What a day!!
06:00 - beep! beep! beep! The alarm on my watch goes off. I groan, turn off the fan (David's freezing anyway), and climb out of bed. (Remember that our "bed" is a mattress on the floor, so when I say "climb," I mean it.)
06:30 - "Good morning!" A van pulls up to our flat, Uncle Danny McCain driving, Auntie Ros Yilpet riding shotgun. I clamber into the backseat, clinging tightly to my little "My Clear Bag" that contains my original marriage certificate; a copy; and an envelope with rather a lot of naira, my passport, four passport photos, and my birth certificate. In my other hand is my purse and a plastic bag with my breakfast and a 1.5-L bottle of boiled water.
06:40 - Chinese Fire Drill! We all get out and switch seats. Andrew, the McCains' right-hand man (and driver) puts his luggage in back and climbs into the driver's seat. Uncle Danny rides shotgun, and Auntie Ros and I scuttle into the way back.
06:50 - Another passenger adds his kaya (stuff) to the pile in the boot and jumps into the backseat in front of Auntie Ros and me. (I never did find out his name.) And we're off again.
07:00 - And another comes on and another comes on, and another rides the bus. (Weird Al) We pick up our last passenger (so I think), who throws in his overnight bag, pillow, and briefcase, and climbs in beside John Doe. Andrew pulls the van onto the main road, and we leave Jos by just about 07:10.
08:30 - "Particulars, please." We get pulled over by the police, who want something or other that we don't have. *groan* I pull out my Terry Pratchett book and start to read while Andrew - and then Uncle Danny as well - sort through the problem.
09:00 - Uncle Danny sends us a few km away to go pick up our final passenger, who happily takes the last seat, telling us about the student riots at his school the day before. (He's a professor.)
09:10 - We go back to the police checkpoint, pick up Uncle Danny - who has purchased the missing particulars - and head onward.
09:15 - "Particulars, please." Oh, not again. Beside me, Auntie Ros is beginning to be concerned; I can tell. She pulls out the passport application form she's printed from the embassy website and starts to fill it in. I look at my watch every 30 seconds or so. Apparently, we're missing some other essential component to our vehicle's particulars.
09:35 - "Oh, look, it's the Abayas," Auntie Ros tears my attention from my book. Mutual friends of ours, whose son was my classmate way back, have pulled up in front of us. They walk back to the van to chat for a few moments. Suddenly Uncle Danny (who'd jumped out earlier to negotiate with the policemen) pokes his head in the window. "These people are going straight to the embassy," he informs us. "Go with them." So Auntie Ros and I gather our belongings, jump out of the van, and rush to the Abayas' minivan. We clamber aboard, and Rev. Abaya speeds off down the highway. (Apparently, they weren't missing the essential particular!) God bless the inventor of air conditioning!
10:00 - We turn onto the dual carriageway that leads to the capital. Even in the air conditioned car, I'm sweating. Auntie Ros is napping, but I can feel her tension even in her sleep. We're still a good 45 minutes from Abuja and running very late.
10:45 - We pull up to the Abayas' friends' house in Abuja. The others rush out to use the bathroom (knowing they won't be able to at the embassy until after their visa appointment at 13:30). Auntie Ros and I wait in the car, trying to be patient. She calls her cousin to ask him to meet us at the embassy at 12:00 to take us to the ABC bus station.
11:05 - We're at the embassy! Auntie Ros and I rush up to the security guard, are allowed through, and get held up for 15 minutes at the metal detector. The security person takes out all our liquids and metal objects, asks us to turn off our phones and takes those, gives us badges, and sends us to the right place.
11:25 - We arrive at the U.S. Citizen area five minutes before the doors close. Praise God!
11:45 - We fill out our renewal applications, answer the nice lady's questions, and sit down to wait. There's a bathroom!! It's just like America with liquid hand soap and everything - even air freshener!
12:15 - We pay the passport renewal fee and sit down to wait. It's less than what we'd expected, so we're happy campers.
