The End Of The Beginning

2012 is here. I have been waiting for this year. It used to be a dooms day prediction kind of waiting. I sunk into the hype of the end of time, a new culture forming, judgement day. A few weeks ago my best friend informed me the Mayan calendar actually ends at the end of 2012, the historians speculate. This made me somewhat relived that we had a whole year before dooms day happened.

I don't really believe the end of the world is happening but it does frighten and excite me to think this is such a momentous time in history. We as people have the power now to completely destroy our earth or completely radically change our rate of consumption and live in connection with and fostering our planet. We get to decide how much we care. We get to read the signs of global climate change that are affecting all of us. I see this in the 107 degree months of this Texas summer, also the snow blizzards and earthquake in the Northeast. I see the devastating affects of climate change that have happened and continue to happen in Southeast Asia and Japan.

Now is the time that we get to re-learn how to care for our plant families, how to be inspired by nature and love of the place we live. The other day I caught Sweetpea hugging a tree in the park. She was in complete awe of this amazing, living, trunk that stretched up to the sky, towering above her. I wonder if this sense of wonder about nature is inspired by the way I respond to trees? Is she mimicking my behavior? Perhaps, but I also see this action as innately human. Given the chance we will love and care for all living things. We will look beyond the veil of our bothersome emotions, grudges, and over stimulated systems, to really see how lucky we are to be alive and breathing in oxygen these trees give us.

I fear that most children's connection to place will look like a strip mall. That seems to be the paradigm set up for us born in the 80's. In a country where if one is to succeed one is supposed to move anywhere one can find a job and keep moving for work. In this way of life strip malls do look like the closest thing to familiar territory.

In 2012 I want to make a difference. I want to live more by my values and teach them to my child and to other peoples kids. I want to join the Sustainable Food Center of Austin and volunteer to teach organic gardening to children. I want to figure out how to save rain water at my house and use the extra water from my shower to flush the toilet. I want to teach people to see water as a precious resource. I want to build clothes drying racks for people to use instead of dryers. I have always had these values but I see this year as a call to action. I am becoming a part of the adult community of my generation, it is time to live life with the intention I want to see the human race heading in.

This is what I want for 2012, what about you?

On Co-Habitating

Seeking Family Style Home Share

We are a family of three with a wonderful 15 month old looking for awesome people to share a house with. We would like to rent a house in central Austin or join your home. We would ideally like a house with a big backyard, close to a park and has two bedrooms for us. Here is a little description of our family. We are fun, optimistic, and easy going people who mostly do not drink and no smoking. We are super kid friendly, like animals (we have 1 cat) and like creating a cozy home. We enjoy a party but mostly like staying in and watching movies. We are eco conscience and are interested in making a sustainable green house that includes growing some of our food, compost, keeping chickens, buying organic food when possible and eco cleaning products. We like adventures, biking, exploring new neighborhoods and ethnic markets. We are upfront, direct people who thrive on open dialogue and sharing feelings. We are not interested in passive aggressive communication. We have both lived in communal living situations and know how to share chores and work out problems collectively. We like things tidy but are not neat freaks and we eat meat as well as vegetables. Queer friendly. If you are a small family, couple, single parent or kid friendly person and this sounds good to you please contact us. We are looking to move around March 1st.

Daddy and I are thinking about joining in the labor of love that is co-habitation. I just wrote this ad for Craigslist and will send it off this week. I am both excited and nostalgic for all the communal living I have done in my life. The thought of co-habitating meshes with my moral principals as well. It is definitely more environmentally sustainable for folks to live together instead of in individual houses. It is a direct stab at isolation to live with other people especially as a parent, I would love to have housemates to talk to on my long, home word bound, days with my daughter. It is also way more affordable for us to share the bills and rent of a home with other people.

My experience with communal living has been vast and long. I figured out how to happily live with others as a young single woman, I wonder what will be different trying it with my child and partner? I see the difference in being pickier about the folks I live with. I will be looking for people that I actually want my daughter to be connected to as well as me. I want people my partner will get along with and be able to confront in hard situations. I know these folks exist in Austin, I hope they read our ad. We set up collective style situations wherever we have lived. With our neighbor’s in Olympia we shared baking ingredients and their BBQ. We traded our chicken’s eggs for watching the chix and our cat when we went away on trips. In our new duplex we share Internet and occasional childcare with our duplex mate. Daddy and I are communal people; we are actively spreading that value to Sweetpea by making this lifestyle shift.

A Life Story Told Through Co-Habitation

In my young adult life I have lived collectively in 8 different situations. It all started with my parent’s house that I moved out of at age 18. Most of my childhood I remember professing I wanted to live alone in an apartment in New York City and get all my house ware from Pier One Imports store.

This dream bubble helped when I had to share a small house with my brothers and all their friends and mostly wanted a place where I got to actually take up space. Through a series of events including a sense of adventure and falling in love, I headed for the Northwest to check it out for a little while.

My first collective house where I paid rent was with a sassy & sweet older, working class, lesbian and a younger, Minnesotan, hippie lesbian, in the Central district of Seattle. Our house was lavender and on the side of a hill. My older housemate watched kids upstairs during the week and I had a basement apartment. I heard the trampling of little feet over my head as I crafted my next artistic project. I started work at a pre-school while living there and would come home exhausted and fall asleep on the couch amongst the squealing 2 year olds waiting to be picked up from their parents. I lived in that house for 2 1/2 years, sublet my room to friends when I went on vacation, and lived through 2 housemates beside the Minnesotan. One was a thieving performance artist who only lasted two months and the other was a sweet, Irish, rock climber from upstate New York with the middle name Clover.

I decided to move out when I wanted to go travel and be gone for an unknown amount of time. I boarded a plane in June to Greece via Italy and did not see the gray shores of the Long Island sound again until that September of 2001 a few weeks after the world trade towers fell. After a brief stint back East with my family during that scary time I decided to head out West again to continue my life in Seattle.

I moved back right when my best friend was about to leave for a trip to India and Thailand and would not be back for several months. We shared a room at a collective punk house called "Spokanarchy" for one month before she left. The house was technically a 5-bedroom house that we made into a 12 person living situation complete with folks living in closets and cubbyholes in the attic. You were lucky if you found one clean dish a day in the house. There were often bags of half rotten vegetables on the floor from dumpster diving the night before and huge political discussions happening daily on the large, moldy, couches in the living room. It was a perfect place to start out communal living again. It was temporary, alive and politically passionate, the way I felt at the time.

I was still interested in being an artist and was really looking for a space to make my work. This could not happen at “Spokanarchy,” a house named for the majority of anarchists from Spokane that founded the house. One evening at the arts walk in downtown Seattle I happened upon a rag tag bunch of artists, with brightly dyed hair, sharing their work on the brick streets of Pioneer Square. One of them was a lady with bright blue hair, I thought was awful cute, who knew my best friend at the time. She took us back to her loft, an old rubber stamp factory with a whole wall of old windows overlooking downtown Seattle's International District. After talking with Blue Hair for several hours, staring out at the skyline of our pretty city, I was hooked in more ways then one. Blue Hair and I started dating and I soon moved in down the hall in my own loft with her best friend and one of my good friends.

