Caitlin Shetterly's Blog

My Elle piece and other considerations...

Dear Loyal Readers,

I'm so touched by the response I'm getting to my piece, "The Bad Seed," in the August issue of Elle. It took a lot for me to write that piece...for some reason I felt so extremely tender about opening up about being unwell--and then there was all the research which took forever (2.5 years forever plus almost 100 interviews!)

I am so glad that readers are feeling inspired by my piece to seek out more information themselves. Cynthia in Pasadena wrote in to say that "..as I don't look sick to people it's hard to explain the situation. You understand this, I'm sure...I'm reading this article and thinking OMG could there possibly be help? Possibly?"

I hope we can all find a way to help each other muddle through; there is so much out there our bodies are working with and against from things in the environment to changes in our food. I'm grateful that I can share my story and, perhaps, help some of you understand yours.

Best and please stay in touch,

Caitlin.

Village Life

 

Dear Friends, Family and Loyal Readers,

When I last wrote, back in September, so many of you responded with such care and kindness about our struggles with our landlady, Hopper’s health, our impending move, etc. Your notes, as they often have, buoyed both Dan and me and made us feel less alone. Thank you.

Before I get to the updates on where we are (!!!), how Hoppy is and everything else, I want to share a selection from the nice things you wrote. I think it’s important for us all to know that we’re out there for each other in a real, human-to-human way, supporting each other, even over email. All we have to do, sometimes, is dare to reach out:

“…I send beams of lamby and millety love for Hopper plus a warm sunny spot to lay and heal, and good luck with your move…Finally, I'm all for expressing desperation. “

xoxo adriane

Hi Caitlin,

…Thank goodness no one was in the room when the ceiling caved in.  Sounds to me  - as difficult as it is to move - between the mold and the asbestos - it might prove to be a "gift”…I love your slogan "No you can't"!  Naturally, because I know  - yes you can!

Much love to you all,

Ruth                           

C,

…If it's any consolation my iCal looks about the same! Remember the old trick, to focus on how much time you do have, instead of how little? Really, it helps when I remember to do it. I have nothing very dramatic to report, aside from moving twice and sending kids to a new school, getting used to the boonies, and trying to find time to write a book along the way, but nothing so terrible either.

xo, M

....Wowsers. If you have any interest in a more rural setting, my house is vacant.

Chrisso

Well, reader, did you already guess? We took our friend, Chrisso, up on his incredibly thoughtful offer and decided, commute be damned, to move into his lovely home in a small town 30 minutes north of Portland (he’s moved down to Louisiana to get married.) “We’re up for a new chapter,” we told each other. Hopper, in the weeks leading up to the move, slowly started to get better; what happened that night we ended up in Boston was, we think, some kind of severe inflammatory reaction (possibly due to some bad dog food), which effectively shut down his bowels. In the weeks since, our instructions have been to get his weight up (which we’ve done—yay!) and to bring him back to Boston for rechecks (also done) and, so far, although he still has two abnormal lymph glands, he’s fine—himself. Fingers crossed.

The first weekend of October, I moved up here alone with Hopper and Master M. while Dan finished the packing of our things and moving most of them, for now, to storage. Although it was a little shock to my system to be in a village with neighbors—after all, I grew up in the woods and have lived in cities for the last 20 years—I felt myself come back to some intuitive part of myself our first night here when, lying in bed next to my sleeping child, I heard what I thought was rain. Getting up and going downstairs, I realized it was falling leaves. I marveled that I couldn’t remember the last time I had heard leaves fall! The leaves, it turned out, were the big excitement for M.--we spent most of that first weekend (and the two following weeks) raking up enormous mounds of colorful leaves and moving them via wheel barrow and tarps to the woods. A couple of times we borrowed the neighbor, Dick’s, Leaf Eater, which ravenously munched the leaves.

But get back to the house, you say. Well, it’s a small four bedroom, with a big stairwell and a fireplace. We’ve made a little room off the kitchen into a playroom for Master M. and there have been a few blissful afternoons of cooking on Chrisso’s Magic Chef vintage gas stove, while M. plays and murmurs to himself. The neighbors are very friendly (and patient, too, about the oddball arrival of two artists, their big dog and a rowdy three-year-old—I keep thinking of that Greg Brown song, “Boom Town,” in which he sings, “here come the artists, with their tense faces and need for money and quiet spaces…”—Eek is that us?) Speaking of artists, a plug for Dick and Sue, next door: They make the most beautiful painted boxes, ornaments and watercolors. I’m particularly fond of the boxes which, for instance, are painted with, say, a salmon on top and then inside Dick has tied some salmon flies that sit like jewels against a small cushion. Her lovely paintings of fruit and houses are simply done in the Shaker tradition and are lovely  works of art. If anyone can’t think of a Christmas gift, and might like to fill a lovely box with something special or send flies to an intrepid fisherman uncle, get in touch with me!

