The most spiritually influential person I ever knew

This is not me and Aunt Reva

Today, in 2013 I pray to her for inspiration and advice.  I lean on her to nudge the circumstance gods of my personal friends and family.  She is an angel, who, when she was living and breathing the air I breathe, had amazing success promoting the law of love in my universe.  I didn't realize it when I was little girl spending summers in her Mt Pleasant, Texas country domain, that she would always and forever be making an important contribution to my shift in consciousness, which actually began at her funeral in 1992.  

She is Reva M. Jackson, affectionately known in my family as Aunt Revie. I never heard her fuss or disagree with or argue about anything.  She wasn't a hero or saint, or a wild woman with something to gain or prove by opening up her home and life.  She was a crafter and a seamstress, a country chef, and snuff dippin' organist whose self image didn't seem to exist.  She had a freezer filled with goodies ready to cook ready to eat.  She was a gatherer.  And her house could have stood to be a little less rickety than it actually was, but it it was always country clean and inviting.. At night, there was an occasional roach and mouse, but I remember the mouse traps and cans of bug spray and fly swatters much like I remember the snuff and spit cups conspicuously placed about.  She had a shit ton of dusted old books and a little fat sheep dog named Happy.  Her guest bedroom rooms were haunted, as personally experienced by me.  I could not take a nap during the day without the spirit of my great-grandmother hoovering over me.  I never knew what that sensation over my body was until adulthood, when I mentioned this to my mother.  I was never afraid, but always annoyed.  When I wanted to take a nap it was because I was tired, and this thing was determined to get my attention and keep me awake. It would eventually lose it's grip on me and I could drip into a comfy sleep.  Forgetting about it until the next nap, and never mentioning it to anyone.

Aunt Reva imparted wisdom and inspiration without using too many words, that always invited a personal relationship and memorable personal experiences with her.  She was very different than my grandmother, her sister. And my mother loved her, dearly.  Even more than she loved her own mother, I think.  It seemed to me that Aunt Reva was differently blessed with the spirit and intellect to divine the ability to live in harmony and draw others to her.  She was a Baptist who married a Methodist.  She and her husband, Uncle Marion, slept in the same room but went to different churches on Sundays.  As a child, I never understood the discourse and gossip that Methodist thing created behind her back.  Well.. more so behind his back.  He was a unrelated unicorn married to our angel.  If Aunt Reva was ok with the arrangement, why couldn't everyone else be?

She was 85 when she passed away, and today she'd be 106 years old as of April 1st.  She might have made it, had it not been for those strokes, as she's got a brother who just celebrated his milestone 101st birthday, and a sister, my grandmother who is 92 in August this year.   

I wish my daughter could have known Aunt Revie, personally. There are times when we all need that one person who knows what to do like a very laid back high priestess who would never lay on hands or lecture, and she never wrote a book or banged you over the head with the One she read daily.  She was a poet and a scholar living in relative quiet and quaint anonymity, knowing all that she knew from where she stood would bless me (and others), and my daughter, after all.

Her life was greatly lived and I wish she was still here to get a letter in the regular mail from me and write one back.  She is the reason I still buy postage stamps to this day.  I don't know if she'd use email if she were alive today.  But if she did, she would love the innovation and magic of it for what it is and does for humanity.  She would probably Skype and Youtube in order to remain active in the lives everyone distant, but I know for a fact, she would still write letters.  

Well.. I was thinking about her and I wanted to dedicate some space to her name and legacy.  When I think of her, I feel like she's the one above all who served to liberate me from the dogmas of my upbringing and culture that constricted me.  I'll try to find a picture of her and post it, too.

Is there a person besides Jesus and God who influences you, even if they are no longer around?  How so?  I would love to hear from others on this.  

 Anyone can teach you about love... but I can make you good at it!

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No sex. No drugs & booze. No videos on MTV.

All these years,  it's been nothing short of magical watching her become who she is today.  Every discovery she made as a girl opened her eyes to the possibilities of the bigger world around her.  Every triumph she knew made her a little more confident, every disappointment made her perhaps a little more sensitive.  Every heart that loved her that she loved in return has shaped her and molded her and created for her a place in this world that no one else could ever fill.   She is a woman to admire.  She is a one of a kind daughter who has made me really very proud.

Which is why last night and today are so beautiful for me!   She called last night with lots of yawns and introspect.  This past week was Spring Break for her and no, she didn't spend it in Miami or Padre Island.  Let's just say .. it was a wellness week filled with moving beyond fears (for them) and alienation (for her).  She spent a week with a family she didn't know she had.    Now she's got a new way to be herself.  And that's wonderful.

Happy weekend from the happiest mom on the planet!

 Anyone can teach you about love... but I can make you good at it!

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Comfort Food for Writers

I had no choice but to opt out of full time employment into full time college.  Being a veteran sometimes has its rewards, and I found out about my veteran reward in the nick of time!  Last day of work:  January 18th, first day of class:  January 22nd.   Talk about jumping through hoops and doing back flips.  College staff are least helpful.  They're so involved in the process that they don't really look up to see that you're not 18.  Professors seem to take for granted that just because you write well you know what you're doing, when you really haven't a clue.  I have to plead with mine for feedback.. on content and format, at least.  Which is why I lack confidence now that I've got to write a 7 to 10 page term paper.  I know.. I know.. it could be 15 pages.  I spent the greater part of spring break writing a 4 page paper on Cabaret, a musical presented by the college theater group.  Writing that was extremely time consuming because... I write papers, essays and short writes like I blog.  From my heart. Which makes it take hours, sometimes days, for me to pound out one blog article and hit Publish. And then after it's been live and online for an hour or a day, I often go back and revise it.  Not sure how appropriate that is, but I don't care, that's just how it works for me.  I'm trying to fine tune this need for perfection when it comes to college papers.  So I resolve not to care when I get to the point - where I really don't care whether it makes sense or not.  I opt for less rather than more, once I approach that mental roadblock of no return. I've only turned in a couple of assignments where I've said in the paper or in comments to the profession.. "listen.. I can't do any more with this." - Just gimme my F.