The romance of living in a loft was cut short by the intensity of being their day-to-day, sharing one large room with 2 other people. There was no running water in the place; we did our dishes in the hallway, a drying rack full of paintbrushes and sweet potato encrusted pans. We ate a lot of Ramen and whatever we could find for cheap at the giant, Asian, markets in our neighborhood. I created wood and photo collages and sold them on the street. I was a part of performance pieces and had spontaneous singing sessions down the halls of that crazy place. I slept in a tent in the middle of the room and tried to be quiet with my new sweetheart (Blue Hair) as we stayed up into the wee hours of the night getting to know each other s bodies.

It was a wild time that came to a crashing end as my roommates and I realized this was not working for us. I moved in down the hall temporarily with my sweetheart and ended up living with her for the next 3 years. In the new loft we tried to make a happy living situation. We called our place the overpriced squat; we would pay insanely high bills trying to heat the place with little electric heaters. We had a huge loft built inside the bigger space for sleeping. It was really glorified bunk beds. We moved in my best friend, her partner and we were always looking for the 5th roommate to make it all affordable.

Who would want to live with two couples in glorified bunk beds in a freezing cold loft trying to make art in-between dealing with day to day living rituals? Well, you should have seen the view. The romance of the place just made people think they could handle it. My best friend and I had a garden in a pea patch, community garden, up on a hill a few blocks from the loft. This was our tiny green oasis in the downtown concrete jungle. Did I mention the crazy coke parties my landlord held who lived next door to us? Or the downstairs neighbor who blared her television, would get high on meth and start banging a broom on the ceiling telling us to quiet the f*&%k down or she would come up there and shoot us?

At some point we had enough and my sweet heart and I decided to get a two-bedroom apartment in the heart of the Central District. The place looked perfect, affordable, clean, and quiet, less drama. That is before we realized after moving in we lived next door to a crack house. The nightly commotion out one of our bedroom windows was a real nightmare. People screaming, strung out, prostitution, drugs and violence held that place together. We liked our apartment but got tired of the drama and feeling of being unsafe in our home. We started scheming for a trip together. We wanted to go to Ecuador and knew we needed to live cheaper in order to make that happen.

We moved a bit south of the drug, apartment, complex to a neighborhood with kids, and into a collective queer house called the "Sweet Potato Shack." There was a huge sycamore in the yard and a big garden started by our new sweet housemates. The feeling was warm and inviting, we shared a room off the kitchen, it all seemed to work out nicely. We were saving money, had a nice, mostly clean house with folks that cared about politics and art. I started photography school again, which was an easy bus or bike ride from the house. We started to make the preparations for our big trip.

"The Sweet Potato Shack" was a really eclectic house. My one housemate that played the viola gave lessons out of her bedroom, she also would make crepes and scones for everyone in the early mornings. There was a huge tangle of houseplants that blanketed the front windows of our living room. Unfortunately we never could arrange to garden together, so the two that started the garden ended up doing the most work. I only remember weeding once but often helped with watering. I left my cat with these housemates when we left for Ecuador planning to return back in a few months.

After we got back from Ecuador, my sweat heart and I started to break up and life fell into chaos. We tried living on the East coast for a little while before our break up but soon realized all the resources we had built in our young adult lives were back in Seattle. We boarded a plan and headed for the wild Northwest again. The break up was gradual, and we decided to not live together anymore once we returned. My good friend had a room in a big old, bright, blue, house on top of a hill and there was an opening for one of their tiny rooms.

The room had a buckled floor, was only a little bit bigger then a closet and had a floor to ceiling window facing a parking lot. It was $425 a month for everything, all bills, including phone. I took it. My friend lived in the best room in the house that was almost the size of an apartment. She often slept in my little closet room saying, “it was more comfortable then her place.” She was quirky like that. She would make a huge mess in that big, beautiful room and then stay in my room for days on end instead of cleaning it.

I was living with men and straight folks again which actually felt like a welcome break from all the queer, women centered houses I had lived in thus far. I wanted a different feel from the circles I was used to running in.

“The Big Blue House” was not communal. It worked out because, folks were clean, mostly quiet and I had a good friend down the hall to snuggle up with and grieve over my failed relationship. She had also had recent heart break. We were each other’s rocks. I ended up living in that house for 2 years, working down the street, saving money and studying to get into college. The house did get more communal as the years progressed. New folks moved in, one awesome guy from Minnesota who wanted to have potlucks every Thursday and the tradition still lives on in the house to the present. My good friend moved out and I moved down the hall to a room with floor to ceiling windows facing a giant apple tree in blossom. The blooms were amazing and I would sit on a pillow by the window for hours in reverence. We also planted a huge Garden of Eden next to the parking lot and had bushels of abundance one season.

My final cooperative living was in Olympia WA, where I moved to go to college. My best friend, the one that got me to move to the NW in the first place, decided to go to college with me so we both moved to Olympia and into “Terra Down.” This house was an old, green rickety home on the down of a hill. We moved in with a new housemate and three cats. “Terra Down” had one of those gorgeous claw foot bathtubs in the upstairs, the perfect remedy for student stress. The kitchen was huge and painted a fantastical crayon box mix of colors by ancient housemates past. The house was a queer women’s space, which I was ready to be around after two years without. We had our dramas and our strife, fighting to make it work and stay close. We all were involved in peer counseling and this made our friendships adhere longer. Unfortunately we were all busy students and sometimes the house was a second thought to mountains of homework and school activities.

After three years in Olympia I found the love of my life and after a year and a half of togetherness we decided to move in together. At first we wanted a housemate too but we couldn’t get my best friend to move in. We couldn’t think of anyone we both deemed the right person, so we just moved in together. We started a beautiful home, all painted walls, chickens in the back and a studio attic space for me to create in. The rent was just right for us and we were in a new neighborhood to give our small, college, town a fresh perspective. I was on top of a hill again and living with my love.

Through a series of simple twists of fate we decided to commit to each other and soon after had Sweetpea come along. With all this transition and a whole new little person to join us, two becoming three, we decided we were ready for a life style change. I had some karmic, unfinished, business and some historical, place based, artwork to do in Texas. We had a brother here, multiple cousins, aunts and uncles, and loving grand parents just a state a way. Grand parents that agreed that if we moved, they would visit every month we were here. This and a new job for my dear daddy sent us packing for Austin TX where we have landed today.

Our first place has been a sweet, small, community of duplexes in central Austin. We like the people and the location but the rent and bills are to high and we miss having a yard to grow things in. We are ready to start anew and make collective living a part of my family’s life together. Wish us luck.