Our first week here, while Dan started a new job working for Colby’s Art Museum, M., Hopper and I found some lovely trails through the woods—one we’ve named “The Christopher Robin Walk,” where we’ve built houses for Pooh, Piglet, Christopher Robin and Rabbit. That walk has become our daily rite—if we don’t do it, we mourn it. Another walk takes us up through the woods on an old train track and we usually turn around at some slightly grumpy cows. Our first week here, the cows appeared to want to charge us, giving me a bit of a jolt. I’m not sure if it was my too cheery “moo-ing” or Hopper’s wagging tail, or the Bob stroller, which Master M. still likes to ride in for the better part of long walks—but a horned brown cow, in particular, got very snorty and annoyed at us as we passed by and led the whole group of five or so to snort and paw and run at us while I tried to pretend that this was all totally Mary Poppins normal and safe to Master M., even though I was fairly sure those two thread like strands of electric wire would do little to stop an angry cow weighing well over 800 pounds. To get past them, I held Hopper close by on his leash, and ran like a bat out of hell pushing the stroller as fast as I could, just praying my lightning-mother speed would sail us past a stampede.

More things I like up here: At night we hear a train go by—hoot hoot, chugga chugga chugga—and a river is not far away. There’s a lovely little store, which we visit at least once a day where we can get tea,  coffee,bubbly water (A.K.A “farty water” in our house) and maple candy. The library is a short walk away and there’s a pumpkin farm down the road from whose bounty we’ve carved countless Jack-O-Lanterns. Also, the trees around here are some of the biggest and oldest I’ve seen still standing on Maine farmland—I am in awe of these trees. Last night, as Sandy whipped through and we moved ourselves to a back bedroom, I found myself wondering, “What does it feel like to be a tree during a storm like this? What kind of amazing courage and strength does it take to hold on by one’s feet?” Maybe, in the end, we’re all holding on by our feet most of the time while the winds of change toss us around.

There have been a few bumps along the way, as moving is always hard. But we’ve found ourselves saved by a few simple pleasures: instant oatmeal, rice cakes (who knew they were so soothing!), Ryan Adams’ song “Ashes and Fire,” which we’ve been playing at full volume while we dance around playing air broom- banana-whatever-you-can-grab-for-a-guitar and we’ve turned the potential negative of explaining hunting (the season just began up here) into a fun opportunity to wear lots of blaze orange outfits which we’re sure look a tad overactive to our more seasoned neighbors. On some of our worst days, we’ve needed a few You Tube sessions with Bert and Ernie (which, it occurred to Dan and me, should have been called “Scenes from a Marriage.”) I include a few of our favorite episodes, here, below, for a few giggles.

Take care and send me your news,

Caitlin.

BERT and ERNIE (Or, “Scenes from a Marriage”):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHUOZWu7soY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT8xsggdYPw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_023QLvRow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hou8AyxWTYw&feature=related (this one, in particular, reminds me of the time I “trimmed” Dan’s hair….)

 

 

Letting Summer Go and Other Travails

Dear Friends, Loyal Readers and Family,

 

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these. Time seems to have sifted through my hands like the most silken of sands and I’m somehow unable to discern the expanse from May till now as more than an instant. This morning, waking to cold air on my face, my legs warm underneath a down comforter I had pulled up over myself in my sleep, I thought “How did this happen?”

