Banana Bread

I’ve been rediscovering the joys of cooking for friends in the weeks since I’ve been in Butte. Tomorrow my friend Jana is coming over for dinner – shrimp curry and rice w/peas … mmmmm – and I decided to bake some banana bread for our dessert.

I got a little carried away, I think. I was mixing up the batter and thinking … oo, I’ll add some walnuts .. and some chocolate chips … and some almonds … and some coconut! Oh, the smells coming out from the oven are sooooooooo good!

Last week I had a friend over, and I tried a recipe from BaWin – Burmese Chicken Curry – and I baked an apple crisp. The chicken was delicious, but, the apple crisp wasn’t really what I had wanted, and it wasn’t so good. But the week before, when I baked that apple cake for the MAR artists receptions – now that! was good. People asked for seconds and thirds. That recipe is a keeper.

I had forgotten how messy baking can be – so many bowls and measuring cups and spoons and spatulas and flour and oil all over the counters. But, even the cleaning up part is fun – licking the batter from the spoon and remembering all the times I’ve done that in the past.

There are moments when I sit back and look around and I can hardly believe this life I have. My days flow so easily from project to project, from personal time to work time, from outside to inside to outside again. I am looking forward to starting school in August, but, I’m already doing work that I love – and I have plenty of it! I have met truly wonderful people and I feel so deeply appreciated. My friends from the east coast stay in touch, and I talk with my daughter almost every day. There is very little that I lack in my life right now – and I trust that those pieces will also begin to fall into place.

The banana bread is ready to emerge from the oven and leave its lovely scent all over the apartment. I will do my best to be patient and wait til tomorrow – but I’m not makin’ any promises!

Sunlight

Some mornings I wake, and the grief drops heavy on my shoulders and surrounds my heart and its all I can do to move through time and space. It’s an unattached grief, nothing in particular, and mornings have traditionally been challenging for me, even as a child.

This morning I woke early and already sinking into sorrow – so I made myself a cup of tea, and sat in the bright sunlight of my apartment – letting it shine onto my face and hands – soaking it into myself. There is a beautiful prayer in Awakening Osiris, Normandi Ellis’ translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. If I knew I would be stranded on a desert island, this is the book I would choose to keep with me – it is beautifully written and deeply inspiring to me. The prayer is:

May the Light shine through us and on us and in us.
May we die each night and be born each morning
That the wonder of life should not escape us.
May we love and laugh and enter lightly into each other’s hearts.
May we live forever. May we live forever.

I allowed the sunlight, the warmth of the tea, the soft music in the background, the bird calls outside my windows, the rhythms of my breath and my heart bring me back toward center and balance. I allowed myself to take the time I needed to re-enter the daylight world and move from dreams that were deep and powerful. I opened myself to the wonder of life – the clouds sailing across the skies, the Highlands shining out in the south, the beauty that surrounds me.

An hour to traverse the lands that lead through sorrow back to the enjoyment of the simple pleasures of my life is an hour well spent.