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Zumba!

Today’s daily cure was Zumba!

photoTomarra’s 50th birthday invitation read, Zumba, Bacon and Mimosas at the Rainier Beach Clubhouse.  She, a talented massage therapist, who moves the flesh, blood and lymph of her clients, would, of course, host an invigorating event. Recovering from a muscle spasm in my lower back, and having never tried Zumba, I was a little nervous about shaking my booty today, but I couldn’t pass up an invitation to celebrate this very intuitive and creative woman.

At the beginning of the party, Tomarra tearfully paid tribute to the clubhouse, and spoke to her long held wish and now good fortune to be able to rent space since the clubhouse, historically a nexus for community activities, had become largely unavailable for rentals since 2005.  Because the Rainier Beach Community Club recently procured a lease from its current owners, the VFW, the building is now fulfilling the mission of its original owners, The Rainier Beach Women’s Club, who specified the building was to be used for activities, which would enhance the community.

At 10:30AM, the music came on, and Zumba instructor, Paula Aio, started the dancing. Forward, back, side-to-side, hands and pelvis, up, down, our bodies squiggling in every direction.  Paula hooted like a mama bird, smiling and encouraging her fledgling awkward flock, to keep moving to the beat of the music.  And move, shout, and ululate we did, for a whole hour, occasionally stopping for a swig of water or to wipe off sweat.  It was more than a workout; it was a tribal turnout.  All of us, mostly women, mostly beginners, moved in time, together. Tomarra, sharing her love of Zumba with her community, gave the gift of her exuberant physical freedom, which inspired the rest of us to loosen up.  And that kind of repeated pelvic rotation and thrusts released my lower back from its muscular rut.  It was a blast.

By the end of the party, after all the delicious breakfast food, it felt like it wasn’t only Tomarra’s birthday we were celebrating; it was the clubhouse’s birthday too.  The vitality and joy in our recently refinished hall is an initiating spark for many more community celebrations to follow.  As someone who served last year, and will again this year, as a trustee on the executive board of the Rainier Beach Community Club, I had the privilege of watching committed members of our community do the hard work of reattaching its core mission to the building that gave birth to it.  Happy, Happy Birthday!

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Seed Swap

 

It’s the little things, the things that come in small packages, which often give me the most joy.

IMG_0998Today, Upper Rainier Beach residents, Iris and Dave, organized the first Seed Swap, an informal neighborhood event. Located in their dining room, it was perfectly little. As I browsed the table filled with thoughtfully categorized vegetable varieties, I was smitten; it wasn’t just the seed varieties that got my attention, it was how they were packaged.  Iris and Dave with typed labels on small plastic bags, gave clear growing instructions; Kim brought seeds in small paper origami packages, complete with a numerical key on a separate piece of paper; others, including myself, simply put the name of the variety on a label and called it done.  Kristen and Don brought their seeds in little plastic tubes. I took a sampling of their Purple Driveway, an otherwise unidentified purple lettuce that, you guessed it, grew alongside their driveway.

While some attendees perused the table making their selections, others exchanged gardening tips, lessons learned, and plans for their upcoming garden.  This kind of free exchange of information and resources, a little thing, an underground thing, has the potential, like in every seed, to nourish our whole community.

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Laugh Medicine

Tita2 Tita1jpegA few weeks ago, when I returned to work as an on-call interfaith chaplain at Harborview Medical Center, Tita, at the front information desk, exuberantly welcomed me back.  It had been three years since I last saw Tita yet her spirit shined as bright as ever. Some staff at Harborview practice medicine.  Tita is medicine.

Traditional Chinese medicine understands a person’s shen or spirit as integral to health; when shen is strong, eyes are bright, radiating spiritual and emotional well-being. Tita, stationed at Harborview’s ground floor entrance, not only shares information and directions, she, a practitioner and leader of laugh yoga, also shares joy, love and compassion.  And, of course, laughter is thrown in for free.

Tita described her daily self-cure practices to me: When I wake at 4:45 in the morning, I spend five minutes expressing my gratitude.  I say, “Thank you God for this new day, bless my day; it’s going to be a great day.”  I look at the sky and say, “Thank you for the beautiful day.”  When I take a shower, I laugh.  When I drive, I laugh.  When I am at work, I laugh. When I am in the bathroom, I laugh. You don’t have to have stress.  You don’t have to have other emotions.  You just have to celebrate life everyday.

