Tag Archives: winter solstice

STICKY RICE

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

It’s a sunny Christmas Eve afternoon. There’s no sign of a white Christmas. I’m making sticky rice as my contribution to our family meal at my brother’s this evening. I’m not at all in a yuletide mood. But my mind is cast back to my childhood memories of winter solstice and New Year in China.

Though we have left China behind, my mother have kept some of the traditions alive. Now that she can no longer make the traditional dishes, she has instilled the love of Chinese food in me. Enough so that I can sort of fake a dish or two. There’s YouTube now with instructions for any dish you can think of. It’s too late for Winter Solstice but I can make rice dumplings for New Year’s. Chinese New Year would even be better. It would give me more time to prepare. Here’s an excellent video on how.

New Year was an exciting time for me as a child. All the aunties would get together on the eve and spend the night cooking up all kinds of pastries. I can still hear the murmur of their voices as they tend the fire and pots while I lay upstairs in bed, fighting sleep. It was a magical time. I would wake in the morning to find a new outfit to wear and a little red envelope.

Now back to my sticky rice. I use a fail-safe recipe by Amy and Jacky. It is cooking in the Instant Pot after a little mishap. I was forgetful and not paying attention. I started pouring water into the pot then realizing the liner pot was not in it! Lucky it was just a little water and it came out the bottom. I was afraid it might short circuit the electrical and wreck the pot. I used my hairdryer to blow dry everything. It worked. Saved for another day!

Instant Pot Chinese Sticky Rice

BECOMING MY MOTHER

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Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Daylight hours here in Saskatoon = 7 hours 43 minutes. In other years my mother would be making glutinous rice ball soup. She made two kinds – one with a sweet sauce and one with a savory soup of vegetables, meat and spices. I prefer the latter. It’s a process. It’s another thing she has given up with advancing age and declining health. I have made the effort once. It turned out not bad. I should make it every year as the Chinese do celebrate Winter Solstice. It would have been a comforting thing on a gloomy day. I would be carrying on my mother’s tradition. I can still do it on another day.

More and more, I find myself becoming my mother. I hear her voice and laugh in mine. Sometimes when I am moving, I feel as I am her. Maybe those traits were always in me but I’m just recognizing and acknowledging them now. I don’t know any young woman who would want to be their mother. I remember having many mother/daughter disagreements and fights. I was reading books like My Mother/Myself by Nancy Friday. I wish I still have that copy but I’ve tossed it thinking I’m done. I was wrong. A daughter is never done with mother/daughter relationships. Great that I found it in the library system and have requested it. It will be interesting reading from my now vantage point.

We have no more fiery encounters. We have both mellowed and respect each other’s abilities and individual rights. She can no more order me around than I could order her. Equals at last. She still like to tell me that I am sloppy and bad tempered like my father. Also that she can still clean better than me. That is true. But she’s also said that my sticky rice was pretty good and that I am making pretty good art.

It’s all good at this stage in our lives. Those difficult days of struggling to make a living are behind us. We have reached Gold Mountain at last. We have climbed its slippery slopes and reached the Promised Land. We are living our best parts. Happy Winter Solstice!

 

LONG AND WINDING ROAD – day 127 – 129 in a year of…

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Day 127 – 129 – December 1, 2016 @5:32 pm

img_8557A few days have slipped by.  I’ve been absent from this space but I’m here now. That’s how it is in real life.  Some days we go missing and we will have to find our way back – if it is important.  It is.  The pages of the calendar keep turning. It is now December.  The days are getting shorter, the nights longer. Soon it will be Winter Solstice. After that the reverse will happen. Life in cycles.

 

img_8570In this year of doing different, I am sojourning forward – out of the fear and the darkness.  There’s light at the other end of the tunnel.  I am in the desert.  It’s where I am suppose to be.  I have things to learn.  I am safe for I am with me. The road is long and winding.  The challenges beckon.  Come on. Take one step.  Then another.

Knit one. Purl one.  Keep going. You will figure out the pattern.  One row. img_8564Then another and another.  There – now you have a sweater.  Now you have a life. Wear it. Live it.  It is yours. Tomorrow you will wake and rise to face another challenge.

 

 

BEGINNING & ENDING WITH CERTAINTY

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For Reverb14 – Day 21

IMG_1908What can I say with certainty today?  It is the shortest day with the longest night of the year.  It is winter solstice.

That was yesterday.  This morning we are still in complete darkness.  I was insistently nudged out of bed by Sheba’s wet nose.  Just as well.  I was wool weed gathering in bed, not sleeping nor tending my garden anyways.  I was having a little bit of the moody blues and the simmering of a low grade depression.

That was what I thought – until I read Anne Lamott’s post.  Then I realized I was just crazy and normal like everyone else at this time of year.  No need to talk to the therapist about it. I read another post and it gave me a little hope that there is good in the world.  I’ve been thinking about Christmas and gifting.  How can I not?  I’m not caught up with the masses and yet I am – in finding the perfect meaningful gift.  I’ve found it in the last paragraph of Anne’s post.

“Emily Dickinson said that hope causes the Good to reveal itself. So bring it on. When I bring people hope–cups of tea, poetry and art supplies–then I’m holding hope in my hands, but I can only receive it by giving it away, to you, and to me; to us. Here, have some; it’s on me. Just don’t give up before you get the miracle.”

What I know for sure today, as in all days, is that I always have hope.  I remember saying in therapy a long time ago that I am never without hope according to the questionnaire I had to fill.  I was wondering why I was there.  Did I wandered into the wrong place?

IMG_5023I am finding myself in the same place again.  What I know for sure is, it is good to have hope.  And it is good to have help, a little guidance, small nudges in the right direction when I have wandered off the path.  I am gifting myself for the coming year.  I’m preparing myself so that I will be opened to receive more of life.  I want to feel more joy and less anger.  I want more clarity to the yes(s) and no(s) I will be uttering.  I want to be saying in December 2015, It was a very good year.  I did the best I could.