A "last supper" of sorts

Several weeks ago a former colleague and dear friend emailed current and former CJP faculty/staff members to invite us to gather in the parking lot of the office buildings to mark yet another transition happening within the organization. The remaining faculty/staff were being moved from those offices to others across campus and so there would no longer be a "CJP building." Knowing that spaces matter and the stories those spaces held for many of us, she invited us to gather together to grieve, celebrate and share a time together of remembering and marking these changes (as unwelcome as they felt for most). In the email she noted that a light lunch would be provided. I knew immediately that I wanted to provide it. What was different than sometimes is that I felt no "should" in my spirit but instead almost an "I need to do this" feeling. So I offered and they accepted. 

At the time I didn't realize how significant and important it would be for me to cook and bake this meal. So yesterday as the gratitude flooded my direction in the CJP parking lot, I didn't know how to articulate that I was glad they were enjoying the food, but this was honestly more about me than anything else. I needed to do this for me and my own process. So bonus that the food was enjoyed by others, but I'm pretty sure I got more out of it than anyone else in that circle yesterday. 

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to flesh out all the layers of this but I'm here to try because it feels significant enough to mark it in the family scrapbook. Here's what unfolded as I chopped and stirred and kneaded and baked.

Making this meal reconnected me with one of the things I loved in the early days of my job. I remember thinking, "I'm being paid for this?" I would make things for various special events at work. I was reminded by a former colleague yesterday that I would bake bread for one of the regular trainings we held. I had forgotten this until she reminded me. We often gathered together around food - for coffee breaks, for birthdays, for check ins, and so on. As my job responsibilities grew, as budget tightened, and as stress increased it was those things that felt like they were slowly whittled away. Implicitly it communicated the message that those things were extra. So we shared less food together, we gathered less, and I kept my nose to the grindstone. Not only did I hardly cook or bake for work anymore, I also didn't join any of the "extras" when a few colleagues had lunch together or in other ways tried to hold onto the importance of relationships within our work environment. A part of me yearned for those deeper points of connection and yet the feeling of "I don't have time for that" almost always won out. I was struggling so much to just keep us with the bare essentials of my job.

As I sat in the circle yesterday with people who spanned all my years at CJP and listened to stories, I felt so keenly how much those times of gathering around food and celebrating together and building relationships were NOT extras! They were the core and heart of who we were together. And I felt sad and angry and regretful that this is another thing that hustle culture and capitalism stole from me/us. I marveled at how insidious and powerful those messages are, filtering even into work environments that want to care for people and that verbalize values around relationships.

Cooking and baking for this event didn't come with all warm fuzzy feelings for sure. The day before the event I made the soups and cheese and prepped a few other things. I was initially thinking that there'd likely be only a handful of people there, but the net had been beautifully cast wide and clearly this was an invitation others valued as much as me so the lunch was now for about 25. There was a lot going on at home that day too and so I was in touch with the fact that what I was setting out to accomplish in my afternoon was a bit of a stretch. But I was in it now so was gonna try to make the best of it. Then one of my daughters was having a hard time. And things spiraled - as much within me as externally. She needed my presence and I felt panic in me about getting done all the things I had started on. And then this very deeply uncomfortable feeling rose up, something that was so so familiar for years. This tug of war within me. All the times that I had to (or chose to) put work above the needs I saw around me at home. I knew my kids yearned for more of me. And I knew my work responsibilities could take every second of every day if I let it. I did better and worse with boundaries in various seasons, but the last few years had been rough. My kids had extended grace over and over again, but I know it wasn't always easy. So here I was doing something I really wanted to do, but it felt soured by a sense that my daughter needed my full attention as she was overwhelmed by some big feelings and I was struggling to be fully present because of competing needs for my time. Sigh! Undoubtedly, it was hard to be a mom and work at CJP as the demands grew. 

Let me be clear: for every single year of my 20+ years at CJP I worked with some of the most incredible human beings on this planet. Of that I am sure! And yet the system squeezed us and pressured us and made it hard to not lose our way and the focus on how we care for each other and tend to what is most important. But all throughout my time there, we tried in little and small ways to not lose it altogether. And as I gathered things for the lunch it felt like the timing of this lunch struck something deep in me as well, something connected to some of my most cherished memories.

