, “unlike a painting or statue is not intended to be insulated and untouchable but is meant to fulfill a purpose - even if only symbolically. For it is held in the hand and drawn into the movement of every day life."

There’s nothing particularly artistic about The Stuffing Bowl. It’s simply a piece of Hall’s Superior Quality Kitchenware, circa 1920. But to me it’s more precious than the pieces of Waterford crystal I received as gifts for my own wedding.

Because they’ve been on the shelf behind closed doors, beautiful to look at, but never “drawn into the movement of everyday life" like The Stuffing Bowl.

They’ve not been touched by three generations of hands, they’ve not held food lovingly prepared to nourish a precious family.

They’re not The Stuffing Bowl, and they never will be.

How about you? Is there a special piece of pottery or kitchen ware that’s imbued with special meaning for you and your family?

Practice Time

My best friend Lisa and I started taking piano lessons when we were about six years old.  We had the same teacher, and were quite competitive (well, at least she  was).  I recall Lisa was never able to come out and play between 6:00 and 6:30 because it was her set time to practice piano.  There was a wind up kitchen timer always sitting on top of her piano, and her mother would set the timer for 30 minutes, during which Lisa was to practice her Hanon and scales, do the workbook exercises we were set each week, and then practice her pieces. I have to confess, my practice techniqe was much more haphazard.  I would sit down for 15 or 20 minutes in the morning before school, and usually play for a while as a way of relaxing after I came home.  I often did the workbook pages in the car on the way to my lesson.  As for Hanon and scales - well, let's just say I didn't get many gold stars on those pages in my lesson book.  My parents never forced me to practice, or chided me if I didn't.  I loved playing, and since I seemed to be at the piano for a good portion of every day, they were never too careful about exactly what I was doing.

Here's how Natalie Goldberg describes the practice of writing:

This is the practice shool of writing.  Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.  Some days you don't want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway.  You practice whether you want to or not.  You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run.  It'll never happen, especially if you're out of shape and avoiding it.  But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance.  You just do it.  And in the middle of the run, you love it.  When you come to the end, you never want it to stop.

That's how writing is, too.  Once you're deep into it, you wonder what took you so long to finally settle down at the desk.  Through practice you actually do get better.  You learn to trust your deep self more and not give in to your voice that wants to avoid writing.  It is odd that we never question the feasibilty of a footballe team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

I have a long standing writing practice, and I admit it's a bit like my piano practice.  I write every day, with a cheap, ball point pen, in a brightly colored spiral notebook, three pages of anything.  Sometimes it's stream of consciousness garbage, sometimes it's a list of everything I'm worried about, or happy about, or thinking about.  More often than not, it starts out as one thing and becomes something else - today, what began as a simple memory about a conversation I overheard as a child turned into five pages about my neighborhood.

My favorite time for writing practice is first thing in the morning, after one cup of coffee and about 15 minutes of reading.  Often, something in my reading will ignite an idea for writing -this morning, it was a passage in Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs that got me started.

I don't hold myself to any time limit (no kitchen timers for me!), but I usually find myself spending about 20 or 30 minutes on these pages.  I write loosely, and messily, on one side of the page.  This writing is for me, and it doesn't matter whether it's grammatically correct.  When I'm really "on," the pen can barely keep up with my racing thoughts - sometimes, I feel as if my brain is running away with me, like flying down a steep hill on my bike.

"This writing practice is a warm-up for anything else you might want to write," Goldberg continues.  "It is the bottom line, the most primitive, essential beginning of writing."  Through the daily writing, we learn to listen to our own voice and trust it, we learn to free our thoughts and then corral them into words, to improvise like a jazz musician at the keyboard, experimenting with the tools of the trade.

So this week, I'm channeling my friend Lisa's mother - if you don't regularly practice writing, challenge yourself to do so.  Get yourself some brightly colored spiral notebooks (they're on sale everywhere just now!) and a package of pens.  Find a time each day when you can sit down for a few minutes and just write.  No need to pressure yourself - you'll know when you've said all that need to be said.