 

I had plans for my summer—they weren’t big, per se, but I wrote them down on my calendar for some day in mid-June when I figured I’d begin to see the months unfolding as limitlessly before me as the ocean here in Maine sometimes seems on the clearest of summer days. I wrote, “Summer plans: croissants; find peanuts and almonds that are other tree nut free; jars for canning--and can!!; Maine sunflower seeds; & cheese making?” Looking back at it now, it seems like a very ambitious list. But I remember that when I wrote it, it seemed luxuriously care free and even practical. I probably don’t need to tell you that I’ve moved that list ahead day by day on my iCal and that not one of those things has been accomplished. But oh how I wanted to learn the art of baking the perfect croissant! And cheese, how hard can it really be? Anyway, here we are: It’s September 11th, a day that will forever be seared in my mind as one full of blue skies marred by incredible loss, and that list still stares at me each time I turn on my computer.  Each day, fruitlessly, I find myself (even this morning!) moving it ahead one little square more, hoping, somehow, that I can go back against the current. [1]

 

I have my defenses: There’s a story here behind the story (and behind yet another story!), as there always is. For starters, I was assigned a long nonfiction feature this summer by a magazine, and so I spent the end of May and the early part of June traveling and gathering information and, of course, worrying. (I’m like the opposite of the Obama campaign; “No You Can’t” is my personal slogan. I should make myself a t-shirt or a bumper sticker and get people to donate to my “I Can’t Do It Campaign.”) Then, in the first week of June, our ceiling caved into our little rental apartment in Portland. It’s funny how these things happen, and then, in that moment, so many things can start to go awry, sometimes with startling alacrity. It was a Friday, Master M.’s last day of preschool. And because it was the last day his teachers had given him a bright green Popsicle. Now, Master M. is allergic, we’ve been told, to yellow # 5. And usually that yellow dye is in electric green yummies. He ate half the Popsicle and then his teachers remembered, freaked out and, to add insult to injury, took the Popsicle away. (He was totally fine, by the way, which made us wonder…) That evening, in recompense, I’d made him a triple scoop ice cream cone, which alternated homemade vanilla and homemade orange sherbet. As he sat licking away, the green popsicle and school itself quickly fading into the unimportant past, there was a crash bang and Dan hopped up to stand in Master M.’s room. M. and I turned warily. Dan stood there, his hands outstretched as if he were trying to catch rain and he kept saying, oddly calmly, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” And then another crash bang and more of the ceiling caved in. The story goes on, but I won’t bore you with it. In short, there was mold (what is it with us and mold?) and then it got unpleasant with our landlady (a shame, we had been so fond of her!) and then a two month long battle to get the problem fixed while we all camped in one bedroom (back to the family bed again, Dr Sears!). Finally we got our friend Frank to fix the holes in the ceiling (which he did expertly with Dan as his sous-fixer-upper). Unfortunately, however, while searching for paint to match our walls, Frank found asbestos crumbling over our boxes of stored things in the basement. This has led to more unpleasantness and, well, the whole thing has really been a mess. As my friend, Andrea, said to me the other day, when I bemoaned how hard it had been with our landlady, “this is when you really see what people are made of –moments like these.” She’s right. It’s true. And yet. So, we’re looking to move now, which is always hard to do. Sometimes, it seems, at least with us, when the snowball starts rolling downhill it’s hard to stop it.

 

To go with this snowball metaphor for a moment, there’s been another hard thing: Hopper, our princely black and tan gentle giant of a dog has been sick. At first it was a slow progression.  “He just doesn’t seem quite right,” I’d say to Dan at night when I had time to worry. Then, this summer, we had a full on problem: his skin had sores all over it and he was nervous and losing weight.  We thought we were dealing with allergies so we began a long and confusing reformulation of his food, cooking up sweet potatoes and turkey instead of lamb and millet, adding in store bought dry food, taking it back out, trying different medications, theories and lots and lots of baths. And then, last week, on Friday, he collapsed. He couldn’t eat, he was vomiting, he was weak. We were told he needed emergency surgery and we were sent to Boston. So, at 8:30 at night, we all piled into the car, Master M. in his P.J.’s, the audio book of Stella Luna playing on repeat on the stereo and Dan driving like a bat out of hell. When we arrived at Angell Memorial Hospital, a tech came out with a gurney and Dan lifted Hoppy’s frail body onto the metal platform.  Hop folded his legs under himself, looking, I remember thinking at the time, almost like a cow resting in a field.  I put my arms around him as he was wheeled inside. Perhaps this was histrionic, but as he was taken away from me to the ICU, I grabbed the DR’s arm and said, more like a charge than anything else, “I can’t lose this dog right now.” I felt myself wince with the knowledge that my most raw self had just been exposed to this perfect stranger. How many times has she heard this, I wondered later? How many times has any one of us entreated a medical provider to attempt the heroic for someone we love, as if our own desperation will somehow tip the scales in their heart?