12:25 - The nice lady gives us back our passports with receipts, and we scurry back to the security station. We collect our things (chapstick included) and rush out the door. Auntie Ros calls her cousin because she doesn't see his car. He's at the ABC bus station. When he couldn't reach us (remember we had to relinquish our phones), he thought we might have gotten a ride with the Abayas. He'll come right 'round and get us.
12:50 - His black Mercedes pulls up, and we jump into the car, forsaking seatbelts, etc. Auntie Ros's cousin floors it through crazy capital traffic. I hold onto the door handle for dear life and pray for safety.
12:58 - We leap out of the car and run through the bus terminal to scramble onto the ABC bus leaving at 13:00 for Jos. ABC buses leave on time. We're the last ones aboard.
13:02 - The bus pulls out of the depot, and we're on our way home. There are curtains in the windows of the large van and sweet air conditioning. Plus we're only fitting three to a row instead of the customary four. I try to relax and stop thinking about how hungry I am.
15:00 - There's a five-minute stop at Akwanga. If there were restrooms I'd call it a pit stop, but... Auntie Ros and I each buy a small package of biscuits (cookies) to keep our hunger at bay until we get to Jos. We climb back in. The rubber insulation around the van door is half falling off. No one cares.
16:40 - Instead of railroad crossings with bars that come down, we have go-slows where the road curves around so sharply that you have to slow down before the crossing. (No trains, though.) On the outskirts of Jos, there's a rather large traffic jam where the policemen are stopping vehicles after the tracks. When we pull up the policemen after a 15-minute wait in line, he waves us on and salutes.
17:00 - Finally, we pull into the ABC bus station in Jos. Auntie Ros's husband is there to pick her up, and David pulls up just as the Yilpets are departing. I'm tired of jumping into and out of cars all day, so I merely plop myself into the passenger seat and let David drive. Talk about pooped.
BUT my new passport will be ready to pick up in two weeks - with my brand new name!
April 25, 2007
April 18, 2007
So far away
Tonight my mind is somewhere else. To be more specific, it's on the campus of Wheaton College, in a chapel pew, waiting for a good friend's senior violin recital to begin. I was at the first performance of his college career and am missing his most important and possibly last. Sometimes it's hard to be thousands of miles away.I got to know Erik because – oddly enough – he was my chapel buddy. At Wheaton, chapel three times a week is required, and there's assigned seating to make sure you're there. (Yes, they actually have people in the balcony checking seats.) Every semester they change the seating arrangement, but that fall semester, we were arranged by street address. Since Erik's house is literally a few blocks away from the condo my sister lived in that year, we were neighbours. Erik was a freshman music ed major, I a senior English major. Not a lot in common. But, as it turned, out, he joined a community service group that spent time once a week in a low-income children's hospital in south Chicago... the same ministry in which I'd participated as a freshman!
We hit it off, I'm not sure why. It's not like we were ever close buddies, but when our seats changed second semester, we still got together for lunch or coffee occasionally, and Erik still told me in advance about his performances. We hung out in completely different crowds, but we were still friends. Even after I graduated, I showed up for his open recitals (but always had to leave early to get to Chemistry class at a different school).
Last year, when he gave his junior recital, there was no way I could attend. I'd moved to California by then and had just been in Wheaton a month earlier, not knowing when Erik's recital would be. My friend and former roommate Megan, who was still in Wheaton at the time, knew I was disappointed, So she called me up to surprise me, took her cell phone into the recital, put on the speakerphone, and I was deathly silent while listening to Erik's violin. It was one of the sweetest things anyone's every done for me. (Thanks again, Megan!)
But this year, it's a senior recital, much more glamourous than a junior recital, and I must miss it completely. In fact, I'm going to sleep right through it. And that breaks my heart.
But I'm where God wants me to be, and that will have to be my comfort tonight.
April 10, 2007
Iliya's Wedding
Saturday, one of David's best friends from med school got married, so we attended his wedding... sort of.
The fact of the matter is that we were only in the service for about 45 minutes, even though it had begun an hour-and-a-half before we arrived and probably lasted another hour or two after we left. And that's only the church service.
