This has been one whale of a tough year. Still is tough, to be honest, but I'm trying to overcome.
And here come the holidays, oh my. I no longer wish to be asked to join anyone's celebrations because those just make me feel even more isolated than I already am. Crowds make me confused and uncomfortable even on a normal day. So I don't mind being on my own. Truly. And I really like choosing my own odd little "borrowed" holidays (like Tanbata when I borrow a stalk of bamboo from my neighbor's yard and I light sparklers after dark).
But this year, I have not celebrated any day at all (not even my own birthday) because I could not. There was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to celebrate with. And I was desperately sad. But I was also often just plain hungry.
It was all too hard, too shaming, too much of too little until I just sort of collapsed in the middle for awhile. I have found it very hard to recover my bounce.
This month, I vowed to change when Guy Fawkes Day (another one of my borrows) came around. Sometimes we have to change our own minds while we change our circumstances.
I splashed out $1.35 (yes, I went without something else to do so--no laundry soap now at my house) at the dollar store for oatmeal to make parkin (a chewy, oaty sort of gingerbread, traditional in some parts of the UK for Guy Fawkes). But I could not afford the syrup the recipe requires. Instead, I used persimmon butter that I had made when neighbors gifted me with a bag of fruit. It was lovely parkin, and I enjoyed it. That the only celebration I had but at least it was an act of defiance in the name of hope.
Then I had Thanksgiving staring me down.
What to do? My pantry is still quite bare, and even the local food bank could not be of assistance. In fact, when I went there last month I received a notice that they were low on food and that I could not expect help again for more than six weeks. They had little enough to give me that day: six cans of veggies, two loaves of out-dated bread, and a jar of peanut butter.
They also had a huge bunch of fresh collard greens that were loaded with cabbage worms. The worker apologized profusely and said I didn't have to take it but I told her that I was grateful, that bugs were natural, that I could cope. And I did cope (despite some screaming and squealing as I cleaned the leaves) because I was too honest-to-God hungry to say no. I made a dozen servings of collards to freeze, and am enjoying them while sternly refusing to recall the worms. You might be surprised to know how desperately you wish for anything green to eat when you have had to do without.
So, Thanksgiving.....I've been lucky enough to be able to spend about $5 on food every week this month so I had a tiny bit of this and a little bit of that: a couple of onions, two very small potatoes, eggs, and home-made frozen leftovers. I made a plan based on that bounty, and then I went to the dollar store to spend $3 on the rest: a sale-priced can of creamed corn for 33 cents, a can of jellied cranberry for $1, and (my big splash-out expense) $1.50 on sale-priced cream cheese.
Was my supper any good?
Yes, of course! And part of what made it good was the effort of planning to make something out of very little.
Celery with cream cheese
Salt-roasted potatoes
Boiled onion with cream cheese sauce
Dressing with cucumber (like stuffing but vegetarian)
Corn pudding
Cranberry sauce
Persimmon hand pies
.....and the inevitable mug of tea
A week or so ago, I had made half a dozen small casseroles of cucumber dressing when I found a bag of clearance sale cucumbers for $1 at the grocery and I used one of the loaves of bread from the food bank to put it together with. It would have been better with some cheese but there was no money for a big purchase like cheese (believe me, anything that costs $2 is a big purchase). I've also got quite a few stuffed cucumbers in the freezer--yes, you can cook those things. Our ancestors certainly did.
The persimmon hand pies were made from the fruit that my neighbor gifted me. I'm still trying to use up the last of those persimmons! And I'm not complaining--I'm grateful.
There really was such bounty from small things!
What I did not expect was that a friend from a local church would show up on Thanksgiving morning with a bag of food. More bounty: canned corn and beets and aparagus (oh my!) and water chestnuts (yes!) and olives. Rice, beans, a box of pasta (all of which I had been out of). A jar of pickles. She said that it was all she could find from donations at the church. I don't know if she understood how touched I was or how much this means or that I truly was filled with gratitude.
Yes, I cried. And I began to think ahead to Christmas supper. I suspect that I'll be saving the asparagus and the water chestnuts for that. Maybe the pickles and olives, too. I'll work hard to imagine something special.
It's nice to have something to look forward to. I could not have gotten this far without the kindnessof friends and neighbors.
Life is good.
We have to remember to live in hope.
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