 

While I sat on a hard wooden bench waiting, Dan took Master M. to Andrea and Harlan’s in Cambridge and then came back to get me. At around midnight, we were lead into the ICU where Hopper lay blotto on a puffy bed on the floor of a large cage. They had stabilized him and didn’t want to rush into surgery. Wearied, we went back to our friends’ and Dan stayed up, sitting at their kitchen table writing emails and trying to do the things he had meant to do that evening at home. I collapsed into bed, but could not sleep. Every few moments, a harbinger of doom, I kept coming out to Dan: “I’m sure this is our fault,” I’d begin and then launch into all the reasons we should have done this or that differently. I worried about how thin Hoppy was and how often we had refused to feed him more dinner, even though he was getting thinner and thinner. I felt angry. Finally, I said, “I just can’t take all this right now.” Dan, having a tiny bit of patience still in him, offered this: “We just have to keep going, Cait.” The next morning, more tests were done and in the evening Hoppy was allowed to come home. Prognosis: Possibly lymphoma or some acute inflammatory disease, maybe stimulated by an allergy or an underlying infection, which caused his digestive tract to just shut down on Friday. We will know more in the days to come, we’re told. But it may be a fight, whatever it is, and, as Dan reminds me, we’re going to have to fight all these battles—the moving and asbestos and Hopper and the constant check-to-check struggle of our artistic lives--even when we’re our most tired, because this is what we all do in the end, keep going even when it’s hell.

 

But I’m not going to end this letter here, with the word “hell” because there have been some peaks this summer which have soared over the valleys: In June, we spent a few days at a friend’s cabin in the woods on the ocean near where I grew up. There we gathered shells, ran long distances, watched bald eagles, held sticky-legged June bugs and left the light on at night to attract moths so that we could identify them in the morning while sitting on the porch with our coffee and plump, ripe nectarines. During our few days there, Hopper gathered every stick he could find on the beach and made a beaver-like pile on the grassy yard. Later, in July, we went to a fishing camp in Northern Maine, a few miles from the Canadian border. There we took a boat out to a little island where we swam in water so clean, with sand so sparkling, we felt we’d been transported back to a time when we didn’t question the purity of the elements around us. On that trip, Master M. started “fishing” with a pole his Nonnie gave him (which I believe used to belong to my brother) onto which he’s affixed 5 bobbers of different sizes. (He and Dan did catch an actual fish, by mistake at that lake—Dan was showing him how to cast with a real pole that happened to have a lure on it. When the fish flopped up onto the dock, we were all so startled for a moment no one knew what to do. Then Dan and I ran around trying to figure out how to get the three-pronged hook out of the fish’s mouth with pliers and clippers. The fish was fine, in the end, thank God, if a little tore up. But the Master is definitely against hooks after that episode.) All summer, we spent every Sunday, rain or shine, running together on a trail we love in the woods.

 

And so, this morning, I’m reveling with gratitude in a few small simple gifts:  Despite the odds, we didn’t lose Hoppy on Friday night (he is, in fact, lying at my feet right now, his belly and legs shaven for the various catheters and instruments that were needed to pull him through the other night, but his breath is steady); Master M. loves his new preschool—he’s actually excited to go, which is an unexpected blessing; and I feel lucky that we had some beautifully present moments together, when we were at one with the natural world. So, even though it seems like we’re in another all-to-familiar free-fall, and even though the chill of fall makes me mourn the summer I had dreamed of, I find myself wanting, right now, to reach out and hug this big, complicated world we have. Because, in the end, what other choice do I have?

 

Tell me your summer stories of ups and downs, if you care to share. I’m here.

 

Love, Caitlin.

 

Hi Friends!

So, up here in Maine I've been teaching Creative Nonfiction to grad students and watching my little Master M. start preschool and STILL going around with my book and having wonderful conversations about the American Dream! And, out of the blue, I just found out that my book has been nominated for an AWARD! From Good Reads! In the Travel and Outdoors Category!! If you feel like it, and have the time, YOU, too, can vote for my book! Here's the info:

http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice...

Something Over & Something Begins...