David's brother James called around 9AM to tell us he was at the motor park (kind of like the free-for-all bus depot) and had found us a car and driver to charter. They arrived just after nine, and we piled in with a bottle of drinking water, two cinnamon rolls, some bread, a book, and my miniature electric fan (thanks to Scott Davidson). David had said the trip would take a little less than two hours, as it was in a village off the plateau.
Well, the problem was that we didn't actually know where the village was. We knew its name (Katsit) and that it was near this other town (Kafancan), but that was it. Iliya had told David to call when we reached Kafancan, and he'd send a driver and vehicle to come get us. Ha. By the time we reached the town, Iliya was already in his wedding, and thus didn't answer David's call. So we asked some policemen where Katsit was, and they directed us along the road another 10km. Finally, we saw a sign on the right advertising Iliya and Deborah's wedding. (The sign was attached to a small sapling that had been pulled across the road to make a sad-looking arch; our car barely fit beneath!) After driving a few moments on a bumpy dirt road, we asked again for the village of Katsit. "Keep going," we were told. So we did, for another half hour. The dirt road got bumpier and bumpier, and the driver we'd hired began to laugh about our situation, insisting we owed him more money than we'd settled on. We heartily agreed. We came across a man walking along the road and asked him (in Hausa) where Iliya's wedding was taking place. He directed us to the primary school. A few moments later, we turned into the primary school yard. We arrived around 11:45, purposely late, as the wedding had been supposed to start at 10AM. (Keep in mind Nigerian weddings never start on time.) David told the driver we'd want to leave by 2:30, and the driver agreed to wait rather than travel that dirt road again. We were met by Iliya's brother, who walked us across a grassy field to the tiny Anglican church.
David wanted to stand outside, but I told him I couldn't stand for three hours. So he found us seats on a wooden pew a few rows from the back of the church. I was shocked at how pleasant the temperature was (considering we were off the plateau in April, one of the hottest months of the year). We were just in time to hear the conclusion of the sermon and the beginning of the Eucharist. The women around us (we were sitting on the women's side of the church) were dancing to the music and doing the nasal high-pitched yip that I'd gotten sick of at my own wedding. The drums beat constantly for several minutes, and I found myself caught up in the celebratory mood. The women around me were of all ages and sizes, and their outfits were brilliantly colourful. I suddenly realised I was moving my feet and swaying my shoulders to the drums.
The "passing of the peace" differed from any Anglican church I'd ever attended; we danced aroudn the sanctuary, grasping hands and singing loudly, everyone all smiles. For the Eucharist, the bride and groom left the church, shaking hands as they went, then re-entered with bottles of non-alcoholic wine and pieces of bread. The "President" (as he was called on the programme) announced that all believers were welcome to share in the holy communion, a rare thing here among churches that exclude all but members from taking communion. But most of the congregation still remained seated, singing, singing, singing.
By 12:30, I was hungry and told David so. He went outside to see if he could get the bread from our car. Alas, the driver had disappeared. By the time David returned, a large lady with a small boy had taken his seat on the bench beside me. (What could I do? We were already maxed out in the tiny space.) He told me he'd be outside. I lasted another ten minutes before I got entirely claustrophobic and got up to leave. Besides, there were three ladies who had just walked in and needed seats. David was in the shade of a tree, chatting amiably with two friends from medical school. I began to feel ill, so he talked to another of Iliya's brothers (none of whom were in the church for the ceremony) and said we were leaving soon. We walked back across the grassy field toward the primary school. I felt like I was out in the middle of the bush, like a missionary of old. The land was brown for the most part, and a few rocky hills rose from the fields around us.
When we reached the canopies and chairs set up for the reception in the primary school yard, Iliya's brother brought us a bowl full of meat and a jug of juice. He told us to sit inside the classroom and eat while we waited for the driver and car to return. The meat was sooo good. Half of it was chicken, and the other half was beef, which had been boiled and then fried. Yummy! We didn't dare try the juice, considering we didn't even have cups. David's brother James got us a sealed bottle of water since I was parched and our water was in the missing car. It was sweltering in the little classroom, but we'd been told to sit there, so we did. David didn't fit on the little wooden bench, so he sat on the attached desktop that stretched halfway across the room. The windows had no glass or screens, just wooden shutters that kept blowing open and shut in the wind. On the far wall to where we sat, there was a "blackboard," which consisted of a stretch of black paint covering part of the wall. No, I'm not sending my kids to government school, thank you very much.
