Fairies of Hanukkah

My daughter made her first menorah, or hanukiah, this year by gluing small silver nuts, as candleholders, on the inside of an empty Altoid box. Two nuts stacked on top of each other made a place for the shammas candle. Birthday candles just fit. This was an activity at the local Jewish community Hanukkah party.

Since we just started exploring Jewish traditions in our family, we don't have a fancy menorah. The Altoid box is what we put out on the table each night. We don't know all the words to the traditional prayers, so we say what we can remember and make up some impromptu tributes to the light. My daughter thinks of fairies when she thinks of blessing candles, so our Hanukkah prayers have strong echoes of woodland paganism.

I tried making latkes for the first time tonight, on the fourth night of Hanukkah. Achieving the right crispness clearly requires more practice.

Oh, Fairies of Light, forgive us the soggy latkes!

Election Week

In Port Townsend, Election Day was unseasonably sunny and warm. I had lunch with a friend on lawn chairs outside, faces turned to the sun. We talked about finding our voices and supporting the empowerment of our daughters. 

The day after the election it rained. And rained. And rained some more.

The day after the day after the election, across Port Townsend Bay, fog shrouded Indian Island, so I could only see the top of the giant crane at the military loading dock, where it sits poised, waiting for disaster. 

The fog burned off. The moon came out. I learned that Leonard Cohen died. We have given up Manhattan.

For Jennifer

This week a former colleague of mine, Jennifer, died. She died in her sleep. Since she was waiting for a kidney transplant, I am assuming her death had something to do with the condition of her kidneys, but I don't know the details. She and her husband were (are) expecting a baby boy, via surrogate, in August. Now her son will grow up without knowing his mother.

Jennifer was a very sunny person. She radiated good cheer, even when she worked long hours in an often aggravating bureaucracy. I didn't know her outside of work. If I had stayed in New York perhaps I would have gotten to know her better and met her husband. As it is, I can only remember the fleeting images of meetings together. She had a distinctive voice and smile.

When I walked by wild roses today, I smelled them for her. When I saw wren perched on a bush, I listened to its song for her. When I sit here, another Thursday morning, fretting about my next steps and what work I ought to be doing, I remind myself, "Don't fret. You are still here to smell the roses and listen to the wren. Do those things with gratitude, and that is enough." Thank you, Jennifer.

Skunk Cabbage

I am taking a 9-week series of classes called Transformational Yoga. This week we were guided through a drum journey to find our plant allies, and I discovered skunk cabbage.

I went into the process with thoughts of sassafras and peonies. As a child, I loved the word sassafras. In the Michigan woods, I learned you can dig up the young plants and chew the root. I have considered getting a tattoo of the wavy mitten of a sassafras leaf. But it is a spare plant. It doesn't wrap you up. It doesn't hold you. The peony, on the other hand, has those overlapping petals, so you can stare into the heart of the flower and feel enveloped in a delicious cocoon of scent and color.

As I tried to stay in the peony garden, with my eyes closed, listening to the beat of the drum, my beloved departed husky appeared and led me to a stream bordered by skunk cabbage. Then my childhood dog and my current dog joined in, reveling in the mud and smell. I remembered spring in Virginia, spring in Michigan, powerful green leaves emerging so soon after the ice and snow.

My imagination fled to images of the red leaf maple and mulberry trees. I remembered my first bottle of perfume, eau de toilette of lilly of the valley. As a teenager, I picked lilies of the valley in France for May Day. I called it my favorite flower, before peonies. And yet, I kept coming back to skunk cabbage. The dogs were happy there.

The idea of the plant ally is to provide spiritual protection, protection from the "riff raff," as my teacher put it, "riff raff" of energy, thoughts, events, other people. What better than skunk cabbage? It takes up space, with it's smell. It generates enough heat to thaw the snow.

Researching it later, I learn:  "Bear and elk love the roots and are said to plow up entire swampy areas to eat them." Desire, appetite. The smell of the plant keeps some other animals away, so birds and lizards seek protection there. A forcefield. Native Americans of the Northwest used the leaves to wrap salmon for cooking and to hold other foods. A container for creating heat and transforming flesh. The root can be made into a tea to use "for coughs, as a blood purifier, a kidney cleanser, and to ease the pain of labor." Purification through hunger, fire, and purposeful transgression.

Sean Donahue, who writes at greenmanramblings.blogspot.com, shares:
"With fire rising from its body, roots deep in earth and water, and flowers and leaves giving off their musky scent, Skunk Cabbage combines the four elements of western magical traditions. With its paradoxical nature and its dwelling place at a boundary between worlds, Skunk Cabbage is a natural ally for shamans and midwives."

I do not pretend to call myself a shaman or a midwife, but I feel that I often inhabit some liminal space. I have always identified with water, embracing my Pisces sign, but I recognize my need for grounding, for earthiness, and a longing to stretch upward, toward fire and air. I swim in emotional borderlands, mine and those of other people, so it seems most fitting that my plant protector would be a borderland plant, container of all elements, using each element to transform and heal.

Wisdom in the Fields

Driving O to school this morning, we pass through a swath of low cloud that hovers over the tiny local airport. A small plane waits on the runway, ready to push through to the blue above. The Olympic Mountains peak through their own white shawl. Driving down Highway 19, a two-lane road that feels nothing like a highway, Mt. Rainier rises straight ahead, between the pines lining the road. It feels as if we could drive up to the edge of the glacier-covered peak, despite the miles and the Puget Sound between us.

At school, we park by the barn and O. eagerly points out which of the strawberry blond chickens she has held. We cross the small frosty bridge to meet her classmates. Her head is wrapped in a wool balaclava that makes her look like a gnome bounding across the field.

Today is Three Kings Day. The day the wise ones come, to pay homage to the child. Because wise ones do pay homage to children. Through the nighttime fog of adulthood, we can travel back to a time when magic hid under every bridge.

New year, new lenses

Yesterday I picked up the new glasses I ordered back in the old year, 2015. Now, in 2016, I no longer have scratched lenses that make everything look like the view through a foggy windshield. May this carry over into my vision for the year--may I see clearly. That is the first step.