Dear Loyal Readers, Family & Friends,

It seems impossible that it has come to this so quickly; an end to summer and the beginning of fall. How is that each time this happens, I'm surprised at the brazen alacrity of seasonal change? Maybe, instead, I should be surprised by how slowly I adjust. Nevertheless, this year feels particularly laden with new beginnings and mourned endings because tomorrow both Master M. and I are starting school. He, at the tender age of not-quite three, will begin preschool. And I will begin teaching Creative Nonfiction at a place here in Portland, Maine, called The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Wasn't it only a moment ago that I was holding him with only one arm cupped around his small body as he nursed? And just yesterday that we were driving across America as his two-month-old self and Hopper slept in the backseat, Greg Brown's "Late Night Radio" playing on the stereo? And last week his first birthday—so close I can still taste the baked apple with a candle in it, which, frankly, sort of terrified him? And didn't summer just begin the other day?

For us, this summer began in late May, when the months ahead seemed to stretch out as wide and as deep as the ocean and we spent two blissful weeks in our friend Dee's tiny cottage on the water up in my hometown. By day we investigated the lives that for brief moments intersected with ours: crabs and scuds; real foxes and imagined bears; gray jays and baby phoebes. By nightfall, Dan was grilling everything we ate (and, though he doesn't like to admit it, burning a good portion).  That tiny ripple of time—just two short weeks-- on the surface of our lives feels, somehow, present enough we should be able to go back right now, this moment, and start over. But as with everything, we can't.

Tomorrow, Dan and Master Himself will drop me off for my first day of teaching and continue on for M.'s first day of school. To say I don't feel ready for my first—and only, so far—child to begin school, is an understatement. But last night Dan said something surprising to me. We've been running, lately, at a series of trails a little drive from our house where we can do about four miles if we wind around and then follow our footsteps back again. And on our way home each day, having timed our run to the tide calendar, we've been stopping at a little working waterfront off the road, full of fishing boats and sailboats, motor boats and dinghies, and we've been jumping off some big, pink granite rocks and plunging ourselves into the water. Just before I jumped last night, as Master M. filled his bucket and "made" a tide pool, Dan said, "I always want to recreate that moment of shock and exhilaration just when I've hit the water."

And I said, "What? I hate that part. That's what keeps me standing here, reticent to jump."

"Nah, not me. I love it, " he said.

I was stunned. How could anyone love that part?

Tonight, though, what I know about my son is this: He's a little reticent to jump in, like me, but like Dan, he loves a thrill. And, we've been learning a bit about courage this summer: the brave way our new cat, Hemingway, sauntered into our lives; the leap my cousin Carrie took this summer, walking down the aisle in a white wedding dress; my saying "yes" to becoming a teacher and our agreement to send M. to school. So, I'm hoping that with his new tin lunchbox in hand (with --what else?-- a John Deere riding lawnmower on it's face) and his goggie neatly folded in his backpack, he will jump right in, with only a tiny shiver of shock tingling through his limbs.

I just hope I can do the same.

Tell me your back-to-school stories!

Best, Caitlin.

www.caitlinshetterly.com

 

PS: Below find a list of my fall & winter readings. If you know some folks in any of these towns, I'd love to meet them!

PPS: Dan and I watched Biutiful this weekend—what a heartbreaking, beautifully made and deep movie. If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it! We're also watching, tape by tape, Little Dorrit, the Masterpiece Theatre series based on Dickens' serial novel—it's quite good and a real escape at bedtime.

 

Sunday, September 11, 3:00 PM
Dorcas Library
Part of the "Schoodic Creates" Tour
28 Main St., Prospect Harbor, ME
(207) 963-4027

 

Thursday, September 22, 7:30 PM
Maine Women Write
Space Gallery, 538 Congress St., Portland, ME 04101
(207) 828-5600

 

Wednesday, September 28, 5:30 PM
Jackson Memorial Library
38 Main Street, Tenants Harbor, ME 04860
(207) 372-8961

 

Saturday, October 1
Bangor Book Festival
10:00 – 10:45 AM: Finding Home—Writing Memoir with Susan Conley and Melissa Coleman
Bangor Public Library Board Room

11:00 – 11:45: Readings and Discussion with Susan Conley and Melissa Coleman
Bangor Public Library Board Room

Bangor Public Library, 145 Harlow St., Slot 13, Bangor, ME 04401
207-947-8336 | info@bangorbookfest.org

 

Thursday, October 20, 7:00 PM
Norway Memorial Library
258 Main Street Norway, Maine 04268
207-743-5309 | norlib@norway.lib.me.us

 

Thursday, October 27, 7:00 PM
Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers
Reading and Signing
193 Broadway, Farmington, Maine
(207) 778-3454

 

Friday, November 4, 6:00 PM
Pechakucha Night & Juice Conference
256 High Street, Belfast, Maine 04915

 

Saturday, November 19, 7:00 PM
Northshire Bookstore
Reading and Signing
Manchester Center, 4869 Main Street, Vermont
(802) 362-2200

November: MAINE WOMEN WRITE BOOK CLUB PICK
Bookstores across the state of Maine will celebrate the themes of family, giving thanks and America in Made for You and Me during the month of November.
For more information, find Maine Women Write on Facebook.