You know you have a toddler when

1. When you go into the bathroom you trip over small wooden toys and books your baby has dragged in there earlier in the day while you were trying to go to the bathroom and keep her from grabbing the toilet brush and putting it in her mouth.
2. You can't seem to find your sunglasses, lip balm, keys, one of your sweet babies shoes and figure out she's been "playing with them" aka hiding them in places you would never think to look or believe she could get to like the way back crevices of the sofa.
3. Her new favorite activity is playfully shaking her head back and forth in the no gesture and giggling with mirth when she does it.
4. Any high surface in your house is littered with the contraband that you swiped from your baby ending in tear jerking screams of rage when you tell her she can't put the sharp pointy or soapy poison thing in her mouth.
5. The high surfaces are also covered in paperwork you do not want to have eaten, her shoes, your shoes, sun block and books with rippable covers.
6. RIP morning nap, the time when you used to get all your writing done and clean the house.
7. Helpful baby time means big mess adult time that you take deep breaths and try to relax as she disassembles the whole contents of the dirty dishes in the washing machine. She is really helpful when we have to take the clean dishes out.
8. You figure out how to make every errand into a game and every transition into a song.
9. You watch those sweet baby legs gallop across the playground and remember just a few months ago she was crawling across the same turf.
10. You start to enjoy multiple full nights of sleep.

On Being A Young Adult Parent

We eat a lot of beans, vegetables and eggs. We pay for our groceries in cash that has been set aside each month for the food budget. We walk to the grocery store and load up the bottom of the stroller with our food. Almost all of my baby’s toys were gifts or donations from friends. Most of our books come from the library. Most of our entertainment comes from play dates, music, Netflix, free adventures around town and cooking. Recently, for fun, we took the bus downtown for a day’s adventure of walking around and seeing a new angle of our city home.

When I go to the park I sometimes feel more like the nanny then my babies mother. Most of the nannies are blithe, young adult women or older looking Latina women, with an occasional hip looking manny thrown in for good measure. The parents on the other hand, mostly look older, adulty, pale lip-gloss and clothes that don't look like they came from the thrift store. Some of them look more crunchy, Chaco sandals and tank tops instead of Jcrew and LV bags, but it seems like most parents have caught onto the adult, "I'm in charge look," that I don't have yet.

Daddy and I break the mold we see around us, we don't own a house, have two careers, two cars and a whole list of needs to support this life style. Almost everything we own is used. I wear the same clothes most days and Sweetpea's pants become caprice and her onesies become tuck in shirts as she grows. It would be nice to be able to get new clothes and have more room in the budget for decadence, but I am noticing we don’t really need that stuff to be happy and comfortable. On weekends we go to the park or go swimming, we have an open lifestyle that is not scheduled to the bone, leaving more time for us to just be present with our daughter and each other.

One of my goals in parenting is to connect my daughter to the turning of the seasons. I can name the trees in our neighborhood and most of the birds, I am teaching her these things on our daily strolls. I want her to have a deep sensual connection with the place she lives, to know her neighbors and what colors the lizard is that lives behind our potted tomato plants. I already see how she is getting a chance to do this when she toddles around the playground scooping stones into her shovel, examining ghouls from the pecan tree and scrambling up the slippery slides.

I like that my baby daddy is 27 and I am 30. We get to be young and parents and figure out our identities and careers while parenting. Parenting does not write the script of our life, it dances along side our visions and dreams.

Though some of the things about our lifestyle now will shift in the near future, its nice to notice the benefits of being a younger parent. I feel that I have a better understanding of what my daughter is going through because I remember going though it too. I can better advocate for her because of this. Sense our lives are not completely set in stone right now, we get to dream big about the things we want for ourselves as individuals and as a family. Our daughter gets to watch us figure out how to lead an adult life instead of just seeing that everything is already set up.

I know that most mothers in this world and most mothers in the US are a lot younger then I when I started parenting. I also know that most people's norm is to not have two incomes, a house one owns and two cars, but this is a lot of what I see, and a lot of what I grew up around. My mom waited till 34 to have me, I was the youngest and everything was pretty much set in stone by the time I was born. This is the paradigm I thought I would mimic and my older brother seems to be mimicking. You have it all "figured out" before you have a child. We have not gone down that path and it worries our parents. We might never have it all "figured out" in this post-industrial world and I am excited to see what potential comes from the paradigm that we are creating.

Austin Fall, A Four Seasons Perspective

This is my first fall in a place that does not seem to have four seasons. Austin tends toward the south of the equator weather continuum that has a wet and dry season, a warm and hot season. Still the city likes to dress itself in the fall colors of New England like all other American cities across the nation. September 1st in 100 degree heat the front of the grocery store was loaded up with pumpkins and gourds of all shapes and sizes. A tease as summer has continued into October now. I wonder why the rest of the nation wants to copy New England seasonal traditions? Perhaps it is because that is where the colonizing began?

I long for sweater weather, pumpkin carving the harvest festivals and fresh apple cider of my younger life in WA and CT. Austin has other plans for my family and me. It's exciting to be able to go out in the middle of the afternoon without feeling like you are melting, a celebration when hoodies and jeans are in order for early mornings at the park. We are slowly, at a snails pace, creeping out of summer and into what this climate calls the fall. What would a regional fall actually look like? In some ways it’s like a second spring, rain hopefully, a second harvest of all vegetables. At the farmers market we can get eggplant, tomatoes, arugula, all veggies I associate with deep summer now making a regular appearance in October. A sagey looking plant is starting to bloom purple fragrant flowers along with the forever-blooming crepe myrtle. We start to consider camping now; in WA I would be putting away the camping equipment till next spring.

It is a physical and mental adjustment moving to a new climate. I associate this weather with travel to far-flung destinations, Brasil and Ecuador especially, except now I am still in the states. I was ready for the adventure moving here and feeling the sun touch my skin each day. In my heart I am starting to claim gnarled live oak trees and limestone creek beds as a part of me. Still when I prey images of the Northwest are my grounding place. Rosemary covered in raindrops, gathering waters of the Puget Sound, Mount Rainer all pink at sunset and deep ancient wilderness in the North Cascades.

I want to see a regional Christmas celebration here that does not involve a decorated pine tree and snowy home all dolled up Norman Rockwell style. My guess is the celebration would mimic Mexico more. I want to learn this and apply it to our festivities this year. I have heard stories of Christmas trees and fake snow in Southern California and am starting to understand why people try to make the illusion now that I live here.

I am not sure where we will end up raising Sweetpea but for now I wonder if she will have memories of this weather, will it coat her childhood the way my New England home did? Will she have memories of swimming everyday and not leaving the house between 2-6pm all summer long? Austin has a surprise around every corner for us. I look forward to the next few months and seeing how different it will be to have a sunny winter.

Old Wood (A Recipe For Creativity From My Childhood Home)

New England Home 1

Sticky wet old wood, curving banister, beautiful vibrant house. Plant green and wind chimes stroked by fingertips and air every afternoon, wooden staircase climbed by many a small foot. Teakettle whistle, a hand crank for windows letting yummy kitchen smells escape to the neighbors a few feet away next door. Toys on the floor, a pot and wooden spoon, an amber medicine jar with a tiny bell in it to shake. The sound of baby opera in the back seat with Wicky as we speed down the highway to the next New England destination.

Green plastic barrettes formed into perfect plastic bows snapped to my scalp to keep loose golden threads from falling in my face. Old wood painted bright blue with dark purple, forest green and creamy white trim. A sculptural arch of chairs will someday be erected over the impossibly beautiful front garden, my mother’s wild art mind achievement. Inside meets outside with every window open exposing pink and peach walls to the moist air and cricket chorus of summers end in New Haven. This is my home, my place, my youngerhood happy home. Brown paper bags filled with crab apples and horse chestnuts, salamanders lurking in the huge woodpile to the right side of the house a mound of mottled grey with shocks of lime, green lichen.

