Jenny Wren

All the Things My Mother Never Knew

No parent is so blind as the one who refuses to see.

My mom wasn’t home over the weekend, but no one would believe that if they were listening in on her phone conversation. It was a Monday morning, sometime in the fall of 1993, and my mother was on the phone with her sister, rewriting the narrative of my life.

Every weekend since we had moved to this god forsaken desert three years prior, she had flown back to our old home in another state. It was my dad’s gift to her, a promise he had made when he took this new job in New Mexico. His wife would continue to spend her weekends playing soccer with friends and visiting family.

I don’t think I minded too much, really. My mom and I did not get along. Somehow, I knew I wasn’t the child she had really wanted. I wasn’t a boy, I wasn’t sporty enough, I didn’t live to compete.

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Good Food Sometimes Means Doing Hard Things

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 30-Dec 6

Winter often drives me indoors more frequently, which in turn means I spend more time in the kitchen. This is an odd December, though. Although I still find myself in the kitchen most days, it is at the comfort of my desk with a pen and paper in front of me, instead of before the stove and dusted with flour.

In other words, cooking has been a chore rather than a delight. An odd December indeed.

It is easy to compromise our goals and our plans, to literally go for broke, when the body and mind rebel against what must be done. It is easy to frame poor decisions as giving oneself grace or as self-care.

Compromising values, giving up on goals, and taking the easy way is not self-care, no matter what your influencer-guru tells you. Hurting your future self is never self-care. To throw away money — and the life energy we spend acquiring it — on food choices that go against our values and drain our wallets is not self-care.

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Localize Your Feed and Free Your Mind

Less News is good news

The alarm goes off, and I grope for my phone in the dark. As soon as I silence the auditory noise, I begin filling my eyes with visual noise. The daily scroll has begun. I cycle through headlines on the news feed, helpfully curated by algorithms that no human hand controls.

When that becomes too much, I flip over to social media and begin reading the headlines and hot takes regurgitated by a million countless cogs in a machine that is imprisoning us all. By the time I roll out of bed an hour later, my brain is filled with rot I can’t control, and I have lost all faith in not just humanity, but my own future.

This isn’t some dystopian fantasy; this is the reality for millions, if not billions, of people around the world. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be.

The 24-hour news cycle has created a trap that leads to personal paralysis. If everything is so screwed, then why bother? If you still have the energy to bother, to try to effect change, then where to start? For too many of us, where we start and where we end is by banging angrily on a keyboard. Adding to the noise, but not creating anything of substance. Certainly not creating any solutions.

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Navigating the Mama-Drama Without Losing My Mind

Sorry, this isn’t my battle anymore

“Mom, they fought until after midnight. I’m so tired.”

I reread the text, my stomach clenching with anxiety. My 24-year-old son, Will, was my man on the ground at Mom’s house. He was staying there along with my sister and her two young kids.

I was so, so sorry, and I let him know.

I had booked a hotel room for myself, my younger son, Andy, and his girlfriend, Jess. It wasn’t in the budget to book a room, but a gut feeling told me it was the best option.

Always trust your gut

This trip had been planned for months. We visit my mother every summer, but this year was going to be a big one. My youngest son, Andy, planned to introduce his girlfriend, whom he has been dating for two years, to his grandmother.

He was excited. I was apprehensive.

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Eating Through Life’s Seasons

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 23–29

Life, much like the wheel of the year, is an ongoing cascade of different seasons. Usually, we cycle through busy seasons and slower ones, but recently, life around here has felt like one busy season after another. True, each one is busy for different reasons and in different ways, but busy nonetheless.

It makes cooking even more challenging when one has mixed feelings about the winter holidays. The dominant culture around me celebrates three main winter holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Of the three, the only one that raises no misgivings in my heart is New Year’s Eve and day.

I struggle with the colonial roots of Thanksgiving and the Christian appropriation of various solstice/midwinter celebrations that evolved into our modern Christmas. I am sure I am not the only one who finds this challenging.