Writing on demand for college professors is a mind blast.  Quite frankly South Oak Cliff high school didn't prepare me for it back in the day, and I sure as heck don't remember what didn't stick.  So.. I learn to do this by-the-numbers.  At this point, I'm sure I'll pass every class because they all seem to like the way I write (my voice), but doing it right has just now become my goal.  And perhaps I am already doing it right and don't realize it.  A good enough teacher would help me know this without me even asking.  I'm longing for a good enough teacher, I suppose.

Last night, as I was digging around for 5-6 hours on the internet looking for information on how to write an outline and proposal for my anthropology term paper.. I had major stress about it and needed comfort food.  I had none.  Not even a Hershey's Kiss in the freezer.  And this stress came at a time after I had home made chicken gorditas for dinner and decided I'll never eat chicken again.. Organic or not!  I looked at the clock and realized it was too late for a fast food run for onion rings or chicken tikka masala.  And if I give up chicken will I have to give up eggs?  I love eggs more!  I haven't decided on that yet.  It's too much trouble to prepare meat and sweets like I did when my daughter lived here full time.  I've got so much homework to do now, and I just don't trust fast food joints and restaurants anymore, regardless of their freebies and offers to give them another try.  So comfort food will have to come from quick and easy to prepare super nutritious foods that are grown and not raised.. except for fish and an occasional rib-eye.

So here is a new comfort food I whipped up for breakfast this morning.  It's a breakfast rice pilaf recipe I got from the March 2013 issue of Outside magazine.. made with wild rice, mango, apples, cranberries I substituted for the pear I ate as a snack yesterday, maple & apple syrup, ground cinnamon & nutmeg- I didn't have any ground ginger, a pinch of salt, and I used grape seed oil instead of olive oil to sorta stir-fry the rice.. Just prepare this like you would a box of rice-a-roni, heat oil stir rice for 3-4 minutes, add spices, then add 2 tablespoons of syrup, add only half the fruit, add 3/4 to 1 2/4 cups water (depending on how much rice you added), bring to boil.  Lower heat and simmer until rice is just tender.  Add remaining fruit.  Cover.  Let sit for a minute or so.  Serve.  

THIS IS SO VERY DELICIOUS & GOOD FOR YOU!

 Anyone can teach you about love... but I can make you good at it!

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My week long love affair with my heart

I used to think of my heart strictly as this mechanical processor that instinctively kept me alive by divine order.  Since I've been a mom though, I've come to realize that my beating heart is more than a dynamic machine but a diorama, a meditation starting someplace in the past leading someplace to the future, with a very strong hold on the present.. not only sustaining me, but guiding me, and even thinking for me.  But this big little heart of mine has a beat so fast that it needs a morning and evening cocktail of little pills to calm it down.  Before giving birth and then learning all of this stuff about systolic pressure and diastolic pressure and pulse rates, I had no reason to notice my heart beat at all.

For all that it is and all that it does, this lover of lovely things & life-giver that is my heart, cannot keep doing good without my cooperation.  Like this past week I was totally out of HBP medication because my old VA doctor erroneously discontinued my prescription, and it took an act of Congress to get a new one.. And when I swallowed that last dose, I knew that my heart beat and my blood pressure were only as good as that last pill I took.  And in a weeks time, though, my meal planning and cooking went from reasonably smart nutrition to heart beat support and performance nutrition.   I had to go beyond exercising and eating right to embracing whole foods for a significant purpose.. Like a fever dream with vivid revelations of me laid up in some cardiac unit or buried dead, leaving my college freshman to pursue her degree without me and predeceasing my mother, I was overly concerned that something bad could happen fast and perhaps silently, if I didn't do this right.  I never knew what a pain it is to really take care of the heart.. 

I spent half a day reading magazines and nutrition sites to figure out what else would help me lower my blood pressure naturally then I went shopping..

And as an  enthusiast of R&R, B&Bs, and hitting lots of healthy Zs, I was needing to see a heart beat.. to get better sleep. To meditate and visualize the hows and the whys worked wonders after I found this very helpful and educational heart video.  I was able to close my eyes and get restful sleep, feeling every hard and dedicated beat at about 120 laborious bpms.  Waay too many, even for me.

I don't mean to over complicate this.  I just really needed to figure out a plan to keep alive while waiting for my medication to arrive.  I seriously believed it could be the end, and I did take steps to make sure my house was in order, just in case.  Surely.. Hypertension stage 2 is just that serious.  That's all I'm trying to say.  And I wasn't willing to stress out for quicker cure by going back to the wretched  Dallas VA.  But I'm glad somebody got it together enough to send my medication via UPS.  I found it on my front door yesterday afternoon, and by now, I've taken four doses and my blood pressure is much lower.  But I am committed to saying farewell to the easy way of managing my blood pressure.  Don't get me wrong. I'll refill my prescriptions until I don't need to, and I'll find a doctor that's not on the government payroll.  And I'll definitely minimally spend my money on shakes and pills and nutrition bars and such.  For I do believe in my heart of hearts that my heart and my life are worth the things I do for it and the things I don't do.

(Forthcoming: My take on the Body By Visalus 90 Day Challenge.)

 Anyone can teach you about love... but I can make you good at it!

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