The Storytellers Path

The path that starts through the garden, best if taken bare foot so your feet will sense the earth as your heart and mind fuel the inner story. Round' the corner where the clapboard is kicked in exposing new hiding places under the front stoop. Where wasps and secret childhood messages and maps are scrolled across the base layer of an ancient home. Creep along the narrow, dark, north facing ally wedged between house and bushes. Bushes your father trimmed sometimes, leaf droppings becoming Pagan princess attire. Round' back to the basement door made of thin grey tin, a perfect slide and place to stop and think, perched across the top like a bird. Squish your toes into the rotting crab apples and stroll to the other side, just past the window to the interior world, full of human noise and kitchen scent. Step over the spiky, green hulls of horse chestnuts as you approach the sawdust scent of the ripe pile of wood, ready for stacking to heat a winter home. Your legs sweep past the fresh scented mint to your right and your circle is complete back to the front garden path, ready for the next beginning. You have laid the walkway for creativity. This is the place of imaginative play and luscious inspiring alone storytelling time.

Incrediably Close and Isolated

I am talking about the funny contradiction that happens with young people. Being a full time mom I spend the majority of my day up close with my little one. As a breast feeding mama I am also sharing my bodies vital nutrients along with all the hugs, holding and snuggle play that make up my infants day.

Being touched is so important to my well being, I love the contact with my daughter, how she holds my legs as I walk around towering over her, or how we play snuggle on the bed and she crawls up into my lap and pats my head. I also love nursing, the sweetest bond, sharing my body with her; this time is precious and so much fun.

I also sometimes feel the urge to toss her off my lap mid-nursing session and run out of the house to some place of adult persuasion where I never have to look at another nursing pad ever again.

I crave adult stimulation, intellectual talks, adult caresses with my partner, to have me be held the way I hold her. Some days I feel so isolated, especially when the weather is too hot or cold to take her out in and we end up in the house all day. By the time my partner gets home I have hit the cabin fever high and throw myself at him chattering away about all the things I have thought of that day. I try to make extensive plans in the mere 3 hours between him arriving with our car and babies bedtime. Being a mother can be an isolated path. Even if you join all the mom clubs and see friends, if you live with your little family, the majority of your time is spent with just you and your little one.

Daddy and I come up with extensive plans to co-parent and move in with people. We talk about buying land and living in the country with a collection of good friends, raising goats and living off the land. Right now these are fantasies that keep us going each day.

Isolation can have its benefits, the cloistered life gives me more time to write and contemplate. I think my introvert and extrovert self battle it out daily, I still fight the inner demons of isolation from childhood and teenage hood. I also notice when I am uber social I sometimes loose track of parts of me I really care about. I feel spread thin and like I can't do things alone the way I like to. Alone time is precious with a baby who needs you all the time. When she sleeps I get my breaks and put in my work, writing, looking for paid jobs, identifying trees.

Sometimes mothering feels like being in a crowd of people and completely alone. You get all this good sweet energy and touch, you get all this work out and body time running and crawling after your wee one but almost no intellectual stimulation. I listen to podcasts for this, read books when she naps, call friends and have mama dates where we just talk it all out while the kids play and nurse.

My old friends and new friends invite me to parties that are way past Sweetpea's bedtime. I could go alone and sometimes I do but I long for the times when I have my partner to go with me or a good friend to stay out with and no curfew. The adult no- kid scene is sometimes to shallow and drunken for the profoundness I feel in being a parent. The parent scene is over worked and sometimes feels to adultest and boring to really connect too. There is also seriousness among parents about the stress of holding multiple identities that sometimes makes everyone seem more uptight then they actually are.

I know there is something better then this out there. I see the potential for an un-isolated parenthood and know I will continue figuring it out as my baby gets older and I acclimate more to my new role. Until then I am holding out for real intentional community and as much alone time as I need.

My baby has health care!

Being a mom you want the best for your kid. You want to see them thrive and you want them to have medical coverage that will take care of all their needs. You want it to be top notch, what one might expect of healthcare in the USA and western society. This has not happened for my daughter in the state of Texas until very recently. We moved here when Sweetpea was 5 1/2 months old, she was on Medicaid in WA and we thought transferring it over to TX would be fairly easy. Oh boy, were we wrong, it has been one of the biggest red tape headaches I have ever experienced to date.

I don't actually blame this on Texas, like any other state Texas is working within the guidelines of a F#%&ed system. Unlike WA their are two kinds of freeish healthcare here, what I like to call healthcare for the poor, Medicaid, and health care for the kind of poor, CHIP. When we first moved here with our income, we were considered part of the poor, after an unexpected job change and supposedly making more money, (supposed because a lot of daddy's income goes to all the benefits for working for the city so we actually get less each month), we are now a part of the kind of poor. With keeping the class system in its solid place we had to switch over our babies healthcare.

At the beginning I thought CHIP was a part of Medicaid. I filled out a CHIP application and got Medicaid info in the mail. 3 conversations later with various operators, all nice people that I waited for 20 min. to talk too, I found out CHIP was a different program and Sweetpea would not be eligible because of the before mentioned income requirement and also because she was under age. No where did it say on the website you can only get CHIP after you are 1. The unfortunate part is in the meantime when I thought CHIP was Medicaid I found a doctor I liked who only takes CHIP. Feeling defeated I tried in vain to find a good doctor that takes Medicaid. Moving to a new state, not knowing any other moms on Medicaid, my options were slim. I even consulted the Internet to find a good doctor. There were reviews but most of them were for specialty pediatricians and were hard to get in touch with. Finally after holding off for too long, Medicaid assigned me a pediatrician and health plan. They also told me I could change it at anytime, great, still not the doctor I wanted.

With the advent of daddy's new job my CHIP dreams looked like they might come true after all. This is also around the same time I got a renewal notice from Medicaid saying if I did not fill it out in 5 days time I would not have Medicaid coverage. Perfect, I thought I want CHIP. I filled out the application once again, this time giving it to daddy to fax into the requested office. 2 weeks pass, again we are denied, Sweetpea is too young still.

I think, I am screwed, no CHIP and now no Medicaid, we still have yet to use Medicaid, but knowing it is there in case of emergency had been helpful. I call Medicaid. They explain to me they actually “just say 5 days to scare people into filling it out,” we got this form 2 months after my daughter got Medicaid, so only a two month break from paperwork, grrrrr. They tell me I have to fill it out again to have them officially deny me, then sign me up for CHIP. I fill out the form I think for the 4th time in the 5 months we have lived here. We wait; we get a letter saying our Medicaid will end. More waiting, then the letter today, a day of waiting to hear from a job after a second interview, my baby has CHIP!