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Go Outside Every Damn Day

It’s not a choice, it’s an imperative

What do rain, sun, and snow have in common? If you said they are all types of weather, then you are only half right. The full answer is that they are all great types of weather for being outside.

That’s right, rain and snow can be just as lovely as sunshine.

Not the outdoorsy type? Who cares. Is it raining? So what. You have an overriding fear of moths? Grow up.

I’m not saying this to be unkind. I’m saying this because the kindest thing I can do is to tell you to go outside nearly every damn day. This isn’t about some study making the daily news rounds, although there are more than a few of those. It’s not even about vitamin D. Well, not entirely.

It’s about humility, awe, and being true to your most primal inner human nature.

It’s about being fully alive.

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I Am Not Special

These four words will save your life

Chances are, if your life was anything like mine, you were told by someone at some point that you were special. Usually, it’s a parent, grandparent, or other adult who first says something like this to a child. Sometimes it’s a teacher. Sometimes it is twaddle from an esteem-building children’s story.

“You’re special. You can do anything you want.”

“You can be anything you like when you grow up, because you are special!”

“Don’t worry about what that bully said; they are just jealous because you are so special.”

“You aren’t like the other girls (or guys), you’re special.”

However it is worded, it somehow seeps into our psyche. The world is comprised of special individuals like us, and then there is everyone else. For some reason, we never stop to consider that everyone is walking around feeling special.

Everyone thinks they are the main character. Yet, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that none of us is the main character. Main characters live happily or unhappily ever after. All of us die at the end of our story.

No ever after.

Nada.

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Tight Belts, Full Bellies

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 16–22

Although it is both physically and figuratively impossible for one to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, it is possible to tighten one’s belt. Whether that is a good thing depends upon the individual’s need, of course. In general, though, it does all of us a bit of good to tighten our belts periodically — whether necessary or not.

When life becomes too easy for humans, we begin doing stupid things — like running monopolies, hanging out on private torture islands, and engaging in senseless cruelty against the underprivileged. I know I don’t want to begin on that path.

For many in the US, the end of November is the theoretical release of said belt, allowing it to stretch to its utmost as we stuff ourselves with good food and cheer (and, for some, a lot of shopping). Of course, this loosening of the belts often continues into December. This is why so many of us wake up on January first feeling desolate, indebted, and afraid. For the fortunate, there are credit card bills to deal with. For the less fortunate, being short on rent or another important bill may be their lot.

Well, let’s say balderdash to that!

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My Life With Spiders

Caught In Charlotte’s Web

It is still too dark to check on her.

Last night, I watched helplessly as she rushed to bundle up her home in the failing light, as rain lashed down and the wind blew. She hadn’t quite succeeded by the time I closed the blinds, but she was huddled up in a relatively safe and protected spot.

As dawn finally breaks over the eastern ridge, I hazard a peek through the blinds. Her home is immaculate, and she is perched comfortably in the center, her head down and waiting. I see the beginning haze of a cloud of gnats rising from the stinking laurel shrub below, and I am relieved that she will not go hungry today.

I call her Charlotte, for the obvious reason that she is an orb weaver spider, and I was one of the many children in this world who cried over E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Her home is a web that she has spun across the outside of my dining room window, mere feet from where I sit and write most days.

Autumn in the Pacific Northwest is aptly named “spider season” by the locals.

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Mad for Mould

A love letter to an unsung garden hero

Winter brings with it a green carpet. The November rains return in earnest to tell us winter is on her way. The grasses, dry and brown from summer heat, come alive in the cool dampness. Moss creeps over bare earth, ensuring every footstep is cushioned by emeralds.

Along with the green comes the leaves, tumbling down to land like jewels upon the lawn. Yellow, red, orange, and tawny brown compete for pride of place. Those leaves that still cling to skeletal branches stand out beautifully against the cold, grey skies. It is like a treasure has been spilt upon the ground from the benevolent heavens above.

In fact, it is the lawns and not the streets that are paved in gold. For the gardener, each leaf is more valuable than one would dare imagine.

It is my task on this late November day to collect the leaves.

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