On Bracing

Cold mornings, Hemingway, new additions; farro bowls.

It’s been cold here lately. This is not shocking — one expects winter in New England to be cold. But it is bracing. Waking up in the morning to low double digit temperatures has a way of snapping things into focus.

That’s not to say I’ve been spending much time outside in the morning. Whereas the last few years I had made it a point to get outside — barefoot, no less! — to watch the sunrise, this year I’ve instead found myself mostly inside in the mornings. This is partially due to my contentedness to work out pre-dawn in our basement — not subjecting myself to both dark and cold before I’ve had a cup of coffee — but also due to the vagaries of two children who both wake up before the sunrises. When their lights switch from red to blue at 6:45am, I’m greeted with a cacophony of screams and wails and pleas for Daddy! and then — we’re off to the races. Gathering one after the other — the order of who actually recognizes it’s the morning first changes daily — we’re either into bed for a few moments of quiet with Mrs. CWD or reading a book or heading downstairs to eat breakfast or play Zingo! or sit on the couch and check to see if it snowed. In the loosely structured mayhem of the mornings, there scarcely time to press my coffee — let alone have a moment of solitude outside to appreciate the cold dawning of the day. Rosy fingers be damned.¹

But, as Hemingway wrote, the sun also rises — with or without me outside to watch it. And the cold still seeps in, managing to solidify that which seems fluid. Once the kids are up and out of the house, I can settle into my own routine and maintain some semblance structure. I can get some work done, finish cleaning up, block out a plan for the day. So, lately, if I’m working from home, I’m not really able to embrace the cold until later in the day, when Mrs. CWD and I sneak out for a walk at lunch time. A moveable feast this is not — we eat after — but still, it’s nice to get outside and spend time with my lovely wife.²

Since the opportunity presented itself, I’ll mentioned that I have always liked Hemingway’s prose. There’s a line in The Sun Also Rises which I particularly appreciate. One of the characters, Bill, asks another, Mike, how how he ended up bankrupt.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, and then suddenly.”

That’s an apt way to describe many things.

“How did you end up writing a newsletter every Friday?”

“Gradually, and then suddenly.”

“How did you end up with an overflowing compost bin?”

“Gradually, and then suddenly.”

“How did you end up with Mrs. CWD’s due date two weeks away?”

“Gradually, and then suddenly.”

Before Kiddo was born — lacking any other offspring, besides our befurred one — we had time to plan and think and anticipate for an incoming arrival. Our minds were nearly solely focused on a new baby, preoccupied with preparation. It felt like we were getting ready for the entirety of the nine months, our lives gestating along with Kiddo. And even though we didn’t have the full attention to devote to an embryonic Warthog — Kiddo, of course, requiring her due share — there still felt like a linear build up to the excitement of our trip to the hospital. We had time to think, to prepare — to send Kiddo off to Auntie and Uncle CWD’s and get some alone time before chaos ensued.³

This time, it’s felt different, though. Perhaps it’s the increased mental energy required for two kids, not one, or perhaps it’s just that by the third time, the novelty has worn off.⁴ But we end up going about our days as if nothing has changed — the passage of time marked only by an increase in the frequency of midwife appointments and the addition of a Spinning Babies routine to Mrs. CWD’s evening agenda. Sure, something is going to happen, but we still have time. The kids still must go to school, we still have social obligations, extracurriculars, a dog to keep from suffering from extreme boredom. And so this due date sneaks up on us and we find ourselves thinking, “Hey, we should probably pack a hospital bag, get the kids stuff ready for when they go to their cousins.”

So here we find ourselves suddenly preparing for what could very well be the imminent arrival of Baby #3. And that, too, is bracing. And, it, too, puts things in focus. As we fly through checklists and refresh ourselves on 511s or 311s or — in the case of Mrs. CWD with the Warthog, 111s — I wonder what become of our current routines and systems. Optimized for two, do they hold up to added rigors of three?⁵ How do we make sure that Kiddo and the Warthog — and, yes, Doggie — feel supported and get what they need when Mrs. CWD and my attention is pulled hard in a new, helpless direction?

I don’t have the answers for these questions — nor, do I think, anyone does. But, as the Tao te Ching advises, a good scheme needs no deliberate plans.⁶ The best we can do is continue to use kindness and virtue as the lodestars for our parenting, creating an environment that builds security and confidence. By accepting the ups and downs as just that — ups and downs, not forevers — the path unfolds itself.⁷ And it’s far better to approach it with optimism and with eyes wide open — radically, even — because as a wise dog once said, that which you manifest is before you.⁸

One thing that’s important to have amidst the chaos of life — irrespective of new additions to your family — are simple meals that can come together quickly. And while this time of year we rely heavily on our slow cooker, sometimes you don’t have the time for an all-day cook. When this happens, we turn to grain bowls⁹.

We made this the other night, it coming together in less than an hour — even using a lamb roast. It could be far quicker with a quicker cooking protein and leftover veggies.

Cook the farro in a rice cooker (using bone broth if I have it), season diced winter squash and sweet potatoes with salt, pepper, oregano, and olive oil and then roast at 375(F) for about an hour. You can simultaneously cook whatever protein you’d like — we used lamb, flavored with oregano and garlic, but almost any meat will do — and then stack the lamb over veggies over farro and then top with a quick dressing (in this case, following the Greek theme, I mixed yogurt, sour cream, salt, pepper, oregano, and red wine vinegar together for a cucumberless tzatziki sauce).

With that, I’ll leave you to your weekends. A long one here — Mrs. CWD and I are going to sneak away for perhaps our last date night of parents of two, but otherwise, we’ll be home, relishing every moment, imprinting it in our memories. However you choose to spend it, I hope you spend it intentionally.

We’ll see you back here next week.

1. Even Doggie CWD is lucky to get the door to our backyard opened for her many mornings, with all the pressing tasks required by the dynamic duo of Kiddo and the Warthog.

2. Even if she steals my winter jacket.

3. Though not too much time, arriving in the hospital parking garage just forty-five minutes before Mrs. CWD delivered the Warthog.

4. It seems friends and family feel the same way — “When is Mrs. CWD due again? Holy sh*t! Really? That’s so soon!” These things sneak up on us all, no matter how vested we are.

5. Optimized is a generous word, carrying a lot of weight here.

6. Chapter 27:

Good deeds leave no signs.
Good words leave no flaws.
Good scheme needs no deliberate plans.
A good lock uses no bolts, yet it cannot be opened.
A good knot uses no rope, yet it cannot be united.
Hence, a saint is always kind by saving other people and rejects no one.
He is always kind by saving all things and therefore nothing is being rejected.
This is the true enlightenment.
Thus, a kind person is the teacher of the unkind.
An unkind person is a lesson for the kind to learn.
He who does not value his teacher and dislikes the valuable lesson, although knowledgeable, is in fact greatly confused.
This is the fundamental essence.

Speaking of The Tao, it’s interesting — but not surprising — how as I revisit the text, so many themes I’ve written about here appear within something written some six thousand years ago.

There’s nothing new, only a constant relearning and rediscovery.

And, I guess when you think about it, that’s the Tao.

7. I like the poem Carmel Point by Robinson Jeffers for taking that long view, especially the last three lines:

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

8. This is one of my favorite lines from The Art of Racing in the Rain, in case you didn’t catch the reference. Another book filled with Zen.

Also — when you stop to think about it, three is just two plus one. From the Tao, again (Chapter 42):

Tao gives birth to one.
One gives birth to two.
Two gives birth to three.
Three gives birth to all things and all beings.

9.

Sam Sager

used to call these “hot salads” but he’d use greens — perhaps wilted — in lieu of the farro.