My fingers tremble as I pay the fee online to get things started up and finally choose the plan I want and the doctor we picked out, the doctor we are aligned with in values, who has a small practice and is a mother herself. I am crying, things are finally working out in my favor, the stress of the last 5 months and not having the healthcare we want for Sweetpea is melting away. After getting her all signed up they tell me on the phone her coverage will not begin until October. A letter should come in the next week telling us the exact date. Sweetpea will be 13 months old and will be having her first check up sense we moved here. 5 1/2 months to 13months with no check ups, no updated vaccines and thankfully very little sickness.

To those of you who are used to having regular healthcare you may be appalled by this, why didn't we just go with a Medicaid doctor and get her all up to date? Well, we have tried, recently and we will continue to try until CHIP comes through. With the possibility of me working full time, childcare outside our home is in our eminent future. In order for Sweetpea to attend day care she needs everything to be up to date with her healthcare. The incentive is there, it’s just that the doctor they assigned us has been out of his office for a week now. This is a man we have never met, who doesn't seem to keep any regular office hours, school just started here it would be odd for him to be on vacation. I have called twice and still not even a call back.

The doctor we chose gave us a free half hour consultation; her practice is small and has a special room for sick kids. She is open to a longer vaccination schedule, she answered all of our questions and looked us directly in the eye. Her office said, I want you here. Isn't that what we all want for our kids? This is also why we were holding out. We had had a bad experience in Olympia when Sweetpea was sick and we had to see a substitute. We knew how bad it could be to have a doctor taking care of your baby that you don't trust.

The fact is most of these doctors for the poor are overworked, and run huge practices that look more like factory farms. I don't know the back ground story of why so few good doctors seem to accept CHIP and Medicaid but I do know it really sucks that I can't get my Medicaid doctor to answer the phone when I need my baby to have a wellness check up before she starts daycare.

This is not meant to just be a rant, although it could be. This is the state of healthcare in the USA. This is what makes me want to be a healthcare activist. I was put off my parents insurance when I turned 18; I have had health insurance for 3 years of my adult life. Once when I had a full time job that actually paid for it and once when I was pregnant and for 4 months of my post partum. Thankfully there were great cheap clinics in Seattle for all the times I got the flu or needed something checked out. What about now? I am a mother without health insurance because my family can't afford it until I get steady work outside the home, which will hopefully cover my babies childcare, groceries and then maybe health insurance? We shall see.....

For now Sweetpea has her doctor, we just need to hold out till October.

Crys In The Night

Sometimes parenting is a nightmare. Scrounging up all the tolerance you can muster in the thick of the night as your little precious being hits notes in the angels octave range. She is hurting, irritated, needing you at a time when all you need is yourself cuddled in a ball in the silence of your being. I thought this would stop when she got close to 1.

In the beginning you are ready for it, know it is an endurance test, co-sleep, know that this is a temporary space and time, you also just get used to not sleeping. After a few months of sleeping through the night I was lulled into the belief that this was our new norm, that is until the rumbling volcano of my child started awaking in screams 3 nights ago and flipped my sorry idea of a good nights sleep on its rear. The thing with babies is it could be that this will become our new norm for a week then she will switch back. They are unpredictable and fickle and so deeply wonderful on this base level that one has to say, it’s worth it.

Can I admit that I am an attachment parent that lets my baby cry it out alone in her crib? That I can hold the ideals of always soothing her and the reality that I am as grumpy as a gremlin when awoken 4 times in 1 hour in the wee hours of the night? Then there’s all the theories you come up with for why she has decided to start crying this week, grandparents in town, co-sleeping while g-parents take our bed, sick for 3 days, only nursing with no solids during the illness so never full enough for a growing 11 month old body? Any one of these, and probably a combo, is the culprit, but my brain does not function on that level at 12:30am when after two feedings she decides to start wailing.

It is a test of will. I will not leave the couch where I have set up camp hoping the distance will lull her back to sleep and she will not stop crying in the other room keeping our full house including me awake. Her father comes out and cuddles onto the couch, "She needs you, you know?" He says in a muffled just awoken tone, " I know" I snap back, the 4 year old in me comes out in this moment, "she will not win this time." As if her cries are a way to make me personally break. As if my daughter was having a vengeful moment for the 6-hour date we took the day before, getting us back for having an adult day at the water park without her. Daddy just laughs at my weak argument. We both lay there listening to her scream, willing her to fall back asleep. She dies down for a moment, collecting breath? Or finally done? Collecting breath wins as she aims another blast of anger into the world.

I just saw "Where The Wild Things Are" the movie by Spike Jones and got a better understanding of the un-tame side of childhood. Children show us the raw and brutal reality of human nature and human potential. I find myself often questioning why horrid things happen in this world and can see how the unfettered behavior of a hurt child shows the thread of how extreme harm and hurt happen. In the movie, Max is dealing with his own inner demons, trying to understand the oppressive experiences that happen to him and dealing with all the emotions that are balled up inside from feeling neglected. I see an over worked single mother, a distant older sister and no friends that set Max up to act out and get in trouble. He is an intelligent and creative child that has trouble controlling his wild side. The movie is a great example of child nature. It was sad and helpful to watch as a parent. Anything that helps me to remember what it was like to be young is helpful in navigating being an ally and caring for my child. It is so hard being both the enforcer and the friend and finding when to play what role.

Her wails have reached a pattern of unhappiness that I can't contain anymore. I laugh a bitter laugh and tell daddy she has won tonight. I go and pick up my stricken child and sooth her to sleep for the 4th time that night. Rocking chair and nursing tames my little beast, hopefully this calm will stick.

Israel and Palestine part 1

I landed on the shores of the ancient holy land of Israel, on a hot August afternoon. The streets were empty, there had been a shelling near by to the city so most folks were staying home. I checked into my small hotel and went looking for dinner. Here is where I most delighted in the Middle East. One market had mangos the color of an orange and burnt red summer sunset, kissed by ripeness. The next market had all kinds of pickled vegetables; jeweled beets, onions and cucumbers suspended in heavily spiced brine of peppercorns and sesame seeds. Next to this was a falafel joint with the most delicious falafel I have ever had. Freshly dipped falafel balls sizzled in oil while the chef stuffed my homemade pita with pickled vegetables, hummus, fresh greens and tomato, drizzled in tahina sauce. I was in ecstasy over the good eating. I was also feeling the eerie quiet of a place under the repression of being a military zone. Coming from Greece, the tourist land of the islands, I really felt the intensity of Israel right off the bat.

The next day I decided to head down to Jerusalem. I came to Israel and Palestine to be in the heart of the conflict and I was feeling lonesome and ready for the next experience awaiting me in my non-violent direct action camp. On the way there I stopped by the sea for a swim. In the middle of the sandy beach 3 large watchtowers had been erected. A chance to see if the enemy was coming for a water attack? Maybe originally, but as I sat soaking up the rays I saw there true purpose. There were signs in Hebrew all over the beach and a sketched picture of a drowning victim. As the children and adults played in the water and one got out a little further from the rest, a man with a huge mega phone from within the tower would yell until the guilty person swam back to the others. First lesson in Israel, we will go to great lengths to keep our people safe.

