feel­ing good

How often do you acknowl­edge that you’ve made a mis­take, and how much time do you spend beat­ing your­self up, imag­in­ing how you might have done it dif­fer­ently, feel­ing inad­e­quate, feel­ing bad, regretful?

On the other hand, how often do you take the time, lit­er­ally stop doing any­thing else and take the time, to admit that you’ve done some­thing well, that you’ve set your­self a chal­lenge and come out on the other side, that some­thing you’ve set your mind to has been a success?

If you’re any­thing like me, the pro­por­tion of the first to the sec­ond is painfully high.  Why is it so much eas­ier to take blame than to take credit?  Even “take credit” isn’t quite right.  “Take plea­sure” in a job well done, an accom­plish­ment to feel good about?

Last week I was “grad­u­ated” from my first social work fam­ily with the divine organ­i­sa­tion Home-Start.  Since it’s an entirely con­fi­den­tial ser­vice for sup­port­ing fam­i­lies at risk, I can’t tell you any­thing about “my” fam­ily, nor can I show you any pho­tos of them.  So I’m going to inter­sperse my happy account with some lovely autum­nal scenes from our vil­lage life, and leave you to imagine.

You might remem­ber that last Jan­u­ary, I began my train­ing with Home-Start, a part-charitable organ­i­sa­tion, part privately-funded, designed really to CATCH fam­i­lies with small chil­dren — at least one under five years of age — at risk of falling into despair.  Of course despair can come in many guises: post-partum depres­sion, mul­ti­ple births with­out enough sup­port, divorce, job loss, bereave­ment while try­ing to raise a family.

In this won­der­ful coun­try, the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor have long recog­nised that CATCH­ING prob­lems when they are man­age­able, keep­ing them from descend­ing into a spi­ral of chaos and hope­less­ness, saves san­ity, saves fam­i­lies, saves money.  Amaz­ing peo­ple called “health vis­i­tors” turn up after par­ents with new babies leave hos­pi­tal.  They visit homes to assess how those new par­ents are cop­ing, and they report back to GPs when they flag a problem.

And then the GPs know that the Home-Start organ­i­sa­tion is there to help, for FREE.  Home-Start’s trained vol­un­teers kick into gear.  So after my 12-week train­ing (really gru­elling and upset­ting at times, with vis­its from pro­fes­sion­als from the most har­row­ing walks of life: parole offi­cers, spousal abuse police task forces, child abuse coun­sel­lors) I was intro­duced to “my fam­ily.”  All I can tell you about them is that an ill­ness had changed their lives.  Every mem­ber of the house­hold was tee­ter­ing on the brink of real life-changing depres­sion.  The whole house­hold lacked breath­ing space, were too upset to lis­ten to each other, too tired to offer any sort of sup­port to each other.

Over the course of the next five months, I vis­ited once a week.  Just once a week.  For two or three hours.  At first I won­dered why I was there, why a friend or a babysit­ter wouldn’t pro­vide the exact same func­tion of two hours’ com­pany and a lis­ten­ing ear.

As the weeks went by and the dark, short days of win­ter blos­somed into the warm, cheer­ful days of spring and then sum­mer, I watched “my fam­ily” blos­som too.  The hard­est thing to learn was how not to cry when some­one you care about is sob­bing.  It was des­per­ately hard the first time.  It was also hard to see fam­ily con­flicts push­ing and tear­ing peo­ple apart, and merely sit and lis­ten.  It was dif­fi­cult to leave at the end of each visit when I sensed — for what­ever rea­son — that it had been help­ful for me to be there and it would be won­der­ful if I could just stay.

But grad­u­ally I realised that no one was cry­ing any­more.  There was a sub­tle shift from com­ing into a house of sad­ness to a house of recov­ery.  Peo­ple laughed!  Every­one got involved in the games and play I sug­gested, instead of just one or two.  As the days got longer, there was a pal­pa­ble sense of nor­mal­ity and cheer return­ing to the fam­ily.  There were can­celled appoint­ments — won­der­ful! — because of new bal­let lessons, new play­dates.  Real life was com­ing back.

Of course the result of this beau­ti­fully sat­is­fy­ing devel­op­ment was, for me, good­bye.  I could feel it com­ing.  My super­vi­sor explained, “We will make this work with the fam­ily.  Every­one knew you were com­ing in tem­porar­ily to help them through a cri­sis, and the cri­sis is over.  It’s like giv­ing a child a pet know­ing that some­day it will die, and that that’s part of life, say­ing good­bye.  You did your job, and now you need to do it for another family.”

Good­byes were said.  Cards and lit­tle gifts and flow­ers changed hands, many, many hugs were given and received.  Most won­der­ful of all were long talks about the jour­ney from the dark days (“life will never be that hard again”) to the nor­mal life the fam­ily lives now.

And what on earth did I do?  I just WENT, and lis­tened, and played.  Impor­tantly, the fam­ily felt I didn’t JUDGE.  Home-Start vol­un­teers appar­ently have a cer­tain qual­ity of serv­ing as some­thing dif­fer­ent from a friend, more approach­ing a fam­ily mem­ber before whom the peo­ple in need don’t have to PRE­TEND or apol­o­gise or do any­thing that’s just beyond them at the time.

As soon as I cycled away into the sun­set — lit­er­ally! — I had to make a con­scious deci­sion not to start pulling back from feel­ing GOOD, from say­ing to myself, “How impor­tant could that have been, any­way?  Don’t take your­self so seri­ously.”  It WAS impor­tant.  Why is it so much eas­ier to blame one­self for mis­takes than to feel good about suc­cess?  Why should we let the blame last so much longer, wake our­selves up in the night with doubts, when the good feel­ings that suc­cess bring are as fleet­ing as a dis­play of autumn leaves, just blow­ing away before we have a chance to appre­ci­ate them?

