Thanksgiving in New Zealand

Growing up...Thanksgiving Day was always my favorite day of the year. Even though the only original participant from my childhood is now, myself, it still is a time when I remember all the other Thanksgiving dinners I shared with my loved ones who are now deceased, or half way round the world. But, all the new participants I hosted this Thanksgiving in New Zealand...found that they think we should continue the tradition in New Zealand...on the Friday here, making it simultaneous with the American Thursday. I agree. It raises the thankful consciousness of the entire world.

There were twelve at my Thanksgiving Dinner this year...and, we had a wonderful time...and, I was privileged to share pumpkin pie with many who had never had pumpkin pie before. Kiwis eat a lot of pumpkin. They have however, never caught on to the sweet serving of pumpkin in a pie...they are almost unanimously wowed by the new taste experience even if I have to coerce some of them for the first taste.

The day started for me at 7am creating my own bread crumbs for the stuffing. There are no packages of bread crumbs to be had here...but, this was decidedly to my favor in the taste department. Also, there was no pumpkin in a can...so I had to cut, cook and press my own pumpkin...which made the pie...divine. Using my grandmother's recipe from the 1950's I was able to give everyone here a taste of something...absolutely unique. It was a success.

I had expected to really miss my grandmother and my mother...traditional helpers for the huge meal preparation, but I had a part Maori friend who stepped in and filled the culinary gaps one can feel when stranded in the kitchen all alone...I was not...I was befriended, propped, and complete with her natural easy going nature of preparing meals for the masses. I was really thankful for that.

It is hard for me to discuss the turkey...I have become almost a vegetarian, having grown a couple of Turkeys last year for slaughter that I could not kill...as they had become my pets, my friends, and not at all like the terrible myths I had been told...how stupid they are...they are not...and so, I challenged my consciousness by buying a store bought turkey for my guests to consume and avoided my own consciousness for the sake of my meat eating guests. I do not want to force my own choices upon anyone, but I will be thinking hard about a mock turkey presentation for next year. It is hard to serve my friends to my friends to consume.

So, what am I thankful for? So many things have changed in this world since my first Thanksgiving memory...since I was just a little girl bellying up to a feast that always included everyone in my family and if not, those who were not there would call after dinner on the old dial-up phone and we would take turns talking to them, consigned to the length of a curly cord that would be wound into knots after tugging its length to reach for another morsel of food while exchanging quick stories of progress or not. The way things were, are simply the way things are not now...while a few of my guests text messaged all the way through dinner. We have become multi taskers and more private in a public sort of way. I am thankful for technology, but not during dinner. And yet...are we not now more capable of sharing immediately and simultaneously whatever we experience without having to chew?

And this is my point...the chewing of food is just like that of a social experience...it needs chewing upon in order to digest...those who are busy communicating in the middle of the experience...run the risk of indigestion later...but, that is again, their choice. However, what I am most thankful for are those who are left...that look at one another, communicate with each other and allow nothing to interfere with the moment they are in together, thereby leaving the other left to feel like the best piece of pumpkin pie ever served up. I am thankful for that, I really am.

Ageless Emergence

No matter how old I get...and, I am fifty three now and not at all flustered by it as I intend to live to one hundred and three...so, I should say...since I am only half way there...no matter...I always feel like I am being born again in some way...every single day.

Forever changing lanes so that I can see both sides of the street...and remembering whilst I am doing it...that there is no home place other than where I am...right now...in this currently pregnant moment. I love to live.

But...this lust for life is not always an easy thing to share with others...especially if the others think they have something in life figured out...and then, something changes...like an additional perspective that is sworn to be the truth...and nothing but the truth...so help me...God, I get tired of this...until I quit resisting it and understand...

...that every life sees something different and it is that difference 'gone unexpressed' that causes depressions inside a soul that makes life heavy and not worth living. To express a difference is an emergence...and an emergence is the creative force that funnels particles of light into the matter which gives us LIFE lived large and loud enough to see and hear it from the unawakened states that many of us find ourselves in...until we don't.

Emergence...is what I'm on about...emergence is what I am trying to allow myself to experience in every way...every day...great or small...something new to reflect upon...don't make it wrong...just make it preferable, or not, for each individual to decide...for themselves...at any age.

Emergence is ageless.

My Grandson

Onyx Oden is seven and a half months here...and, he has just come to stay with me these past few days...he is such a reminder of the 'mommy memory' that resides in me...the remembrance that another life is as important as my own...just as, no exceptions...the bond that changes how I stand, the looks that cross our faces, the grace of such easy smiles...unrestricted by no history...a true beginning every moment in every way...watching the tub lose its water in a swirl...marveling together at the sight, and the gurgle...breaks us both into happy smiles for there is no fear lodged in Onyx's, or my heart...not yet...not no how...I be the Queen, he be the King at my breast, lying firmly together with visions of ice blocks and wooden spoons to chew on, breaking in new teeth without too much stress...just a continuous run for fresh objects to insert in our mouths. I love every inch of him...and he loves me, naturally...

It's been a long time since I saw the look that a child gives a mother, and a mother who is now a grandmother gives back...the look that says, "You are the best thing I've seen in such a long time"...it works wonders on the tired heart of a mother scorned for this and that...

I am so thankful for the time I have been given by my daughter, Destiny, to nuzzle her son, same as my own...in a grand way. I remember telling my children when they were young that we must never live without children in our lives...I remember now that my youngest is seventeen years old...that I forgot that along the way...but, remembered immediately when Onyx became my charge...just me as a mother fill-in, a grandmother at large...

We laughed, we played...we sang and gurgled...we jumped and swung and strolled with courage...we nibbled and nawed...we cooed and awed at one another, all day, today and yesterday...I am in love...there is hope for this heart that was missing a part...the part of the child in myself that needed somewhere to say:

This is what it is all about. Loving a child, and the child in me survives today.

Dear Mother

The foundational relationship for every human animal is the one held with its mother. Initial point of contact...lying in the womb for approximately 40 weeks more or less and then...the cataclysmic ride to the outside world. How we feel about our mothers is so important irrespective of how pleasant our actual relationship was/was not, is/ is not...so important to our own well being that at the foundation of our 'mother memory' should be a simple living remembrance of deep appreciation, profound reverance and respect for the inactment of the life we now own. If we can say nothing else good about our own mothers...we should stop with just a simple Thank You, Mother...Thank You...for Life.

Life is a messy business. If we have ever been blessed with seeing a birth...then, we should never lose sight of the miracle that it truly is. That someone would be willing to participate with our point of entrance in this way...commands respect, reverance and awe. Awe is missing in our 'mother memory' these days as we abuse our mothers with reflections that supercede the initial action of such a gift as Life...