Jerusalem is truly the center. A great pulsing heart runs the middle of the old town, where I spent most of my time. Ancient stone walls, a fortress of sorts, encircles the very fractioned districts within the city. The Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have a piece of this fortress and all seem to try to go about living shoulder to shoulder avoiding the eyes of the other. In the Jewish quarter I saw old men wearing fur caps walking in groups in the middle of heated debate, or perhaps just talking, hard to tell. In the Muslim quarter old ladies sold their fruit using an ancient weight and measure system, my bag of glossy grapes on one side, small metal balancing bars on the other. They would open my hand and count out the sheckles I owed them. I did not get a real chance to visit the Christian quarter but I do remember one night finding myself close to the Armenian district. A large stone wall with one small window of deep red stained glass showed me the way into this private and mostly empty district. I had just learned about the Armenian genocide and could feel the thousands of silent cries as I walked down the empty, echoing corridors of the street.

I met up with my team in Bethlehem; I had to catch a small bus called a "Service" in Jerusalem, which got me to the checkpoint into the West Bank. Check points were a huge part of this journey, being a part of the restrictive movement of this place really made me see how maddening it is not to have freedom. I was only a visitor; I can only imagine what life is like for those that have to deal with border crossings everyday to get to school or work. The tension and frustration were on high at these check points, the soldiers seemed to like what little power they held over the people crossing, making up all kinds of ridiculous reasons why someone could go or not go. I had the American passport, they only questioned my motive for going to the West Bank. I told them to see the holy land, at that point, 2001, the second Intifada had not started yet and travelers from all over were still making pilgrimages to Bethlehem.

When I arrived at The Paradise Hotel I had a cup of Arabic coffee with two of the Palestinian organizers and was shown to my room. Most of my nights in Palestine were spent at Palestinians homes, the hotel was a place for us to come together as a group and do trainings. I have been told this hotel was shelled a few years after our stay and did not exist anymore. In Palestine much felt ancient and temporary at the same time. It is a place of contradictions and a consistent state of turmoil.

The rest of the group arrived and I got to see what diversity we held. There was a small group of Israeli's, many American Palestinians, some American Muslims, Christian Palestinians living in Palestine, American and Canadian Jews, and a medley of Europeans with a larger group of Italians. We ranged in age from young adults; I was second to youngest, 20 at the time, to elders in there 60's. The average age was probably 40. We had vastly different levels of experience, backgrounds, personalities. We had all come there with one thing in common, we wanted to see change and we were willing to be on the front line of making it happen. It was so inspiring to be in that group. There were many times I questioned how I had even ended up there but I knew this was an experience of a life time so I stepped in and rode the wave.

The Czechs in Texas

Dear reader,
I promise to continue the tail from my last post and take you to Israel and Palestine. For now I am taking a brief detour from the land of memory to write about some of my people, the Czech Texans.

Heritage
parts of who I am, part of the makeup of me
I, the duplicity of being many things and only one thing
Self, reclaiming polka, reclaiming dirt under the fingernails,
reclaiming the sound of a tongue never spoken in my home.
Choosing to focus on one part of me, the me of my last name the people of my fathers father, the farmers of rural Texas and Rural Moravia, The people who chose Texas in all her glory to make their home, tell me your story

I am learning so much living in Texas. It is a heart felt experience doing the research of my immigrant people's to the United States. I love seeing small towns on the map of central Texas that have my families last name as the name of the main drag. Being an immigrant minority with a hard to say last name has not been easy. I have often wondered who my people are? What does it mean to be from the former Czechoslovakia? Also how did my people end up in Texas? I am finding out the answers to these questions and constructing a film all about it. It is so exciting being in the throws of a new and very personal project.

Today I read an account from one of the earliest settlers in Cat Spring Texas, Austin county. He talked about coming to the US to flee economic and religious persecution in Bohemia. He arrived here with all his children and started off living with friends and relatives until they saved enough to have their own farm. At this time the civil war broke out and Czechs were being forced to join the confederate army.
"Here I was fleeing my homeland, where I was a serf to the ruling German Hapsburg, and now I am being forced to defend slavery and fight to keep it in place." It is heart breaking to imagine. Many Czechs hid to not be taken into the army or opted to do manual labor in Mexico, hauling cotton. The man who write the account had a son that died doing this brutal work. I am learning how the civil war affected immigration, also about the importance of the cotton trade with Mexico to keep the confederacy economically afloat. It reminds me of the maquiladoras today where Mexicans are being badly treated and payed unfairly to produce tons of cheap clothing for people in the US.

I want my sweet pea to know about her people. I don't expect her to take the same kind of fascination with it that I have, but I want her to know where her people came from and have sensual memories of this place. That is one of the reasons we moved to Texas, to soak up this land and build our own experiences into the landscape of stories I only heard growing up. I am learning a lullaby in Czech. I have the melody and am now working on the words. This song I know my daughter will take with her. It can be her special piece in a great symphony of heritages we have blessed her with. If this is the only Czech she and I learn together I know I will have done a good job, passing on one of our native tongues.

Memories of salt and travel

The air was thick with anticipation, I read about the non-violent direct action camp on Indymedia. I had talked to the Palestinian organizer. Plans were set. I was leaving Lesbos. Lesbos the ancient Greek island ruled by Sappho and still ruled by lesbians, at least in Scala Arosos, the small beach community I had come to love for my weeks stay camping next to the sea.

I made British lezzy friends, fellow beach campers with adventurous hearts. We swam, one evening, to a small volcanic island just off shore made up of small indention's shaped like ears. we deemed ourselves prince's of the Isle of Ears and watched the sunset before heading back to shore. I stayed up one night into the early morning with Charlie trying to get on one of the fisherman's boats. They wouldn't let us on, try as we might to convince them to take a few young, wild women for there private and profound ritual of catching our lunch and dinner. I was a vegetarian at the time and would not have eaten the fish, but still liked the romantic idea of being on the boat at dawn.

My days were spent swimming in the deep teal of the calm sea, laying naked on the beach, feeling the warm sensation of sand caking my bottom. Then, run in again, for the rush of salty aliveness that only comes from being in the sea. I did not want to bath afterword. I let my hair get mated into new configurations. I wore the same sun dress for days on end and would lick my arms in the evenings, feeling the days swim coat my tongue. The salty sensual experience would continue into the night as I danced with my new Greek and Norwegian friends at the lezzy bar on the strip. Pumping our bodies to loud euro disco and drinking shots of ouzo, letting the waves of the sea send our dance moves into snaking, fluid, motion.

I found a new rhythm to traveling solo in the Greek Isles. I hitchhiked by myself, spent hours alone with my journal and my cassette player staring out into the sea, learning from her and other travelers and locals how to open myself up and how to contain all that I needed within me and my backpack. Being in such a beautiful place made me also contemplate what I wanted to do next, how I wanted to make my dent on the world. I wanted to harness the power I felt at the WTO protests in 1999 and continue finding ways to reach out and get to know people. I was searching for my next move. The plan was to meet up with my dear traveler friend in Israel. I wanted to see what was happening there with my own eyes. I knew that newspapers lied and I wanted to trust my own perspective.

In the tiny internet cafe on Lesbos I found my answer. The afternoon the plan was set a traveling party of Greek merrymakers paraded into the cafe with a boom box and a giant watermelon filled with homemade watermelon juice liquor. They filled the mouths of all the patrons with a ladle laughing and dancing in the buzzing heat of the afternoon. What a happy moment, caught in time, a sketch of what it was to be a vacationer on the Isle of Lesbos.