At around 1:15, the driver returned with the car. I staggered out to it and collapsed in the backseat, guzzling our water. While David went to fetch James and say goodbye to Iliya's brothers, I shied away from a cluster of Fulani women who were gathered under the tree by which our car was parked. They spoke to me in Hausa, and I was embarrassed not to understand. When David returned, he told them that I was Fulani (since I have light skin) and then spoke his few words of Fulfulde to show off. Silly boy.
By 1:30, we were on the road. back along the same bumpy, rutted dirt road. Several cars passed us going the opposite direction, and we realised they were guests coming to attend Iliya's wedding reception. ("I'm only here for the food" comes to mind.) Once we reached the paved road, we all breathed a little more easily. We stopped for petrol, and I insisted we get a baggie of roasted groundnuts, as I was hungry at that moment for groundnuts. Then I asked for bananas, so we stopped and bought a humongous bunch of bananas (at least 20). Mmm mmm good.
We drove back without incident. As we drew near the plateau, I drank in the beauty of the stormy grey clouds ahead of us, almost black in contrast to the yellow-brown weeds of the savannah. As we climbed higher and higher, the temperature dropped several degrees, and rain began to patter the windows and windscreen. Total bliss. We were home by 4:00, just in time to pack an overnight bag and drive out to Miango for dinner.
So I've still never been to a Nigerian wedding reception. If I decide I'd like to go, I think I'll have to leave David behind. But another of his good friends is getting married in May, and this time it's far enough that we'll have to spend the night, so... who knows? Maybe I'll get to see what a reception is like after all!
The fact of the matter is that we were only in the service for about 45 minutes, even though it had begun an hour-and-a-half before we arrived and probably lasted another hour or two after we left. And that's only the church service.
David's brother James called around 9AM to tell us he was at the motor park (kind of like the free-for-all bus depot) and had found us a car and driver to charter. They arrived just after nine, and we piled in with a bottle of drinking water, two cinnamon rolls, some bread, a book, and my miniature electric fan (thanks to Scott Davidson). David had said the trip would take a little less than two hours, as it was in a village off the plateau.
Well, the problem was that we didn't actually know where the village was. We knew its name (Katsit) and that it was near this other town (Kafancan), but that was it. Iliya had told David to call when we reached Kafancan, and he'd send a driver and vehicle to come get us. Ha. By the time we reached the town, Iliya was already in his wedding, and thus didn't answer David's call. So we asked some policemen where Katsit was, and they directed us along the road another 10km. Finally, we saw a sign on the right advertising Iliya and Deborah's wedding. (The sign was attached to a small sapling that had been pulled across the road to make a sad-looking arch; our car barely fit beneath!) After driving a few moments on a bumpy dirt road, we asked again for the village of Katsit. "Keep going," we were told. So we did, for another half hour. The dirt road got bumpier and bumpier, and the driver we'd hired began to laugh about our situation, insisting we owed him more money than we'd settled on. We heartily agreed. We came across a man walking along the road and asked him (in Hausa) where Iliya's wedding was taking place. He directed us to the primary school. A few moments later, we turned into the primary school yard. We arrived around 11:45, purposely late, as the wedding had been supposed to start at 10AM. (Keep in mind Nigerian weddings never start on time.) David told the driver we'd want to leave by 2:30, and the driver agreed to wait rather than travel that dirt road again. We were met by Iliya's brother, who walked us across a grassy field to the tiny Anglican church.
David wanted to stand outside, but I told him I couldn't stand for three hours. So he found us seats on a wooden pew a few rows from the back of the church. I was shocked at how pleasant the temperature was (considering we were off the plateau in April, one of the hottest months of the year). We were just in time to hear the conclusion of the sermon and the beginning of the Eucharist. The women around us (we were sitting on the women's side of the church) were dancing to the music and doing the nasal high-pitched yip that I'd gotten sick of at my own wedding. The drums beat constantly for several minutes, and I found myself caught up in the celebratory mood. The women around me were of all ages and sizes, and their outfits were brilliantly colourful. I suddenly realised I was moving my feet and swaying my shoulders to the drums.
