Hospitality

I’m not that good at guests.  

I don’t mind living with people, because the actual conversations are short and casual, and anything beyond that is usually something real – an authentic encounter because one of us truly has something to say.  It’s the extended but shallow social encounters I can’t really do.

I tend to panic badly and go in for a lot of handwringing beforehand. What will I say to them? What if I inadvertently say something stupid/rude/insulting/inappropriate? How will I survive them? When will they go? Can I run away? Could there be any kind of feasible scenario where I could just get in my car and drive . . . and keep driving . . . and . . . how much money have I got in my bank account? Would I ever be able to come home? Who would look after my beautiful mama if I went and never came back?  That sort of thing.

Then, what to feed them? I raised five children and every day used to be like a school canteen.  Even then it wasn’t that easy.  The Bruderhof asked if they could send one of their girls on placement to help us at home. It’s a bit like rumspringa, they have to taste life outside the community for a period of time before they may make the choice to become a member. So we were the taste of life outside. But the thing was, though they lived simply, like most communities they had a life that was . . . well . . . normal. Whereas we could only afford one proper meal a day.  We had cereal for breakfast and a cooked supper, but lunch was bread and jam. Carbs featured prominently in each meal – potatoes or pasta at the cooked meal.  All our household ate meat in those days, but either sausages (cheap) or four ounces of mince that could give a meaty taste to a big lot of onions and root vegetables.  Well, as the girl would be going home for supper each day, I thought she might think I was a seriously bad mother if she only ever saw us eating bread and jam, so somehow during the six weeks she came on placement to help me at home, I felt I must find the money to make it look as though we ate salad with cheese or cold meat with our bread at lunch time. I felt quite relieved when the placement ended, though she was a lovely girl. 

Nowadays when people come to eat we can afford to feed them (provided we’re not talking about too many or too often), but I can never think what to give them because my head is already overwhelmed by the prospect of them coming at all.  So I just buy a heap of basic things – salad leaves, tomatoes, celery, bread ++, butter, cheese, cooked fish, cooked meat, various kinds of antipasti (I feel sure that should really be ‘antepasti’; I mean anti sounds so oppositional), yoghourts, fruit juices and anything else I can think of, bung it all on the table at once and say, “There you are, help yourself, have what you like”.  And that seems to go work okay. I can never keep track of who’s vegetarian and who isn’t at any given time or what they like to drink.  We in our household don’t eat a lot of bread, and are mostly sworn off dairy and meat apart from at parties, so the fox and the seagulls get a wonderful feast of leftovers when we’ve had guests and revert to our habit of brown rice and curries.

But there are some guests I find just easy.

These last few days we’ve had a number of people visiting. My grandson was one. I thought he would like some sweets included in the party fare, so asked him what I should get. Chocolate? “No,” he said: “normal sweets.”  In Marks & Spencer his Auntie Fiona went off in search of normal sweets, and I must say she did get a triumphant haul. And some chocolate.

The sun shone, which made visiting easier – the best place to feed the under-fives is, in my opinion, outside.  It all seemed to go well.

But my easiest guests of all? No contest.

From the large cheerful group we were on Sunday, this one:

And then uninvited – but entirely welcome – today; this one:

Encounters uncomplicated.

Komorebi now

Last winter was the wettest since records began. All the signs led us to expect a long, harsh spell of cold – and that’s what happened in the US. Our weather usually follows suit, but things turned out differently. Instead of the anticipated snowfall came rain rain rain.

In the middle of the winter, Komorebi was built.  Just what I’d dreamed of; finally, the tiny house I’d been wanting. We have a life rule of avoiding debt so far as we can, but the Badger put a lot of the cost on his credit card so we could get it up and finished once we’d decided to go ahead and do it.

I love Komorebi. It’s just what I imagined.  And it lives up to it’s name.  Komorebi, the Japanese word for the dappling interplay of light as sunshine filters through leaves. The dancing of light and shadow are all round and inside Komorebi. It is full of peace.

I’d been researching and practicing off-grid living, to figure out if it’s feasible to entirely live in so tiny a space in an urban/suburban setting. I verified, yes – it definitely is. Easily.