Tomorrow is Nora's 15th birthday. Saying goodbye to CJP buildings is also losing a connection to one of the few spaces Nora inhabited in her 7 months with us other than our home and doctor's offices. She never traveled to family's homes and she never went to the church that prayed for her/us weekly but she came with me to work. It was the most insane juggling act I tried in my time at CJP. And it was agonizing and exhausting and precious. We'd warm a hot water bottle and put it in the carseat early in the morning to warm her seat up. I'd tuck Nora's little body in her carseat and say, "You're gonna come to mamma's work with me." And off we'd go. And then the day of trying to be in meetings and tend to naps, and type emails while holding the phone in the crook of my neck while I also tended to the baby in my arms. But those memories are wrapped up in that space and so that space means a whole lot to me. And while my colleagues often couldn't take any of the balls from me that I was juggling, I did feel their tenderness and care for me then and in the grieving following her death. They had gotten to know her just a bit through her times in the office with me and that was special since most people only got to know her through our letters out to our community. So yesterday I got down and dusted off the bowl that we would line with a baby blanket and weigh Nora in when we were checking her weight before and after every feed. I filled it with spoons and forks for the lunch, as my heart did its panging thing!

Some of the things above were the things that were more on the surface for me as I offered to make the meal and engaged in that process. I was eager to reconnect with the parts of my job that had brought me a lot of fulfillment. It felt like there had been so much struggle in the end, that a chance to connect with things that were more joy filled was a welcome opportunity. But I wasn't prepared for something else that opened up in me.

Let me start by briefly sharing what I actually made. I have a hard time keeping things simple and this was no different!

• Chicken, red lentil, sweet potato and greens soup - the chicken, sweet potatoes, sweet potato greens, lard and garlic all came from this land.
• Vegetarian chili - the things in this derived from Tangly Woods included garlic, peppers, trombone squash, tomatoes, shallots, and black beans.
• Yogurt cornbread made with Tangly Woods red flour corn, our eggs and homemade yogurt.
• The three kinds of yeast breads were made using Tangly Woods wheat, rye, corn, amaranth, buckwheat, and millet. I made:
• Whole Wheat Butterhorns
• 100% whole wheat bread - a FIRST EVER yeast bread made with 100% T.W. grown, harvested, threshed, dried, winnowed and ground wheat!
• And a recipe from my 6th grade science fair project - a multi-grain bread.
• There was homemade butter and several kinds of jams from the fruit of our land (red raspberry, blackberry orange, and a blueberry blackberry ginger)
• Tangly Woods cheeses - farmers cheese, black pepper aged cheddar, aged cheddar with our fermented Serrano peppers
• And for dessert and to celebrate a former colleague and dear friends birthday, an apple cake made with some of the last of our T.W. apples and with 100% red flour corn, as well as our eggs.

It was good to know that I still have it in me to pull together such a meal in 24 hours or less. AND it wasn't as easy for me as it was in my 20's and 30's. I'm very out of practice. But I felt the similar thrills that I often did having 5 different processes going at once and keeping track of timing for each thing. But my brain was feeling stretched to hold it all, maybe as much as anything because my emotions were working on overdrive to take in and absorb and process (or hold for later) all the different things welling up in me. Those things were felt most notably as I kneaded bread dough in the early hours of the morning before any kid had roused. Normally I use that time to listen to as many podcasts as I can squeeze in. Yesterday, I knew I didn't want that distraction. I wanted and needed (as I kneaded!) to feel!!

As I worked the dough on the last batch of bread I found myself closing my eyes. And I felt almost transported in time through various points in my life. I was baking bread in Immokalee, Florida for my VS unit. I was baking bread for the kids at the home in Bolivia. I was baking bread summer after summer at the West Virginia State Arts and Crafts fair in Ripley, WV. I was baking bread with my mom and aunt for our wedding. I was baking for work. Baking for friends. Baking for other people's weddings. My best business venture ever was babysitting, cleaning homes and making bread for the family all within about 4 hours time! The act of kneading that dough reconnected me with so many memories and with a deep part of myself and my identity. I am, after all, the daughter and niece of the authors of Recipes from the Old Mill (a fabulous bread cookbook!).

Well, there ya have it. I hadn't fully come to terms with this being yet another thing that diet culture, the wellness diet, weight stigma and fat phobia had stolen from me. This was not just about "giving up grains" because I had some impression that they would make me fat or sick or unhealthy. With that, I had given up something that brought me such meaning and I believe is coded somewhere deep in my DNA. And it was a way that I enjoyed expressing care for others and celebrating with them and grieving with them. Sure I had found other ways to do that and other things to cook and bake that didn't include yeast breads. But I missed it! And I realized that I didn't need to let it go. So as I worked that dough, I grieved and then also felt gratitude for the invitation I felt within me to freely reconnect with that part of my heritage, family and identity. When my younger gals emerged from their slumber to fresh bread hot from the oven for breakfast, something felt so deeply right as I cut them slices and spread them with homemade butter.