The "passing of the peace" differed from any Anglican church I'd ever attended; we danced aroudn the sanctuary, grasping hands and singing loudly, everyone all smiles. For the Eucharist, the bride and groom left the church, shaking hands as they went, then re-entered with bottles of non-alcoholic wine and pieces of bread. The "President" (as he was called on the programme) announced that all believers were welcome to share in the holy communion, a rare thing here among churches that exclude all but members from taking communion. But most of the congregation still remained seated, singing, singing, singing.
By 12:30, I was hungry and told David so. He went outside to see if he could get the bread from our car. Alas, the driver had disappeared. By the time David returned, a large lady with a small boy had taken his seat on the bench beside me. (What could I do? We were already maxed out in the tiny space.) He told me he'd be outside. I lasted another ten minutes before I got entirely claustrophobic and got up to leave. Besides, there were three ladies who had just walked in and needed seats. David was in the shade of a tree, chatting amiably with two friends from medical school. I began to feel ill, so he talked to another of Iliya's brothers (none of whom were in the church for the ceremony) and said we were leaving soon. We walked back across the grassy field toward the primary school. I felt like I was out in the middle of the bush, like a missionary of old. The land was brown for the most part, and a few rocky hills rose from the fields around us.
When we reached the canopies and chairs set up for the reception in the primary school yard, Iliya's brother brought us a bowl full of meat and a jug of juice. He told us to sit inside the classroom and eat while we waited for the driver and car to return. The meat was sooo good. Half of it was chicken, and the other half was beef, which had been boiled and then fried. Yummy! We didn't dare try the juice, considering we didn't even have cups. David's brother James got us a sealed bottle of water since I was parched and our water was in the missing car. It was sweltering in the little classroom, but we'd been told to sit there, so we did. David didn't fit on the little wooden bench, so he sat on the attached desktop that stretched halfway across the room. The windows had no glass or screens, just wooden shutters that kept blowing open and shut in the wind. On the far wall to where we sat, there was a "blackboard," which consisted of a stretch of black paint covering part of the wall. No, I'm not sending my kids to government school, thank you very much.
At around 1:15, the driver returned with the car. I staggered out to it and collapsed in the backseat, guzzling our water. While David went to fetch James and say goodbye to Iliya's brothers, I shied away from a cluster of Fulani women who were gathered under the tree by which our car was parked. They spoke to me in Hausa, and I was embarrassed not to understand. When David returned, he told them that I was Fulani (since I have light skin) and then spoke his few words of Fulfulde to show off. Silly boy.
By 1:30, we were on the road. back along the same bumpy, rutted dirt road. Several cars passed us going the opposite direction, and we realised they were guests coming to attend Iliya's wedding reception. ("I'm only here for the food" comes to mind.) Once we reached the paved road, we all breathed a little more easily. We stopped for petrol, and I insisted we get a baggie of roasted groundnuts, as I was hungry at that moment for groundnuts. Then I asked for bananas, so we stopped and bought a humongous bunch of bananas (at least 20). Mmm mmm good.
We drove back without incident. As we drew near the plateau, I drank in the beauty of the stormy grey clouds ahead of us, almost black in contrast to the yellow-brown weeds of the savannah. As we climbed higher and higher, the temperature dropped several degrees, and rain began to patter the windows and windscreen. Total bliss. We were home by 4:00, just in time to pack an overnight bag and drive out to Miango for dinner.
So I've still never been to a Nigerian wedding reception. If I decide I'd like to go, I think I'll have to leave David behind. But another of his good friends is getting married in May, and this time it's far enough that we'll have to spend the night, so... who knows? Maybe I'll get to see what a reception is like after all!
Secrets revealed
All right. Fine. The cat's out of the bag. (And I don't mean Zoë, either.)
People are starting to whisper, so I might as well just be straightforward. Yes, I'm pregnant! I'm only nine weeks along, though, and I was worried about telling people too soon in case something happened. But it's impossible to keep this kind of secret when you're sick so much. Besides, it's a very Nigerian thing to get pregnant immediately after getting married, so even if I weren't expecting, people would think I was simply because I've been married almost five months.