I can attest from personal experience, Tita’s methods work.  During my chaplain residency, I often joined Tita at Harborview’s weekly laughter club.  At first, I felt awkward and silly, forced even, as I participated in the goofy group exercises. Soon enough the awkward silly me was cutting loose, my goofball self laughed like the most practiced in the room.  Not hard, really. At the time, those weekly laugh-ins became a self-care practice; an antidote to daily grief and trauma exposure.

We know laughter is an upper but beyond enhancing mood, there is also research showing laughter offers pain relief, immune cell activation, stress reduction, blood sugar regulation and blood pressure reduction. When I’m at Harborview, I inevitably gravitate towards the information desk and get in line for my daily dose of Tita.

Join Tita at Harborview’s Laughter Club on Fridays at noon in the resource center.

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Social Climbers

photoFriends and neighbors, Claudia and Jackie, joined me today for stair climbing on this fine, and increasingly rare, sunny morning at the concrete stairs tucked in at intersection of S. Cooper St. and Waters Ave. S. in Upper Rainier Beach. There’s nothing better, in between breaths, than talking about books, gardening and local beautification efforts to take my attention off this demanding, sweaty form of exercise.  All of us carried backpacks with varying poundage (5lbs – 20lbs) of rice or other bulk foods to make it more of a load bearing exercise.  As middle-aged women, we need to keep building lean muscle mass since women tend to lose 5 -7 pounds of muscle a year if not doing weight-bearing exercise.  And besides building strong bones, weight-bearing exercise keeps your metabolism fired up because having more muscle generates more metabolic activity, which burns fat.  At fifty-four years old, I’m all for it.

I would have never imagined that I would voluntarily walk up and down stairs carrying weight, but after my backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevada Mountains this past summer, I can’t think of a better way to stay in shape and partake in my local landscape.  While descending the stairs, one is treated to wide screen views of Lake Washington, a performance stage for precipitation and light.  Mist, rain and fog can seem so miserable when exercising indoors but can actually be the very elements to invigorate the senses when experiencing them outdoors.

Finally, what gets me out of bed so I can climb the stairs, three mornings a week at 8AM, is I feel stronger and better for the effort. If I feel stronger, I feel more self-confident.  If I feel more self-confident then I doubt myself less.  If I doubt myself less, I feel better about my life.  If I accomplish nothing else than climbing stairs in a day then I have indeed done a good amount of cardiovascular work.

All the work, all the sweat, is so worth it, and so much more bearable if I have company.  There’s no denying it – I am a social climber.

Please join me on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8AM at the intersection of S. Cooper St. and Waters Ave. S.  If you want to do load-bearing exercise, use a backpack with a waist belt so the weight is well distributed.  Increase load gradually.

 

 

 

 

 

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Tea Time

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Yesterday, my friend and neighbor, Jackie, knocked on my door to drop off a little bag of Souchong tea.  The day before she sat at my kitchen counter drinking ginger green tea while we shared very wifey topics like roasted chicken recipes and kitchen remodeling ideas; she also listened to me make a vow to use up and/or throw away all the packaged tea in my cabinet before committing to a very few selections of loose herbal and black tea.  In turn, she made some black tea recommendations, and generously followed up by giving me this sample to try.

Our conversation about tea went something like this:

Me:  “I’m sick of looking at tea bags at the bottom of cups – they’re so ugly – like afterbirth.”

Jackie: “Yeah, they kind of look like an herbal tampon.”

Aesthetics is part of the reason I want to make this change. Saving space is another. Probably the most important reason is because my cabinet of teas has become one of those messy bulging avoidant areas, usually found behind doors or in drawers, which has become dreadfully stagnant. I’m not sure why I’ve had such a block to throwing out those 3” by 5” boxes, which neither I, nor my guests, ever choose.  Maybe it’s because all those colorful boxes give the illusion of having choices, and I’ve been choosing illusion over reality.

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As I write this post, I am sipping on the Souchong tea and it’s good, I guess. I have to admit: I’m not very discerning when it comes to tea. If a tea has a medicinal benefit then I usually can convince myself to like it but I’ve never had strong preferences based on taste alone.  I know I don’t like fruity teas but beyond that I couldn’t even pretend to have an opinion on a tea’s qualities, never mind its aroma.  Which is probably why I have been buying packaged tea.  And I must admit the teas I buy are usually geared towards what’s on sale versus its ingredients.

As I begin the gradual emptying of my tea cabinet, I’ll also have to ready myself for filling the void. Probably the only way for me to feel more connected to my teas is if I actually grow, harvest and store the leaves and flowers in glass canisters of my choosing.  That’s a lot of work.  And so is cleaning out a teapot every day. But that’s how I roll. I suspect my lack of involvement in my tea collection has kept me indifferent and distant all along.