 

Saturday, November 26, 12:00 PM
Maine Coast Book Shop
Signing and Reading
158 Main Street, Damariscotta, ME
(207) 563-3207

 

Tuesday, February 21, 6:30 PM
Winthrop Public Library, With Apple Valley Books
39 Bowdoin Street, Winthrop, ME
(207) 377-8673

 

 



Caitlin's Maine Summer Strawberry Rhubard Pie with Lemon/Lime Ice Cream

 

Nothing speaks "summer" to me like the arrival of the first strawberries—juicy enough to burst in your fingers, staining your lips, chin, shirt and knees, if you're wearing shorts. And because it's around this same time that I start worrying that I haven't yet eaten my fill of tart, springy rhubarb, that I know I have to make my favorite pie.

Since Thursday night was a reading night (in Boston, away from my family, at the Levi's store on Newbury Street), and yesterday morning was sunny, all I wanted to do was get to the beach. As the day started to warm up, I corralled Master M. and Hopper into the car, leaving Dan at home to go for a run and apply for jobs. We took off for our first summer's outing at Mackworth Island, a small state park studded with rocky beaches in Casco Bay. Last summer we began every day here with a walk and a swim—it was the perfect start to even a heinous day. And so I knew it would truly be summer when we got there. Soon, we were jogging up the hill and into the woods, the lily of the valley dense and emerald green on the sides of the path, the water sparklingly filled with cormorants, black ducks and gulls. By the time we got to the beach where we normally stop for a dip, Hopper was barely able to contain himself. The water, to my hand, was warm enough to swim and I was bothered that I'd been too conservative to wear my suit. Oh well, instead two lovely children and their mother shared their beach toys and Master M. and I built a river with them and played waterworks.

On the way home, knowing I had a pie on the horizon for a Twitter group I belong to callled #LetsLunch (the theme this month was pies), I decided to stop at our local, The Rosemont, to see what they had fresh. I had barely even hoped for strawberries—thinking that might be a greedy, silly desire this early. But there, gleaming like rubies in little wooden crates, they sat and Master M. and I picked up two pints.

Home again we washed and halved them, tossed them in a bowl with about 1/3 as much chopped rhubarb and added a squeeze of half a lime, a sprinkle of salt, enough sugar to modestly coat the fruit and a pat of butter.(Now, I've recently been diagnosed with a rare allergy which became, in my case, an illness—more on that later. This condition, though, makes me allergic to spices and herbs. This puts me in, what I like to call, Foodie Exile. But if I weren't in said Foodie Exile, I would grate a smidgen of dried nutmeg into my pie and sprinkle a tiny flurry of cinnamon and to make it perfect, I'd add the grainy insides of one vanilla bean—or two teaspoons of the extract. But since I couldn't do that today and still eat this pie, I've left those out). 

Into our family standard of Fannie Farmer's 9-inch double pie crust  (p. 689) our crimson fruit went, and Master M. poked the holes with a fork. I spread a little milk over the crust and popped it into the oven.

 

It was just then that Dan asked me if I'd put the freezer section of our Cusinart ice cream maker in the freezer. I had not! Oh dear! This machine was a gift from Dan and Master M. for my birthday last summer and is, truly, one of the best gifts I ever received—you can make ice cream on a moment's notice! (But only if you've kept the cold part in the freezer!)

Dan filled it with ice and put it in the very back while I worried.

Later, after a dinner of steak on the grill and my current salad fetish (small broccoli florets, thinly sliced Vidalia onion, avocado and tender bibb lettuces, dressed with a little truffle oil, some sunflower oil, salt, lemon and rice vinegar), Master M. and I mixed up the lemon/lime ice cream (I use yogurt and milk, because I like the tang of yogurt and the body it gives ice cream.)

One and a half  cups whole milk yogurt with cream

1/2 cup whole milk

½ cup sugar

juice from ½ lime and ½ lemon

zest from ½ lemon and 1 and ½ limes.