So yes, for anyone who cares, David and I are expecting November 14th, if all goes well. I'm tired of being sick (although the medicine David's giving me is amazing). I'm ready for my first trimester to be over!! Tonight I cooked for the first time in over two weeks. And I was horrified at the state of our fridge. Luckily, tomorrow's shopping day, so I can restock on all the things we're out of. Now I just have to clean out all the yucky food from two weeks ago. *shudder* Ugh.
I'm going to avoid writing about my pregnancy here, since that's not at all what this blog is for, so if you're interested, you can follow our progress at Baby Trek: The Next Generation (http://babynege.blogspot.com)
**For whatever reason, my computer won't let me input a link, so you can either (a) type it yourself (horror of horrors!) or (b) follow the link provided in my links at right. I'll try to use David's computer to fix the problem tomorrow.
April 06, 2007
Deluge
It rained yesterday.
And I don't mean your token April shower, as if God were saying, "I haven't forgotten you. I know it's been a very long dry season, but if you wait a few more months, I'll bring you some real rain."
It wasn't like that at all. No, this was a real rain. It poured on and off (mostly on) for four or five hours. And it had even rained the day before. (What?! In April?!?)
I was just resting in my parents' air-conditioned bedroom, reading (ironically) Love in the Driest Season when I heard the rain begin to patter on the roof. I switched off the AC and relocated to the living room. The sun was still streaming into the room, so I thought about looking for a rainbow, but instead I parked myself on a comfy chair and watched the rain. It was only drizzling at that point, and I loved to see it stream down from the roof. Should I put buckets out to catch the rain?
Then the thunder came rolling through, and flashes of lightning seared the sky. To the outlets! I was trained when I was just nine to unplug everything in a thunderstorm, and since I was the only one home yesterday, I scrambled around the house, unplugging computers, TV, VCR, microwave, the whole shebang. I want to blog about this, about how much I love the rain, but I couldn't because I didn't dare turn on a computer. Gusts of wind began to blow the rain through the louvered windows, so my next task was shutting them all. One window just refused to shut, so I took the cushions off the chair beneath it to keep them from getting drenched. I knew the drill.
I watched it rain for almost an hour before I fell asleep on the couch. It lightened at one point, and I thought, Well, that's it for today, but then it started up again. Ponds developed in the front yard, and when the rain dissipated briefly, they disappeared as quickly as they'd formed, soaked up by the parched soil.
I love the rain. I come from a part of the U.S. that's pretty dry - southern California - but I don't remember appreciating the rain until I came here. While my agemates in Los Angeles were spending hot sunny summer days making sand castles at the beach, I was reading Mandie, Bodie Thoene war stories, Nancy Drew mysteries, and eventually Steinbeck and Hemingway, while the rain pounded the red earth outside. Mm, what delicious memories, and what delights to anticipate now, with this summer's rains just around the corner. It's like a foretaste of heaven.
I hope it rains today, too.
And I don't mean your token April shower, as if God were saying, "I haven't forgotten you. I know it's been a very long dry season, but if you wait a few more months, I'll bring you some real rain."
It wasn't like that at all. No, this was a real rain. It poured on and off (mostly on) for four or five hours. And it had even rained the day before. (What?! In April?!?)
I was just resting in my parents' air-conditioned bedroom, reading (ironically) Love in the Driest Season when I heard the rain begin to patter on the roof. I switched off the AC and relocated to the living room. The sun was still streaming into the room, so I thought about looking for a rainbow, but instead I parked myself on a comfy chair and watched the rain. It was only drizzling at that point, and I loved to see it stream down from the roof. Should I put buckets out to catch the rain?
Then the thunder came rolling through, and flashes of lightning seared the sky. To the outlets! I was trained when I was just nine to unplug everything in a thunderstorm, and since I was the only one home yesterday, I scrambled around the house, unplugging computers, TV, VCR, microwave, the whole shebang. I want to blog about this, about how much I love the rain, but I couldn't because I didn't dare turn on a computer. Gusts of wind began to blow the rain through the louvered windows, so my next task was shutting them all. One window just refused to shut, so I took the cushions off the chair beneath it to keep them from getting drenched. I knew the drill.