A few years ago, my friend Lizzie actually gave me the tea plant, Camellia Sinensis, which grows well in the Pacific Northwest, but I wasn’t ready for it then and sadly, it didn’t survive.  I’ll have to try growing it again, and perhaps start foraging for other tea ingredients, but in the meantime, come on over for tea.  Right now, I have quite a selection!

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Winter Garden Food Tour

 

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This morning seven of us women started at Parsley Farm, had a good look around at the winter crops, and then mosied over to Mary’s who is also utilizing every square inch of her yard to grow food.   Mary shared her folksy water storage idea using plastic bladders from wine boxes.

We moved on down the road to check out Anna’s expansive first year garden, and learn her trick of digging her food waste right into her garden beds.  We crossed over to Val’s and learned about her goal of making a wildlife habitat and then ended at Annya’s place where she taught us how to pack in lots of fruit and veggies in a small space.

These kinds of informal, small scale, neighbor to neighbor sharings really make my day.

Even though it’s our time to rest, just like our garden beds, here are some resources if you get to thinking about next season’s garden.

Excellent organic seeds at a good price:

http://www.fedcoseeds.com/

King County’s Free soil testing program:

http://www.kingcd.org/pro_far_soi.htm

King County’s manure share program:

http://www.kingcd.org/programs-farm-manure.htm

Year round Garden Hotline:

www.gardenhotline.org  206-633-0224

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Birthday Buddies

Machelle and Ganga

I don’t understand the grand cycles, but I had an inkling that the combo effect of the end of the Mayan calendar and the winter solstice landing on the same date (December 21st) was significant.  However, on that day, I felt no great shift except that something extraordinary did in fact happen: a shopping outing with Claudia to Costco where I bought five new toothbrush heads for my Sonicare diamond clean toothbrush.  If that isn’t a defiant act of optimism on the day the world might end, I don’t know what is.  But I didn’t witness any collective transformation in consciousness as we waited in long lines to check out at Costco.

It wasn’t until the next day, December 22nd, which is the shared birthday of Machelle and Ganga that I noticed there might indeed have been some galactic gearshift going on.  The day started with twelve friends gathering at Margaret and Machelle’s for delicious homemade soups (dal and chicken noodle) and croissant sandwiches before we headed out to Cougar Mountain for a hike.  The early morning rainy skies cleared for the few hours we buoyantly bobbed along in small groupings on well-marked trails through a moist and gorgeous Northwest forest.

Later that evening that same crowd and more friends gathered at Ganga’s house for festivities: dancing, live music and non-stop laughing.    Even though December 22nd marked Machelle’s and Ganga’s birthdays, an official new year for them; it also felt like their joint celebration was somehow driving larger cogs towards a more joyful transmission as our collective New Year approaches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihydca1stOE&feature=youtu.be

 

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A Real Gift

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Maybe many of you struggle like I do when it comes around to finding a good gift for your mother on her birthday.  Maybe you feel that phantom umbilical cord twist into knots in your belly as the date gets nearer.  Finding a good gift for a woman who has historically said she needs nothing has always been a challenge, but now that she is turning 88 years old and living in a nursing home, it’s even harder to find a gift that could bring some happiness. Because she is nearly totally paralyzed, whole categories of gift ideas just won’t work in her situation, and there just aren’t many exciting products on the market for severely handicapped people.  She, like many other elders, is holed up in her room, often left alone for hours, and without her own ability to manipulate anything besides her TV remote, phone and call button.

As her birthday was rounding the bend, with just six days from the due date, I decided on sending her (via Amazon) the first four seasons of the TV series, Curb Your Enthusiasm.  I remembered sitting besides her watching these early episodes as she nearly choked from laughing so hard at David Larry’s mishagas so I thought she might enjoy re-watching this TV show.  The one thing my mom can do without any help is laugh.

On the same day I ordered her gift from Amazon, I spoke with my mother by phone.  In the last month or so, she has been largely confined to her bed and reflecting on old friends whom she hasn’t been in touch with for decades.  A week ago, I goggled one of those friends who actually lived nearby in Florida only to find out she had died recently.  When I relayed the news to my mother, she said, “Too late.”

On this day, she mentioned Phyllis; a friend from high school who she thought lived in Connecticut.  My mother has always had a good memory for the details of people’s lives: how many children they had, their husband’s name and occupation, where they raised their families. I goggled her high school friend’s name and found a Phyllis living in Connecticut who was the same age as my mother so I called her.  When I introduced my mission and myself over the phone, Phyllis said with excitement, “Lynn Cutler, oh my God, I remember Lynn as clear as day.  We were very good friends!”