Add to ice cream maker and …delicious! (Now, if I could add spices, I'd throw in some cardamom…sigh! )

Unfortunately our ice cream never quite hardened—it was soft serve that quickly melted on the warm pie. So, we'll have to try that part again tomorrow (too bad we have to have ice cream two days in a row!) But the flavors, together, were a little slice of summer.

Happy June! Caitlin.

 To read more of my #LetsLunch meals, go to www.caitlinshetterly.com and click on "tour blog!"



Happy Mother's Day

 

Dear Friends and Loved Ones,

 

I'm writing this note from a lovely little B&B in Western Mass. called PORCHES where Dan, Master M. and I have gone for Mother's Day weekend to get away together (we've left Hopper at home with Joanna, whom both he and Master M. adore). The plan is to spend tomorrow at Mass. MOCA.

 

It was sunny the whole drive down and we were all so excited to take this time to be together. When we eventually got to the B&B, we were thrilled to find a hot tub and a heated pool! We quickly stripped down, pulled on bathing suits and, even though it's early May, jumped in. As the water ran off my shoulders and I looked up from the edge of the pool to the mountains beyond, I said out loud to Dan "This is heaven." "I know," he said. Later we went out to dinner at a nice little bistro where, unfortunately, after a great meal, Master M. choked on a piece of Manchego. I grabbed him and slapped him on the back and then he threw up his whole dinner all over me. Afterwards I became, briefly, self-conscious. I thought, "Oh those poor people next to us! We've just ruined their dinner!" But as I wiped vomit from my shoulder, I realized that what really mattered was that I got to be my son's mom when he needed me.

 

In that spirit, here's a funny little thing I wrote for Oprah this week about ten things my mother always says to me—and the gift she gave me in taking us in when we needed her.

 

http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Th...

 

My question for you is this: What ten things does your mother always say to you??? Talk to me. I'm here.

 

Love and HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, Caitlin.



# 66--Of Collaterals and Dreams

This morning I heard on the radio that the unemployment rate is back down. It was up for a couple of weeks, but that was just end of March spillover. In February it was the snow. Now everything's fine--see it's going down! But each time it goes up (or down) I feel uncomfortable. It's all numbers. Or, to use a term that the Bush administration coined during the Iraq war, it's all collaterals. When you hear percentages like 8.4% do you think of the actual people who are suffering? I'm not sure. Very rarely do we read about the real effects—the terror, shame, and worse—that comes with joblessness.

It seems to me that rather than percentages and numbers like 14 million (which does not, of course, count the people who have fallen off unemployment, those who have lost the heart to keep searching for jobs or the countless freelancers who were never punched unto the system) we should be considering the fact that in New York City, for instance, the homelessness rate is the highest since the great Depression—and that 42,888 of those are children. I, for one, want to know the stories of those children. Or we should be hearing that the rising suicide rate in the US has been linked to this recession—again, I'd like to know (as painful as this is) who we've lost.

As all of you already know, I recently published my memoir about my own young family's journey though the recession; my husband Dan and I lost our jobs (and, for a time, our dreams) and, shortly after the birth of our first child, we moved home with my mother. My husband and I are lucky in uncountable ways--one of the most obvious being that we had a place to go at my mom's. Also, I wrote and sold a book based on our experience with the recession, so we have had that decent-though-not-life-changing amount of money for a while. But another way I've been lucky is that, because of my book, I have now been on a little book tour and at those readings, some otherwise unheard and desperate voices show up. And I get to hear them.

I end every one of my readings with a sing-along of Woody Guthrie's famous song "This Land is Your Land." At first this seemed like a fun thing to do—almost a moment of theatre in which we all get to participate. But then I realized something larger was going on. Not only are we reclaiming that song for right now—and remembering that it really was written as an angry song about the promise of the American Dream—but in the version I teach my audiences we're singing a verse that has been edited out of the lyrics school children are taught today. It goes like this:

 

One bright sunny morning, in the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I saw my people--.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there wonderin' if

This land was made for you and me?

 

Everywhere I go—from schools to libraries to book clubs—everyone is laughing and belting out the words at the beginning of the song (it is, after all a national anthem of sorts) but when they get to the relief office verse I hear softness—almost wonder--come into their voices. They're very often unsure of the words to this rarely sung part of the song. But also I sense that a larger moment of meaning is happening. We know—intuitively—when we sing those words about people who are hungry and people who are wondering if this land was made for you and me—that this is happening right now and it's even happening to some of us in the audience.