Then the path suddenly took a surprising twist. I had that health scare with the mole on my leg requiring emergency attention.  The doctor was sufficiently alarmed by it that he booked me two appointments in two separate hospitals so I could take the quickest one.  So I had that removed and biopsied, and just this last week came back the results that all is well. ‘A few irregularities’ whatever that means, but basically all okay.

However, in the intervening weeks/months, the whole thing spurred me into a huge health upheaval, looking again at Gerson dietary principles and macrobiotic diet etc.  We got a very expensive Champion juicer (excellent, I recommend) and a water distiller, both of which became a high-profile part of daily life, as did the coffee enemas to de-tox the liver.

I must say it all worked wonders. I started to lose some of the weight I’ve accumulated, and began for the first time to get to grips with understanding the mysteries of the liver, spleen, gall-bladder, kidneys and gut – not only how they individually and separately influence overall health, but how they govern emotions too.  So it was all a huge physical/psychological/spiritual/emotional health journey, still ongoing; and I’m grateful that mole showed up to be my teacher.

Two things came about that changed things profoundly and unexpectedly.

In the preceding months I’d been, as I thought of it, drifting further and further out to sea; becoming more and more weary and emotionally disconnected, longing desperately for solitude and peace.  This happened to my father, who had the same struggles with his liver and gall-bladder as I do (but worse, probably because he consumed prodigious quantities of red wine and cheddar cheese).  He craved solitude – had to have it.  Me too.

But after I’d de-toxed my liver big-time and gone onto eating mainly whole-grains and vegetables, with some herb teas and fruit juices, plus a restrained amount of fish and my fix of Earl Grey tea, I changed. I wanted to be close to the people I live with, not out on a limb. I wanted to share the same nest space as the Badger. Always. Unexpected. Different.

And of course the juicer, distiller, and enemas refocused everything onto electricity, bathrooms and water.

Meanwhile, as I got my head round the complications of a new health regime focused uncompromisingly inside our regular house, the rain fell and fell, and things inside Komorebi began to go mouldy – books, everything made of wood or fabric.

As I don’t own much and the Badger likes (I think!) to share his night nest up in his attic eyrie with me, this was no big deal. I just ferried it back into his garret.  My mattress went to my grandson whose bed was in need of an upgrade, and he slept better at night as a result.

But . . . what about Komorebi?

Hyperfocus is a characteristic of my thinking, so while I was preoccupied with health and juice and whatnot, I couldn’t pay attention to much else.  But now I’ve got into a more nonchalant place with it. This is what I eat every day: oatmeal made with a mixture of rolled oats and steel-cut oats, oat-milk and a pinch of sea-salt; brown rice or quinoa with dahl or steamed veg or stir fry; salad, sometimes with a little fish; sometimes a big dish of baked root veggies and onions instead of the salad or the pulses and grains; a big glass of fresh juice; herb teas, Chinese medicinal teas, Earl Grey tea.  It’s delicious and familiar and I don’t have to think about it much. Sometimes we eat out in and Italian or Indian or Thai restaurant, when I bend some rules but not to worry about – it’s only occasional.  And on the rare occasions I am a guest in someone else’s home, I joyfully take the opportunity to stuff my face enjoy forbidden foods.

So that’s all rolling along fine, but . . . what about Komorebi? Was it all a hugely expensive mistake? I couldn’t believe so.

My children are wise. My youngest daughter counseled I wait, see what was emerging.  That felt right – and Komorebi is such a potent space, it is a Light anchorage, a healing place.  I thought it might be for prayer or healing, except that I never see anybody much – I am just hidden away, silent and solitary in most of my days. Meanwhile it has become a place to pray and sit and be, to find quietness and listen to the birds sing – and for music practice. Alice takes her flute down there, Fiona her guitar and Hebe her violin. It’s a good place to play or sing.

The Badger painted it for me with the wood preservative I picked out – I chose the colour most exactly nearest to the shadows beneath and between the shrubs and trees.

Now the leaves are unfurling, and the young trees establishing in the little orchard we have made, this is what Komorebi looks like.

So beautiful.

At the back of Komorebi grows this plant. 

Mucilagenous, hairy leaves and stalks, starry blue flowers with very pointy sepals.  We though it was borage, but I think that’s wrong – borage has pendulous umbels of flowers and this does not. Anyone know what it is?