I set sail for Israel and Palestine the next day. I booked a 3 day ferry adventure that would lead me to Haifa a city in the north of Israel via multiple small islands including Semi and Cypress. I chose the sleeping on the deck option for the cheapest travel. I wish they had this option in the states. What could be more romantic then sleeping under the stars on a boat, waking up to buy fruit and olive oil at small markets on the tiny islands we would pause at along the journey? Well it was romantic and it was also uncomfortable, loud and sometimes very bright. I found a deserted part of the boat to sleep. On top of a metal box that held life jackets, I made my sleeping bag home for 3 nights. It was a little quieter there, a little further from the roar of the ferry engine and also away from the giant, florescent, lights, that the ship had on all night long, blocking the glow of stars.

I spent my days staring into the long stretches of deep blue and writing in my journal, similar to my beach meditations, but this time with more purpose and anticipation for the big unknown to come. I also met travelers from all over the place. A group of Germans were also going to Israel to study and become Methodist ministers. I met up with one of the women in the group later on and stayed cloistered in her abby a few nights under a pink peppercorn tree. There was a family that was Lebanese American going back to visit relatives in Lebanon. I was embarking on a journey to a new part of the ancient world. A place I had only heard stories about from my childhood. Thinking of walking around the old city in Jerusalem, walking where Jesus had walked, sent chills up my spine.

The Islands and main land of Greece showed me a window into a way of living and being in the present I had never experienced before. The heat and water got me in my skin, the time to just be with myself changed me and taught me even more self reliance and self love and care. I liked being alone. I hope to give the same amount of freedom to my daughter to explore who she is and how she fits into the web of life and this world.

On Turning 30

Thirty, sounds dirty, like thirsty, 30 years, 30 hours, more than a day. 30 minutes to myself as sweetpea does her late nap thing. 30 breaths I take in during my massage present 3 days before my 30th day of Birth.

This marks the day I came out of the womb, the doctors told my mama she had to be operated on so I was taken out of the womb and into my parents ready and excited hands. A girl, 2 boys and 1 girl, one blonde head in a family of dark brown and black. One set of arched dark eyebrows, poetic passionate dreams, deep green/blue/gray eyes that turn into half moons when I smile. The same half moons I look upon in my dad and babies eyes.

In 2 days I turn 30, I will have been on this planet, breathing this air, taking in all this information for 30 years. Now I am an adult, I will try on this label without the young attached to it. An adult, the chosen people, what we are striving to be, what we are told we should be to early on, now I am me. What next? What does life hold for me now? Will the adventures with white and gold foxgloves and deep blue Mediterranean sea continue?

I have this new unit of my very own called a family. For a very long time it seems I was solo, just me, the pure fun of deciding to have life completely on my terms. Now my choices involve another and then another. It is so sweet being braided into the inner and outer workings of two of my most favorite humans. Still I long for unbridled aloneness, the unpredictable adventures and twists and turns I get myself into when flying solo. I catch these moments now and hold them in a glass bottle like a tiny ship to examine in times of duress. I get them when I go on artist dates and write my soul out, when I take the time to go outside and listen to the birds of central Texas while my baby sleeps in the other room. I also get them while checking facebook and watching historical fiction movies on netflix while eating mint chocolate squares.

30 witching years, a time to reflect and notice some of my achievements

age 8 3rd grade, I write my first story about candy people who get stuck to their beds at night.
age 9 4th grade, I do a ton of art projects and miss a lot of school
age 10 5th grade, I win grand prize in a play writing contest after writing "The Spider Who Wanted to Find A Home." The Yale Dramat Children's theater acts out the play, my grandmother comes to see it from TX, my dad brings me a dozen roses. I am also editor of the school newsletter this year.

age 12 7th grade, Am hating school, decide to take a year off, feel like English teacher is crushing my love of writing, look into alternatives. Last day of school I take a role of caution tape and walk out the doors of institutional schools for 12 years.

age 14, Start hanging with a group of drop out/ unschoolers, make good friends, start thinking about youth lib, start talking about organizing. Help organize a teen weekend for unschoolers with new friends, really decide to stay out of school.

ages 15 & 16, Rocking the unschooler life, volunteering at the natural history museum, writing letters to all my good friends sprinkled across the North East. Regularly spending weekends in NYC, going to art shows, hanging out in parks and shops. Thinking about future dreams and travel. Start doing photography, learning from a neighbor and taking classes at the local arts center. Organize a teen weekend just for women, one of the funnest and most revolutionary experiences of my life.

age 17 Work as a nanny, my first job, save enough money to go and travel in France by myself for two months. Leave in April for Paris, inspired by Billie Holiday, a romantic from the beginning. Also fall in love. While in France decide to move to the North West, following adventure and where the person I loved lived.

age 18 Move to the North West, have my first big break up, decide to stay, get a job at a bakery, a new sweet little house with roommates. Join in the WTO Protests in Seattle 1999.

age 19 Go on a bus trip with dear friend to New Mexico, hitch hike around, camp, swim, stay in a tepee have the time of our lives. Go back to Seattle start a resource center for self educated and drop out youth.

age 20 Save up money and take friend from New Mexico trip with me to Europe for the third time in my life (first trip when I was 6 & 7 with my family) Go to Greece and work on an organic orange farm, Go to the isle of Lesbos, have a ball, decide to join a group of activist and do a 2 week nonviolent action camp in Israel and Palestine. Take ferry there, do the camp, completely life changing and very intense. Decide I am not ready to risk my personal safety for the cause but am very happy to have the experience. The rest of the trip takes me to Egypt, Italy and a road trip to Belgium. September 11th happens I decide I need to be back in the States. Fly into DC for protests against invading Afghanistan. Meet my mom on the street, tears in our eyes.


life is so raw and real, looking at all that I have managed to do I am happy to see how much I have packed in to my 30 years. I will continue the auto biography highlights in my next post. For now I notice, I am soon 30, what a life.

Ethnic Market Love and Raising a Little Foodie

There are these children's board books all about different kinds of food, they rhyme and tell a story from a kids perspective of eating that food. The pictures our photographs collaged with paper and cloth versions of the food. In short these are my favorite children's books. They inspire curiosity, our simple to understand and incredibly creative in their approach to showing the food. In "Yum Yum Dim Sum," we go to a cafe with a little girl and her father and try different kinds of dim sum, taking away the knowledge that dim sum means "a little bit of heart." These are the perfect books to welcome a healthy curiosity in my daughter about the wonders of eating all different kinds of foods.

A habit and happy adventure for me and daddy is to find the little off the beaten path restaurants and markets to make and eat delicious food. When we walked around our neighborhood in Olympia, I would often wish for a chance to happen upon a small grocer, or little house selling homemade goodies for cheap. Now that we are in Austin this dream has come true. Daddy called me from the road a few Saturdays ago saying he had found the coolest market yet. "I am buying ingredients for bubble tea" he told me delightedly, and " I just saw a mound of Chorizo shaped into a hogs head." I was jealous he had gone without me and also excited for the adventure to come in the not so distant future. I watch Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" and learn about a food cart in Austin that makes farm to market, fresh, in season meals each week and another cart that makes gourmet doughnuts the size of frisbees. Our next foodie adventure is set.

