Learning New Ways of Being

We’ve all been exploring new ways of doing things this week, and I have been gratified to experience the creativity and kindness I have seen from friends and neighbors.

Since I am over 60 – way over 60 – and immuno-compromised, I’ve been staying cocooned in my home. My routines have changed, my goals have changed, and challenges have shown themselves to be surmountable. For example, instead of my usual grocery shop on Seniors Day (10% discount) I tried out delivery service from my favorite natural foods store. It went well. I unexpectedly found myself engaged in a text conversation with my personal shopper as she negotiated empty shelves and skillfully selected alternatives to some of my requests. What fun!

Kindness All over the Place

My neighbor at the local feed store delivered a two-month supply of dog food to my front porch, and another who owns a plant nursery placed a 20-pound bag of birdseed and several six-packs of tiny vegetable starts right beside the bags of kibble. This made me happy, and hopefully went a small way toward keeping our small businesses operating.

Several friends and my children who live down the street know I’m missing visits from my granddaughter, and they check in often to see how I’m doing and if I need any errands run. Face-Time brought me her smiling face – and an emotional boost that I really needed.

A favorite vendor at the local farmer’s market, which I didn’t visit today, announced by email that they would deliver boxes of vegetables and salad greens to the selfsame front porch. I put in an order yesterday. I usually buy flowers at the farmer’s market; today instead I ventured into my garden and supplemented the scant number of actual flowers with lavender and sage. Now my living room smells sweet.

Family Connections are Important

Perhaps the most important thing for my mental health is that my whole extended family has made excellent use of technology to keep in touch with me and with one another. FaceTime calls, videos sent by text, frequent phone calls, all have made me feel loved and nurtured, and not too very lonely. I’m going to start a letter writing campaign with each of my four grandchilden; with their parents struggling to keep their littles entertained, perhaps helping them write return messages will serve both sides of the exchange.

How about you? How are you feeling? How are you adjusting to this new normal? I hope you are keeping meaningfully busy and staying in touch with friends and loved ones. If not, this might be the time to write a letter or make a telephone call.  We’ve all probably been on the internet too much, and need to connect in some new ways.

Things to Do To Make Us Feel Better

I suspect we’ve all received advice for how to conduct ourselves while sheltering at home: set a daily routine; get plenty of exercise; go outside; walk; connect with others, wash our hands often. Good advice.  I add to that, cook or bake, now that you have the time; work the soil in your garden; welcome the spring flowers.Now is the time to work on those projects you’ve wanted to get to but couldn’t; to enoy books, puzzles, quilting, woodworking, whatever usually gets put off in our too-busy lives.

I’ve been trying to prepare meals from scratch every day, even though I live alone. I figure it’s good for my immune system as well as my mental health. So far I’ve made Lemon Chicken Soup and Posole in my InstantPot; Gluten-Free Soda Bread for St. Patrick’s Day; and several quite good salads and vegetable dishes from recipe books I haven’t opened in a while.

I am grateful that spring is emerging as we are being asked to shelter in place. Better the spring rains than dark skies and heavy rain in winter. And the occasional sunshine makes taking the “go outside and walk” advice easy to follow.

I invented a particularly tasty salad for lunch today – trying to stay ahead of spoilage since I stocked up on veggies over a week ago and my farmer’s market box won’t arrive til next week. You can change up the vegetables and greens, but the idea is crunchy and tasty. I share it with you below. Enjoy!

Marlene

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Crunchy Spring Salad

The idea here was to explore the veggies and fruit in my refrigerator and select four or five crunchy ingredients and two soft and sweet.

Course Salad

Cuisine American

Keyword crispy, spring, salad, Little Gems, cucumber, peas

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 15 minutes minutes

Servings 1 person

Author Marlene Bumgarner

Cost not much

Ingredients

• 1 cup crispy lettuce, chopped I used a Little Gem lettuce
• 1/4 cup cucumber, chopped
• 1/4 cup English peas or pea pods, chopped
• 1/4 cup celery, chopped
• 1/2 each tomato, chopped I used a yellow heirloom tomato
• 1 each kiwi, peeled and chopped You can also use plums, peaches, etc.
• 1 Tbsp organic extra virgin olive oil
• 1 Tblsp fresh orange, lemon, or lime juice

Instructions

• Chop the lettuce first, and spread it in a shallow bowl.
• Arrange the other ingredients as you wish.
• Toss and eat.

Notes

I encourage you, weather allowing, to take your salad outside in the sunshine and eat it slowly, listening for birds, looking at flowers, or reading a book.  I accompanied my salad today with a cup of hot herb tea. A glass of cool white wine would also have suited.

Welcome to my blog. I am a writer and teacher, a parent and a grandmother. I live on the Central Coast of California with my Border Collie, Kismet. And I am taking this opportunity to slow down, reassess how I spend my time, and clean my closets, both literal and virtual. My memoir of the years my family and I spent off the grid in the 1970s, Back to the Land in Silicon Valley, will be out some time this summer.

I hope you will use the comment section to tell us about you and how you and your family are adjusting to the new normal.