I watched it rain for almost an hour before I fell asleep on the couch. It lightened at one point, and I thought, Well, that's it for today, but then it started up again. Ponds developed in the front yard, and when the rain dissipated briefly, they disappeared as quickly as they'd formed, soaked up by the parched soil.
I love the rain. I come from a part of the U.S. that's pretty dry - southern California - but I don't remember appreciating the rain until I came here. While my agemates in Los Angeles were spending hot sunny summer days making sand castles at the beach, I was reading Mandie, Bodie Thoene war stories, Nancy Drew mysteries, and eventually Steinbeck and Hemingway, while the rain pounded the red earth outside. Mm, what delicious memories, and what delights to anticipate now, with this summer's rains just around the corner. It's like a foretaste of heaven.
I hope it rains today, too.
April 04, 2007
Contentment is...
**feeling good after being sick for ten days. (Thanks, everyone, for all your encouragement!)
**tasting fresh challah spread with real butter. (I miss SAGA!)
**smelling rain on the wind blowing through the living room windows.
**listening to a tinny web feed of country music.
**hearing rolling thunder passing overhead, rumbling and booming.
**gazing at the enormous slate-grey clouds I know will rain somewhere if not here now.
**watching Star Trek Voyager episodes on a lazy afternoon.
**reconnecting with old friends I thought were long gone.
It's a plain Wednesday. Nothing exciting has happened. But it's been a good day so far. Why? The answer is contentment. It's not about what happens or what doesn't happen, what I have or what I'm missing. It's about how I see it, how I smell it, taste it, feel it, hear it. And just for an instant, it is perfect.
**tasting fresh challah spread with real butter. (I miss SAGA!)
**smelling rain on the wind blowing through the living room windows.
**listening to a tinny web feed of country music.
**hearing rolling thunder passing overhead, rumbling and booming.
**gazing at the enormous slate-grey clouds I know will rain somewhere if not here now.
**watching Star Trek Voyager episodes on a lazy afternoon.
**reconnecting with old friends I thought were long gone.
It's a plain Wednesday. Nothing exciting has happened. But it's been a good day so far. Why? The answer is contentment. It's not about what happens or what doesn't happen, what I have or what I'm missing. It's about how I see it, how I smell it, taste it, feel it, hear it. And just for an instant, it is perfect.
April 02, 2007
Would you like chicken with that?
It was a Chicken Saturday.
Mom bought 15 chickens from her friend Tassie at about $10 a chicken. Usually, Tassie sells the chickens live, and the buyer has to take care of slaughtering them. But Mom's a die-hard American and would rather pay extra to receive the chicken already dead, without its head and feet.
(Once, when I was 11, we went to a suya joint, where they grill meat kind of like kebabs. We ordered chicken suya because we'd never tried it. When we got home and sat down for dinner, the electricity went off (which was perfectly normal). One of us grabbed a piece of the suya, and when the lights came on right then, discovered she was holding the chicken head with its feet stuck in the beak!! After that, we never got chicken suya anymore.)
So Mom had these 15 chickens to butcher. David's a pro at cutting chickens, so we offered to come over and help. Together, Mom and David cut up ten chickens, which took several hours. Meanwhile, Mom cooked the leftover carcasses, and afterward, I pulled off the meat (joined in the end by David and Mom). You know I've been pretty sick, so I wasn't sure I could handle the procedure, but it wasn't so bad. David tried to give me a chicken anatomy lesson, but I pleaded out of it. It's so much easier to think of a chicken as “meat” than as a dead animal opened for dissection. I'd rather think of the kidneys and lungs and bottom as “Zoë scraps,” thank you very much.
By the end of the day, we'd finished all ten chickens. Mom packaged the butchered parts into Ziplocs and packed them into the freezer, and froze the other five chickens whole. The leftover bones and inside bits went into the dog food Mom was making. We played a game of Cities & Knights to relax and had supper of tuna salad to get our minds off chicken!
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