Poetry
Here’s Pat Schneider’s “The Patience of Ordinary Things,” and perhaps, their contentment too.
Journeying
Although she grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, my friend V has spent over thirty years in Omaha. This makes her, among other much more important things, my very handy reference guide to the city. She has introduced me to an excellent Tajik-Uzbek restaurant in town, a wonderful moody and quiet bar near the baseball stadium, and kayak and paddleboard rentals available on a local lake. So when she texted me last week to ask if I’d like to have dinner at a new local Afghan restaurant, I responded with an elated, “yes!” V and I both love Afghan cuisine. The restaurant had opened the day before and was serving a buffet for the next several nights, and we were excited for a chance to try all of the dishes. The spacious restaurant had the usual tables and chairs, but also included three walled off booths with curtains across their entrances and rugs and cushions on the floor for seating. A small walled area at the back of the space gave the employees a private place to say prayers throughout the day. As the evening grew darker and the sun went down, more and more Muslim families came in to break their fast for Ramadan. Soon all of the curtained booths were full of children laughing and adults chatting.
As we finished up our meal, I noticed the restaurant’s owner visiting each of the tables with an aluminum food container and a pair of tongs. When he got to our table, he asked if we were enjoying the food. We answered with an emphatic affirmative. Then he offered us each a delicious fried dumpling full of spices, meat, and onions. He told us that this was a traditional food that Afghans ate to break their Ramadan fast. We both expressed our gratitude and a bit of shame at receiving such a gift when we had not fasted. The conversation shifted when the owner asked us if we liked Omaha. I could have given him a list of complaints about the city I’ve called home for the last six years. My friend V has her own list. But now was not the time to rail against drivers who don’t understand how to merge and that the passing lane is actually the passing lane, or to bemoan the quiet, verging on sedentary, nature of the place. We smiled and said, yes, we mostly did. He replied, “yes, the weather is not great, but otherwise, it is a good place to live.” Clearly, he had a list too. But his answer revealed something else: acceptance and even contentment.
After the owner left our table, I looked at the photographs of Afghanistan on the wall next to our table, the beautiful architecture and scenery they depicted. As V and I chatted, we watched the large TV on the wall where a man sung evocative music amidst Afghanistan’s snow peaked mountains, rocky deserts, and bright green fields. The restaurant owner had left a beautiful country, family members, a home. He had endured all of the traumas contigent on relocation. And he appeared, at that moment anyway, content. Obviously, this man and his story are much more complex. But his words, as well as his food, that evening were a gift. In them, and in his demeanor, I recognized a choice made. A decision to accept his new home and to determine it a good place. And I realized that I too could make some decisions.
I could choose to be content in this city with its bad (according to me) drivers, alternatingly cold and hot weather, its frustratingly slow social change rate. I could enjoy my home here, despite the 80’s bathroom and 90’s kitchen, the downstairs toilet that doesn’t really function, and the busy street nearby. I could accept and learn to be content with my imperfect self in this imperfect place by exchanging complaint and dis-ease about this city for a different kind of awareness, one that includes the wonderful friendships I have here, a house that shelters me, and the incredible variety of people who share my city. That contentment might give me a ground from which to grow deep, long term relationships, a garden that provides sanctuary, a space that welcomes others for retreats, workshops, and offerings that contribute to the community’s growth and wellbeing. Even if we move at some point (perhaps, for one of the reasons on my list), my decision to enjoy this place now will foster more joy in the present, while creating a habit of delight for whatever future awaits.
Gardening and Making/Mending
This morning a dusting of dry snow covers my gardens. The wind blows it in waves up our street. The storm door swings back and bangs against the porch railing, its springs long broken by the force of the wind. On my walk yesterday, I passed an older man bundled up in an orange parka, sitting on his front porch. He called out, “where’d summer go?!” I told him it had left but would be back. In truth, excepting a couple of bizzare 80 degree days earlier in the month, summer has yet to make an appearance. I’m glad. Spring lasts about 5 days here, and I want to experience each one of them. I am garden planning in earnest now and can feel the excitement rising like sap through my body as I walk by the front yard on the way to the car, “I want to move those bushes to the B & B and those other ones to the side yard. Then I can plant cutting flowers here,” says my trembling-slightly-with-spring-energy self. Once the season does begin, that excitement will have plenty of places to go. I’m nuturing it as the plants do theirs, with quiet anticipation.
I made several recent attempts to crochet or knit a pair of cafe curtains for my kitchen windows. I’m in the process, and it is one, of repainting the kitchen. I’ve also installed a shelf for plants across said windows. The full length linen curtains that used to hang there won’t accommodate the shelf, and I have some lovely yarn from my knitting friend B - so why not knit or crochet a pair to hang beneath the plants? More than anything, I did not want this project to be fiddly. I wanted it to be relatively mindless because then it had a higher probability of getting finished. So after several goes and experiments with various patterns and non-patterns, different needle and hook sizes, I settled on a simple granny-square pattern crocheted with a big hook. As of this writing, the project is proceeding with relative rapidity.
This is wonderful, Emily. So interesting to think alongside you about the restaurant owner’s story; Afghanistan to Omaha, Nebraska—wow what a story that must be. And thank you for reminding me to be grateful when I’m feeling the dis-ease of my own discontent. Great pondering for an Easter afternoon. Hope you’re enjoying yours. Thank you, again for this, friend.
With your anecdote about the Afghan restaurant and your reflections on it, you succinctly articulate the contentment I’ve been learning the past few years but particularly this past year or so. It’s so true—we’ll never be able to make a place to lie down elsewhere if we do not learn to make the best of what we have here and now. Thank you for sharing.