But I also love hot fudge sundaes, Elise’s butter-cream cakes, and the high I get from two margaritas. What can I say? I guess “moderation.”
“Everything’s fine in moderation,” said Aristotle. Or maybe it was my mother.
THE HUMBLE OATMEAL
In the 1980s, I was a social worker in Harlem, directing a program that helped kids stay in school. At that time, nearly seventy percent of minority children dropped out, and what I learned made me understand why. They were scared of rats in their bedrooms and junkies on the street; their teachers were happy when they didn’t show up; and almost every child I worked with had seen someone get killed—their father or brother or friend.
One autumn day I looked out the barred windows of one of the schools and saw a brilliant blue sky. “Look how beautiful it is,” I said to Lakisha, a nine-year-old I felt drawn to and was teaching to read during lunch.
She answered dully, “It’s ugly here, miss.”
And suddenly, through her eyes, I saw it all in stark relief: the boarded-up tenements, the wandering homeless, the treeless streets littered with garbage.
That’s when I knew I had to do more, something more radical than my everyday job. I wanted to get to the bottom of things—to clean up drugs and crime, to create great schools so all kids had a chance, to end poverty, racism, and injustice. Simply put, I wanted to save the world. But how?
Well, it was around that time that I saw a flyer for a workshop in Massachusetts. It was titled “Follow Your Calling.” So I signed on and landed up in a rural farmhouse, where there were only a few participants besides myself. Ironically, though, one of the few was a man who also saw his “calling” as saving the world. I sensed a subtle competition, and we didn’t really click—which was unfortunate, since teaming up might have made the job a lot easier.
But as it turned out, the workshop leader, Sally, thought my goal was a bit sweeping and suggested I think smaller. Maybe help save one little piece of the world. And maybe start with me.
“One way to find your calling,” Sally announced, “is to know what makes you happy.” Then she asked us all to make a list of whatever makes us happy and take it from there.
Makes me happy . . .
I jotted down the first thoughts that came to mind:
Nature
Love
Helping others
Oatmeal
Oatmeal? Why oatmeal? Who knows. Perhaps it was childhood memories: my mother making oatmeal on a cold winter day. The comfort of eating it with toast and jam. And I’m talking real, old-fashioned oatmeal, the kind you have to cook and watch and stir. A hippie slogan around that time was “You are what you eat.” Well, I wanted to be oatmeal: simple, healthy, and close to the earth. And when I eat oatmeal, that’s kind of how I feel.
Getting back to my list, I looked at “helping others” and remembered all the children in Harlem I had come here to help but didn’t know how. Then I remembered teaching Lakisha to read, how excited she was with each new word, and how good it felt to have something real I could offer.
With that in mind I wrote “teaching” right below “oatmeal.” I envisioned having my own kids in my own classroom, where I would give them love and support and teach them to read—things that just might change their lives.
So I left the workshop knowing this: I would make and eat oatmeal a few times a week and go back to school to become a teacher.
It wasn’t long after then that I met John, an Englishman passing through New York. This was fortuitous. Not only was John changing his life course at the same time I was, and not only did he smile and say gently, “Well, I never thought of saving the world, though I do try to make it a little better,” but like most Brits, he loved oatmeal (which they call porridge), even for dinner. “It’s an ancient grain,” he said. “I think of monks in monasteries eating bowls of gruel.”
One year later, John moved in with me, and one night a week we ate oatmeal. I stood and stirred it, just like my mom, and served it with toast and jam. It was a meal so humble it almost felt sacred.
Then, in the mornings, I took the crosstown bus to teach my young students. And that felt sacred too.
Part Nine
RITUALS AND CELEBRATIONS:
BIRTH TO DEATH AND IN-BETWEEN
Rituals are like ladders:
They can take you
to a higher place.
JOIN THE FAMILY
One year, after family plans fell through, John and I were destined to be home alone for Christmas. We were feeling quite dreary . . . until we decided to go to Taos, the most magical place we know. We’d never been there in winter but had heard about a Christmas Eve procession at the Taos Pueblo, the ancient village and longtime home of the Taos tribe. Now sometimes when we’ve visited reservations, I’ve left in sadness, feeling the sorrow of the people, their history, their land. But when we’ve attended their festivals—the Corn Dance, the Deer Dance—I’ve seen pride, spirit, and the power of tradition.
It’s a long drive to Taos from Boulder, about five hours. We played tapes of Robert Mirabal most of the way. He’s a flutist and singer who grew up in the Pueblo, and his songs blend native music with a sound called tribal rock. As we crossed the border leaving Colorado, the drumming on the tape grew mysteriously louder: Welcome to New Mexico, “Land of Enchantment.”
On Christmas Eve, we parked at the edge of the reservation and followed hundreds of people—Spanish, Native, and Anglo—on a dirt road to the village. It was a moonless, wintry night,