In the course of the conversation, I gathered some details of Phyllis’ life that I would later share with my mother, and found out that Phyllis’ birthday was on December 12th, a day before my mother’s birthday. My mother was equally excited to talk with Phyllis so I arranged for these two old friends to connect by phone on their birthdays with the help of a translator for my mother since her speech is impaired from her stroke.

Finally, I gave a real gift.  It makes me very happy that my mother can connect with an old friend who holds a memory of her as whole and healthy, and in spite of their current limitations due to age, the two of them can still celebrate their 88th birthday with each other.

Yeah, that’s great, but what am I going to get her next year?

 

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Double Happiness

jeri and amy-3

Amy and I have been meeting at Elliot Bay Book Company on Wednesdays from 10 am to 12 pm for over a year.  Each week while sipping Genmaicha tea, we critiqued a chapter from each other’s memoir until finally both of us completed our manuscripts in August.  Amy had a deadline of August 12th to complete her memoir; a year prior, at her wedding ceremony, she promised her new bride, Jeri, a completed manuscript on their first year anniversary.   Amy’s memoir,An Ex-Pat’s Wife, is about the year the adventurous couple spent living in London on an ex-pat assignment.

In An Ex-Pat’s Wife, Amy exuberantly embraces the wife role even though as a couple, they hadn’t yet sanctified their relationship with a private wedding ceremony, nor did they have the legal sanction to do so. Through all her daily devotionals, from vacuuming to making pumpkin bread to waiting long hours alone in their flat while Jeri worked 16-hour days as a corporate executive, Amy, as a wife, brings both dignity and credit to her female lineage. However, Amy, an emotionally fearless writer, also exposes her struggle to find self-value and worth in the traditional support role, a common struggle for straight and gay wives alike.

On the evening of December 5th, Amy and Jeri headed to the Seattle municipal courthouse alongside hundreds of other gay couples and applied for their marriage license.  They were 36th in line.  The media descended on these two celebrating beauties that night; photographs of them, with Amy in her original wedding veil from their private wedding ceremony in 2011 were routed throughout national wire services.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/09/washington-gay-marriage-law_n_2266574.html

http://www.theprovince.com/life/Supreme+Court+takes+same+marriage+first+time/7669809/story.html#axzz2EfaDHnu7

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/06/166662086/photos-in-washington-a-historic-day-gay-marriage-marijuana-are-legal

http://www.lfpress.com/2012/12/08/mass-gay-weddings-now-legal-expected-in-washington-state

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Gregoire-sign-gay-marriage-law-182281251.html?tab=video&c=y

A few days later, I was not surprised to receive notice that Jeri and Amy were having a flash wedding ceremony at 9 am on December 9th, the first official day for same-sex marriages in Washington, at Elliott Bay Book Company.  In the prior twenty-four hours, the wedding came together through the generous and spontaneous support of their Seattle community. Elliott Bay Book Company donated the use of the bookstore, Bakery Nouveau donated a wedding cake, Kan Flowers donated florals, Barrier Mercedes Benz arranged for a videographer, Jill Marie Denckla Smith donated complete make-up services and Cicada Bridal outfitted Amy with a dress.  Their officiant, Annemarie Juhlian, who had performed their ceremony in 2011, and renewed their vows in 2012, was the first to commit to the joyous celebration.

Of course, it was entirely appropriate to have their wedding at the bookstore because with the passage of Referendum 74, a new chapter is being written in history as same-sex marriages are legalized in the state of Washington.  And of course, Elliott Bay Book Company is the place where, week after week, Amy had the safety and comfort to continue her reflections on what being a wife means to her.  Her narrative is of enormous importance, because although she identified her sexual orientation in her teens, she came of age as a wife at a pivotal time in history when same-sex couples can be legally bound in marriage.  Amy and Jeri will not be excluded from the rituals and social benefits of having one’s union be affirmed by their community and state.  They are legal.  They are wife and wife.

As Amy and Jeri tearfully took their vows on the stairs of Elliot Bay Book Company, their guests wept with them.  Their love, mature and deep, sealed and codified, inspired everyone who witnessed them that morning.  Books are written of such powerfully loving women who stood on alters, platforms, stages or street corners to gain their civil rights.

After the ceremony, Jeri shared their personal call to action.  She and Amy, through being their best selves, want to improve the institution of marriage. With women like Amy and Jeri, same-sex marriage looks doubly durable and twice as adorable.

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