Sweet pea has always liked adventures, like her parents some fresh perspective and cool things to sensually experience has always been a great way to get her attention in the present. Ethnic markets and restaurants feel like travel. We don't have to go far away from home to get a similar sensual hit of being in a new place. The people that run the markets and restaurants are trying out their culture on new soil. Making the foods of a place available to its immigrants is a great way to keep cultural tradition in a new place.

My mother, the Southern born Yankee, would often make us her family recipes for dinner, homemade mac and cheese, oven fried chicken, cornbread and black eyed peas. The South was a part of us even though we grew up around the knee highs and sugar maples of the Northeast.

It seems that Sweet pea will grow up with the mix mash food her parents subject her to, but she will have the original versions of those foods as well as our homemade versions. She will have her Teba's corn bread, her Cece's meatloaf, her parents favorite Indian restaurant and some Seattle, via China, dim sum.

The books that inspire childhood foodies:
"Yum Yum Dim Sum" By Amy Wilson Singer part of the "World Snacks" series, check all the books of this series out.
"Bee-Bim Bop" By Linda Sue Park and Ho Baek Lee, a great rhyming story about a Korean dish with a recipe in the back.

Stars above roots below, some thoughts on faith Part 1

Places of Worship:

Oh how I have loved ritual all throughout my life. It started with Catholic church, the smell of frankincense, the texture of popping the air bubbles on the laminated covers of my catacism books, wearing the heavy red robes with the big white collars to choir practice, then the sound of sweet bells ringing as a dozen little voices harmonized.

The most vivid ritual of my early childhood I remember was my first holy communion. As a tiny infant I had been cleared of sin via my baptism, now I was to marry Christ along with all my other class mates.I remember doing lots of practicing and memorizing for the big days events. I remember my mom having me wear her wedding veil and an embroidered white dress. I remember holding a rose up to a statue of Mary and bowing before her in reverence.

I remember doing the stations of the cross for the first time, rolling my rosary in my hands and praying over each step Christ took, supposedly for our sins, towards the fateful cross he would be hung from then left to die. It was gruesome and intriguing and raised a lot of questions in my head, like what does this have to do with me? It was clearly important for all the adults that I learn this stuff and apply it to my every day actions, so I did, we all did as little believers trying to be good.

When I go into a church I want it to be beautiful, I want it to set the scene for prayer and contemplation. I want to feel that sense of elation, not from the words the person speaks from the pulpit but from the space its self, feeling God in every corner. When God's presence is clear to me I can then blissfully engage with divinity, see it as a part of me, feel a part of something greater then myself, feel as one.

When I first walked into a Unitarian church I did not feel this. the space was clean, open and empty, nothing fun to look at other then the pretty windows behind the pulpit where the forevergreens of the northwest always sat in quiet contentment. The sermon was quiet alive though, I felt like I could actually listen to the words and have it make sense, perhaps even apply it to my life. this was not something I had experienced in my adult hood in any church. The songs we sang were full of hope and ideas, some even re-written to have liberating lyrics as opposed to the ancient hymns of my youth. I felt lost without the repetition and ritual of Catholic mass but also elated at this new idea of worship.

My partner and I have sense gone to many Unitarian services, some exciting and new, others holding a similar dullness to the eulogies of my youth, except without all the fancy fanfare of the Catholic church. We started going to the church in Austin hoping to have some spiritual community and considering it a possible base for Sweet pea to have in her life. The church its self is going through some major transitions with a new minister coming in so it seems like a good time to add our new energy to the mix.

Last week daddy took sweet pea out of the chapel to take a nap and left me alone in the pew, well relatively considering every aisle was packed with folks. This time I got a chance to just be present with my surroundings, instead of the constant tug of attention that is a mother with her toddler in a new place. I got to breath it all in, notice the little ways the Unitarians have figured out how to make sacred space. My favorite was a wall of candles next to windows overlooking a live oak. Also the choir with its immaculate operatic voices echoing through the space.

There is a pause in the chatter of the minister to have a silent meditation and get up and light a candle if you wish. I got up and lit a little blue one that called out to me, I then walked back to my seat with my hands folded and started fervently praying. I prayed for myself and my family and all the people I know. I then prayed for all the animals, and all the people of our world and for protection from climate change and ideas for how to make it less hard. The prayers poured out of me like a sudden gush, I was feeling it, the divine spirit, the right mix of silence, alone-ness surrounded by people, and that ache of love in my heart.

Daddy eventually came back with the sweet pea strapped to his chest asleep, we held hands for the rest of the service. I had finally found my base in this chosen church.

As sunshine fades to purple gray

Last night I dreamt the baby was growing in her molars. We were so focused on her front teeth growing in, we had forgotten to look in the back of her tiny mouth. There they were, the lumps of molars coming in. I felt guilty for not starting her brushing her teeth earlier. When I awoke as usual the two tiny tooth buds in her lower front were the only new visible teeth.

I had similar dreams of intense growth spurts when she was just two months. I dreamt twice about her getting up and walking on her wobbly small legs. She was almost like a muppet in these dreams, moving in a sloppy, to fast, drunken baby manner around the room.

My daughter likes adventures, just like her parents. We are currently on a road trip that took us to Memphis Tennessee, a 10 hour drive from our home in Austin. We knew taking an 8 month old on such a long road trip was risky, but she did swimmingly as she always seems to do. Spending her time napping, cooing and charming each new person we met at the various restaurant and road stop attractions that make up a good road trip. We also started at 2 am Saturday night in the hopes she would sleep most of the first half of the drive. it worked! Me and daddy were a bit bumfuzzled the next day but the wee one was all smiles and laughs which helped with the drowsy stupper of our first day.

I had never been through TN or Arkansas and was ready to take a gander at this new part of the country. I have called both coasts home but have never really claimed the gulf coast as mine. This is where some of my people entered into the America's. Drawn by the idea of a better life and cheap land to farm. I came back to this part of the country with questions about heritage, what can a place mean to someone who's ancestors have lived and died upon it? How did we end up so far away from the villages we had lived for thousands of years and what of this village life did we bring to the wilds of Texas, and the severely independent nature of a capitalist democratic USA?

I am lucky to have been able to visit the old country in Europe, to have lived on both coasts of this massive country and had the choice and desire to move back with my new family to the place of my people. Beautiful, wild, independent and rare Texas.

When I left Olympia I had my favorite hairstylist give me a mullet, shedding the long locks I wore through my commitment ceremony and pregnancy for a look I knew I could rock in my new home, the live music capital of the world.

This blog is about heritage, its about watching a baby grow and figuring out how I want to raise her, its a prose document of this one Czech, Scottish, Russian, Irish, German, Polish, Normandy French, Cherokee womyn's experience being an artist, mother, adventurer, grower of greens and lover of life. Enjoy!

Mullet Mom

ps. Memphis has the best BBQ ribs I have ever has in my entire life! Dry rubbed at Central BBQ, really worth it.