I am absolutely deter­mined to reverse that ten­dency.  My new school-year res­o­lu­tion is to take the time to feel good when I deserve it, and, I hope, to pass along that life skill to my daugh­ter who already shows signs of inher­it­ing my ten­dency to set aside tak­ing sat­is­fac­tion in favor of tak­ing blame.  She’s young enough to change.  It’s really not about tak­ing “credit” but more tak­ing the oppor­tu­nity to feel good when you HAVE done good.  It’s an enor­mous priv­i­lege to be able to help any­one, and tak­ing a moment to savour that should be part of our emo­tional menu, I think.

Speak­ing of change, of course, there is also change-ringing to make me happy!  The bells have been par­tic­u­larly giv­ing lately, all of us hav­ing fun ring­ing at a wed­ding over the week­end, enjoy­ing the sight of the glo­ri­ous chapel, dat­ing from 1215, dec­o­rated for the festivities.

We’ve all been learn­ing “Plain Hunt on Seven,” which means fol­low­ing a (to me!) com­pli­cated pat­tern of bells chang­ing posi­tion, speed­ing up, slow­ing down, pro­duc­ing the unearthly math­e­mat­i­cal music of bell­ring­ing.  That bellcham­ber is one of my favorite places on earth, scene of so many scary fail­ures, but then again so many moments of fun and achievement.

Change, too, has been in the air with our diets.  I’ve been pretty much wheat-free for about two months now, turn­ing my back on bread and pasta in favor of lit­tle rice crack­ers, rice itself, wrap­ping things in let­tuce!  Do you have left­over ham you’d like to cel­e­brate?  Try my fab­u­lous ham salad.  Now, keep in mind that here in the UK, if you ask for ham salad you’ll get just that: ham, and salad.  If you want the slightly creamy, savoury mix­ture we Amer­i­cans hap­pily grew up with, but in a much lighter, less gloppy ver­sion, ask for “ham may­on­naise.”  More hap­pily, make your own.

What I’ve been chal­leng­ing myself to do is take dishes tra­di­tion­ally call­ing for wheat and think out­side the grain box.  Take Nigella Lawson’s recent mouth-watering sug­ges­tion for a pasta dish, spaghetti with olives and anchovies.  Why not use the sauce as a salad dress­ing?  I con­cocted a slightly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of her sauce and my dears, with some crunchy Red Gem let­tuce, rocket and tiny water­cress, it was ADDICTIVE.

Olive and Anchovy Dressing

(makes LOTS)

1 cup green pit­ted olives

4 anchovy fil­lets in olive oil

1/4 cup pine nuts

1 tbsp capers, rinsed if stored in salt

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1–2 cloves gar­lic (depend­ing on how much you love it!)

2 large hand­fuls flat-leaf parsley

2 tbsps mayonnaise

enough olive oil to achieve the con­sis­tency you like: per­haps 1/2 cup

Put every­thing in a food proces­sor and blend steadily until emulsified.

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This past week has been happy for me as well because believe it or not, the school autumn hol­i­day has arrived!  As always, look­ing up in the mid­dle of the after­noon and see­ing Avery’s shin­ing head across the room is a won­der­ful thing.  It’s lovely to have her home to make lunch for, to lis­ten to her var­i­ous enthu­si­asms (the evils of trickle-down eco­nom­ics, the beauty of learn­ing Russ­ian!), to get her late-night requests for “pop­corn, if it’s not too much trou­ble!” and to make a choco­late cake for her.  She’s not wheat-free by any means!  This last-minute inven­tion got rave reviews.  Try it warmed slightly with a slather­ing of but­ter, for break­fast.  Avery says it’s just fine.

White and Milk Choco­late Chip Cake

(serves 8)

2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour

3/4 cup sugar (caster)

1 tbsp bak­ing powder

pinch of fresh-grated nutmeg

pinch salt

1 egg

3/4 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup milk

5 tbsps but­ter, melted

hand­ful white choco­late chips or buttons

hand­ful milk choco­late chips or buttons

Heat oven to 400F/200C.   But­ter and flour a loaf tin.

In a large bowl, stir together with a fork the flour, sugar, bak­ing pow­der, nut­meg and salt, com­bin­ing thor­oughly.  In a small bowl, beat the egg.  Stir in the cream, milk and but­ter and blend well.  Stir the wet mix­ture into the dry, stir­ring only until they are com­bined, not overmixing.

Pour the bat­ter into the loaf tin and sprin­kle on the choco­lates.  Of course, you could sub­sti­tute semi-sweet choco­late, or but­ter­scotch chips.  I made this cake with what I had in my pantry!  Bake for about 40 min­utes, check­ing then to see if the cen­ter has cooked.  Bake until a knife inserted into the cen­ter of the cake comes out clean.

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She’s off now, though, on her own to Sicily with her fel­low Greek and Latin stu­dents, for a week.  She reports a wasp-infested hotel room and swel­ter­ing tem­per­a­tures, and sounds com­pletely happy with both so far.  And, “It doesn’t look like Italy!”  We’ll get her back in the mid­dle of the night on Sat­ur­day, full, one expects, of stories.

In the mean­time we’re enjoy­ing the foggy days of late Octo­ber, com­plete with scary spiders…

Would you believe you can walk a block from our Lon­don home and enjoy this beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing reser­voir?  I know that all too soon, in the next week or so, all the leaves will be stripped from the trees, but for now I am enjoy­ing the vista.

I sim­ply love the quiet evenings when Avery and John have gone to sleep, sit­ting up with a cup of lemon and cin­na­mon tea, a cosy mys­tery, an alpaca cardi­gan to but­ton up around my neck in the chilly bed­time breeze.  Feel­ing good.