I don't know, really, in tangible terms what to do about the economy. Wiser people than me will have to figure out how to fix it and whom to blame. But what I do know is the story of the young woman who arrived at a reading of mine (in a cavernous Borders) clutching a little purple envelope with a letter inside it for me. She stood in front of me as I hovered while people settled themselves and the announcement of my reading went out over the Borders PA system. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She told me that her husband—with two degrees—has been laid off five times in the last three years. And that now, finally, they've moved in with his parents and he's gotten a job as a custodian at a local retirement home. She told me that only now with his new job, do they feel that they can dare to start dreaming again for themselves and their two small boys. That night six people showed up at my reading (and one of them was my mother in law!) I said to them, at the end, "You know, I usually make everyone sing with me, but you're such a small group…" And they said to me, "No we want to." So I passed out the photocopies of Woody's song and we started singing. Six small voices plus the voice of the Border's employee who joined in (his headset still on, his maroon Border's sweater pulled down over his waist, his nametag jiggling) ringing across the tables of stuff—books, games, chocolates, toys. And people who were milling around the store stopped and joined in at the parts they knew. And suddenly this small, sort of insignificant moment in South Portland, Maine, became something of a movement. I don't know how else to describe it but it seemed that just in singing this song and these verses together we were somehow owning, in a totally human way, what has happened to this country. It felt good.

You know, I believe we're all in need of some kind of sign--a larger one than statistics--that we can get back to dreaming. And I think we can start with just, simply, singing "This Land is Your Land" (with all the verses Woody wrote) together. And by doing that we can begin to acknowledge the real human beings—not just numbers that we're watching and hoping will affect the Dow—who have gone through (and are still going through) hard times in this country. Because, as I've said before, and I'll say again, America, was, in the end, made for you and me.

Love, Caitlin.  

Breakfast Foods From Made for You and Me

Dear Readers,

I owe you a proper blog! I've got one coming...but you know me, I really like to make it a REAL piece rather than just randomness. BUT today I've written about making some of the foods from Made for You and Me as a part of this event called "Lets Lunch." I've posted it on my website. Check it out and tell me what you think!

http://caitlinshetterly.com/blog/?p=133

Finding Home Book Giveaway!

Dear Ones,

I am so grateful that so many of you wrote in for the book giveaway with Margaret Roach. I am blessed to be able to give her beautiful book, And I Shall Have Some Peace There, away on my blog.

Choosing two of you was nearly impossible! I wanted to send you ALL her book and I wanted to send you ALL my book. So many of you wrote about the things both Margaret and I feel are important--making your own food, being simple, being loving to your families, CATS!!!, and the natural world outside our homes. But choose I must. So here's who I've chosen:

 

LINN: I love the simplicty of your message, here. That you can find peace and home in a cup of tea (and both Margaret and I love tea!) is so lovely to me. But it was the turtle that got me. I think often of turtles and their homes on their backs, how fragile their insides are.

Here's what Linn wrote:

"I realized long ago, after almost constant moving and traveling, that home for me is a warm cup of tea. So easy and portable it is a bit like a turtle carrying its home on its back."

NANCY SIMMONS-WALKER: I am giving you Margaret's book because you have journeyed home, as I did, after some hard, life altering events. And I love how you are connecting to the land outside, the peace in simple things and your memories of your family. Thank you for sharing your story.

Here's what Nancy wrote:

"I found have literally found home by returning to where I grew up 4 years ago after being gone 30 years. I had followed my husband on the trail his career took us, along the way we had 3 children and a sweet life but neverly really feeling any one place was "home", just somewhere we lived until the next promotion. Four years ago my husband died suddenly in a motorcycle accident when my children were 14, 17 and 20 so I brought them to where I had family. Now the youngest has left for college and I am left with my dogs to really rediscover my roots literally and figuratively. I just started a master gardener's class. Growing up on a farm but having lived in NYC and Ft Lauderdale it's wonderful to be back where nature is part of my life. I love to sit at my kitchen table and watch the birds at my many feeders. I listen to the water from my fountain. All reminders of my connection to my father, mother and husband who are now part of the earth and the heavens."

Now, as I said, I wish I could have given mine and Margaret's books away to ALL of you! I loved reading your posts on both her site AND on mine. If some of you are still interested in a giveaway, Naptime Chef on Babble will be giving my book away soon!

Please stay in touch. I love to hear from you! xxo C.