By the way, lest you're wondering how our musical career's ended up - my friend Lisa stopped lessons in 10th grade, and hasn't played since.  Me, on the other hand - well, I've been playing the piano regularly for the last 42 years, working as an accompanist, a solist, and just playing for the pure love of music.

How about you? Do you have a writing practice?  What's it like?  How has it helped you become a better writer?  If you're thinking about starting a writing practice, how do you envision it?  What would work for you?

Things I Know Right Now

These things I know right now:

• As much as I love this warm weather, love wearing my sandals and short sleeves, love sitting on the back porch with a book, love seeing the lacy white blossoms on the trees, I know that it’s much too early for spring to be here to stay, and that a sad reckoning is probably going to befall us somewhere down the line.
• As much as I enjoy playing bells with Classical Bells, as much as I’m impressed with the abilities of my fellow musicians, as much as I’m gratified by my ability to learn and grow in just a few short weeks, I know that I cannot keep playing with them as a regular member, because the schedule is simply too brutal.
• As much as I love pretty things, like two carat cushion cut diamond rings or bronze and crystal sconces to hang on the walls and fill with sweet scented candles, I know that sometimes homely things like my Viking 30” dchw 30421 cookstove are more special because they play such a huge part of my everyday life.
• As much as I wish we could have kept our home in Florida, as much as I felt that quiet place was my sanctuary from all that was harsh and cold in the world, as much as I was vain about furnishing that house from top to bottom and how pretty it looked, I know that in order to move on with our lives and have a secure future, we have to let it all go.
• As much as I wish I never had to say goodbye to people I love, as much as I want to keep everyone I care about safe and secure and happy, as much as I want to shelter everyone dear to me and protect them from every harm, I know that life and death are inescapably intertwined and nothing stays the same forever.

What do you know?

Home Again

Ah, home again. I spent a few days out in Scottsdale, Arizona with a dear friend of mine who makes it her home for the month of March. The west is so different from my usual stomping grounds - all that sagebrush and cactus and gravel. I have to admit that I prefer the verdant green landscape of Florida, and also the close proximity of the ocean.

But those mountains that surround the city are pretty awesome.

Purple mountain majesty indeed.

As you might imagine, today has been occupied playing catch up - this has been such a crazy month for me, and the one remaining week doesn’t look to be any different.

I mentioned a while back that I was working as a “Consultant” (now doesn’t that sound fancy!) at my old office, editing reports and training new writers. In the five or six months I’ve been completely out of the picture over there, I’m amazed at the way business has boomed. Exploded, actually. Working with insurance can be quite lucrative, as you well know if you’ve ever gone out seeking a workers comp insurance quote or a health insurance quote. A Prime Insurance Agency that handles thousands of clients can make a fortune. So I’m happy my little company can get in on some of that action.

For all my whinging about everything I’ve got going on, I must confess it’s sort of exciting to have so many different irons in the fire. Sometimes I like this juggling act, especially if I know there’s an end to it somewhere in the near future. Makes me feel rather proud of myself, keeping all those balls in the air successfully. The majority of this madness will come to a crashing halt on April 1, with even more of it tapering off into May and June.

Although I’m quite certain that something will happen along to fill the gap.

That’s just the way of life, isn’t it?

What’s filling the gaps in your free time these days?

Writer Unboxed

A colleague and I were discussing a former employee who had been hired (briefly) for a technical writing position. “To be honest,” my co-worker said, “she simply couldn’t write her way out of a box."

The image stuck in my mind, and I started thinking about a frustrated writer trapped inside a big brown box, scribbling furiously up and down the sides of it attempting to write their way out.

It’s easy for writers to get boxed in by fear, lack of confidence, being undisciplined. The walls of the box seem insurmountable, and we struggle valiantly to gain some kind foothold so we can work into the light of day.

Confession time.

The walls of my own box are papered with unfinished writing projects and scraps of ideas that never come to fruition.

I'm great at starting things, not so great at seeing them through to the end.

In order to persevere, I need the impetus of an outside deadline. This gives me validation to spend the amount of time and effort needed to complete the project.

Then I write, write, write, until I'm up the walls and outside of the box.

How about you? Are you writing your way out of a box, or scrabbling up the sides? What's papering the walls of your writer's box?