Thursday was a sweet day all around--starting with Elena's early morning pedicure in my bathroom. We cleaned the dish pan, filled it with soapy water and essential oils, and painted her toes purple for her daddy's special day.
After Will's promotion, Kate invited me over for one of my all-time favorite meals--butterbeans and jalapeno cornbread in a cast iron skillet. Then we walked around her garden of figs, tomatoes, ginger, sweet potatoes, and all kinds of plants.
Kate wouldn't care, she said, if her sofa were the wrong color; she'd keep it. Likewise, I don't know a thing about growing plants and I've forgotten most of what I once knew about cooking.
Kate loves to sit on her porch and take callers, and I like being one of her callers. I, on the other hand, tend to be more frenetic when I get involved in a project, as I am now, riding around looking for fabric to recover my sofa (which I found), trying different lamps, taking them back, then finally seeing a pair that works just right with some goat-skin shades I found at the thrift shop.
One of the things that make friendships thrive are the differences. But we share many things, too--like wanting to just be more, do less, live in the moment like Buddhists do. To learn to just sit and be calm, not always measuring our days by what we accomplish or checking things off to-do lists.
We watched a beautiful episode of The Chef's Table featuring a Korean Buddhist monk, a simple ego-less woman whose cooking has been compared to that of the best chefs in the world. She said something to this effect: to be a slave to the ego is to block creative flow. I have to think about that one!
But watching her prepare and arrange "Temple Food" like art on the table, watching her reflection in water in a serene landscape, we both felt calm, quite the opposite of the agitation engendered by watching political news.
I came home with a bottle of kombucha, yummy butterbeans, fresh tomatoes from Kate's garden, and gratitude for friendship, family, and food.
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