{by Mollie Green of Fresh Milk Delivered Daily}

bright, white in the sky, the moon bold faced and shining.
far away, a distance i only know in numbers, but clear,
valleys and summits in sharp gleaming gray inside the orb light of it.

here, the white bright moon, open and full overhead.
here, a night that breathes like curtains in open windows, in, out again.
here, a hope of spring in the corners of it, hope riding wings of mercy free, new.

{From Deidra at Jumping Tandem}

Remember those boxes of 64 Crayola crayons with the built-in sharpener?

In my world, it didn’t get much better than that.

I could spend hours with a box of crayons and a coloring book. My grandmother or my mother would color one page, and I would color the page next to it.

As the years went by, I took pride in my ability to stay in the lines.

{by Jim of The Busy Dad Blog}

The crowd was evenly split, half of them waving dollar bills while mockingly encouraging their chosen gladiator, Jeff. The other half doing the same, but chanting “Greasy! Greasy! Greasy!”

Greasy Lee. I didn’t choose that name. It was bestowed by the 5th grade bully elite upon the chubby Asian kid who always happened to suffer bad hair days.

I glanced across the makeshift arena, which was nothing more than a clearing between two boulders and a tree stump in the woods behind the school. Jeff and I locked eyes. Not in aggression, but more in a desperate telepathic attempt to assure the other that we were doing this for our mutual survival.

I don’t remember the fight. But I do remember sitting in math class afterwards, unable to write anything on the worksheet in front of me because my hand was trembling uncontrollably. I also remember the dozens of perfect red dots on Jeff’s white polo shirt, which matched the missing skin on my middle knuckle.

There we were. The only two Asian kids in an otherwise white working class New England town, divided and conquered.

* * * *

When we first moved to the suburbs from the heart of Boston, it was every kid’s dream come true. A sprawling ranch-style house with a huge playroom, a circular driveway for unhindered bike riding, and an immense backyard. Which meant I could get a dog. Summer was everything it was supposed to be.

Fall meant starting a new school, but I wasn’t worried. I had switched schools a couple times before, and it always brought with it new friends. Also, this was the first time I was going to take a bus to school. Just like in the movies!

{Original post by Tarrant Riglio of Retro-Food}

Well you ask me
to sing you a love song
and I smile ‘n say
Hold on
Let me think
~Melissa Ferrick, Love Song

And then I sing you a love song in a foreign language-the language of food, of recipes.You know this blog is your love song. You can pick out the words and hear the tune. But, will you ever understand it? I think you do now.

You have learned the words and the tunes. You have watched my movements as I flip through cookbooks, plan meals and dance my messy way through the kitchen. Just in case…let me explain a bit more because as I thought about how to talk about this curious mixture of love and recipes…I learned more about myself, you, and those whose recipes I cook.

Joseph says I cook because I love. Is that his epiphany or mine? Both I think. I do. I cook to woo. I cook to nourish. I cook to teach. I cook to love. Meals can show off. Meals can feed people. Most of all, my meals are a hug, a kiss, a wink, a thank you, a caress, and the recipes the love songs that play in my cooking.

That is the draw of old cookbooks and recipe cards. Sure, the commercial ones with their funny pictures and fussy ideas on keeping a home amuse me. The ones that sing to me though come from Junior Leagues, churches, Women’s Auxiliaries, ones handwritten on a recipe card, ones with names attached. Those women share the love songs they sang to their families and their friends through their cooking. The ingredients may be foreign or impossible to find in these times. (celery Jell-o for example) The ingredients may just hide behind another name: oleo, xxxx sugar, #2 cans.

But listen to the tune…you know this love song. This is the dinner made for a mother with a newborn. This is the cake made to celebrate a son’s birthday…his favorite. These are the pork chops and potato pancakes counted on to bring a smile to her father-in-law’s face. These cookies sing holiday tunes with Mama in the kitchen with excited children. She tucks these memories away as she tucks the cookies in tins to give to her friends. Recipes sing the love song of a cocktail party or a brunch filled with laughter and friends.The recipe that makes a full meal out of stale bread, an egg and a few slices of cheese? This is a longing love song to feed a family with a bare pantry and days to go before a paycheck.

This recipe? The chocolate fudge pie? It sings a love song of a mother distracting a brokenhearted teen daughter when she learned that not all friendships are forever. Look at this one! It is the recipe for the aspic that great-grandmother made for Sunday dinner. She never said I love you out loud…but she always had a cake on the glass cake stand in the dining room for you. Maybe the Lemon Cheese Cake? The Caramel Cake? Or the beautiful, slightly wicked Devil’s Food cake. Love.

{by Christine Green}

I was a feather of a girl for a while there. I could stand on my head in the middle of the living room floor for what seemed like hours. My mother would peer at me from the kitchen nervous that I would fall, but she did not scold or ask me to be sensible. She simply let me be.

She knew, I think, that those days were fleeting. She knew that someday the weight of many responsibilities would sit on my shoulders and my easy lightness would be replaced by a heaviness that would keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.

I’ve tried now, cautiously when no one was around, to spend some time upside down again. But I can barely lift my legs into the air, and my feet feel like lead weights. I’ve tried, too, in yoga class with plenty of prep and lots of help from the instructor, but I always freeze up. Fear washes over me and I convince myself that I will fall and break a leg or embarrass myself in front of the entire class. So I quietly move on to something else: a nice, firm warrior pose or a quiet, safe child’s pose.

But I see the others do it and wonder at the ease with which they seem to turn their world topsy turvey even for a second or two. I see them and I remember those sunny childhood afternoons I spent with my feet in the air and my heart easy. There was no fear, just action, as I swung my legs upwards toward the clouds. Then there was a calm while I watched the world pass crazily by as I stood on my head, motionless and quiet.

My son seems to be taking after me these days and spends inordinate amounts of time with his feet above his head. I watch him as he hangs upended on the couch, his small, perfect feet drumming a rhythm on the wall as he watches Scooby-Doo, and I envy the carefree flexibility of both his body and spirit.

I should, like my mother before me, let him be. I should let him hang there upside down among the cushions where he is happy, free, light. But I feel compelled to turn him right side up, tell him to stop before he gets hurt.

{by Jo of Mylestones}

Sometimes I feel like the pit of my stomach is an airtight word container, precariously latched, desperately shoving against my heart to spill onto the open page. Sometimes my soul must labor to breathe because of thoughts lodged in my lungs, freed only in the coughing compulsion of tippity-tapping on the keys.

I don’t always feel it, but when I do, it nags at me until I can’t think of anything else but letting it out. And most of the time, I don’t even know what it is I’m unleashing, until it is there in front of me in words I can finally read.

But that’s nothing new, right? Just a common ailment of a writer? (Or in this case, of a girl who is still reluctant to call herself a writer or even admit that she wants to be one.)

What troubles me is how this feeling gets in the way of my daily life, how it diseases the moment I’m in. And what troubles me more is how in my melancholy, I savor these symptoms as if it is soothing to be sick.

I despise how easily I can disappear into my head and miss the rich flavor of the moment. I know I won’t be offered another taste of those sixty seconds, yet I persist in fasting from the present.

It strikes me at the library, surrounded by foam puzzles and board books. It strikes me at a party, surrounded by friends and frivolity. It strikes me on a run, in the car, in the middle of a conversation. It strikes me, and I think, “I must start writing, or I will explode.” (I am wrong about this. I will not explode. All that ever happens is that I grow weary of feeling on the verge of explosion.)

And here is the bottom line, if I’m really confessing, if I’m really naming the fear. I’m afraid that if I don’t let the container spring wide open and write, then I will never know what the deep-down me is trying to say. And if I don’t find out, if I (the daily I) do not listen to her, then no one will. She will never be heard.

{by Aidan Donnelley Rowley}

It is one of those moments. I am curled up in a bed not my own. Wrapped sloppily in scratchy wool. On my left side. It is late morning. The girls are outside playing with their father. Looking for hippos and dinosaurs. Making believe. Being kids.

And I am here. There. Resting. Because I am tired, so tired. And it’s quiet, so quiet, too quiet. In the distance, I hear the growl of a washing machine, the clanking of pots, the dragging of something big. But mostly? I hear the buzz of being alone.

An avalanche of anxiety. I think of all the things I must do and haven’t done. In the next two months. In my lifetime. I think of the sadness, sweet and stubborn, that lurks in the ale of adulthood; the pearly mist of melancholy we see and feel once we stop pretending. I think of my friend and the unthinkable tragedy she and her family suffered on Christmas day. On Christmas day.

I lie here. There. Body motionless, mind whirring with wonder and dread and, finally, some improbable and exquisite peace. I feel a kick. A thump. A something. Bold and strong and full of life. Just next to my belly button, that spot, small and centered, hidden so well. Beneath clothes and blankets and the most ferocious of fear. I reach my hand under the layers, real and imagined, splay my fingers wide and rest them there. I wait for more. For another movement. Another reminder. Another something.

And it comes. And here, there, alone, never alone, I smile to myself. And words come, a slow trickle, a silent stream.

Everything will be okay.

{by Nicole of 60piggies}