220317 mumma is getting younger... the magic is working.

 Mar. 17

Spring is coming, the ridge stream is running.

I have been old and walked with a cane. I was in pain, and on pain medicines, not able to function. For the first time since I was a child, I needed to be looked after, even my medicine regime was done for me by K. Between illness and medicines, my brain function was way below par as well. But I am getting stronger, able at last to function at my usual level. It takes more effort: things I once did while my mind was juggling a dozen other ideas now require mindful deliberation, my hand will not just now perform without my concentrating some focus on it. I hope that free ability will return, but mindfulness is a good thing, and if I am working with my hands my focus should be on that work.

I have a health app on my phone which records my steps each day and the data from that is a clear breakdown of my wellness over the past months. August, 2021, when I was at my worst, I registered 300 steps (rounded to nearest 100), September 1500, November 4000, January 6400, and February, when Rocky came, 11,100. Most of my walking is up and down a big hill, though the step counter doesn't take that into account! I am cooking and doing mosaics again, and writing more. I can lift the baby up and carry him around. I couldn't do these things; Rain would put the baby in my arms once I sat down and I could hold him for a while. We were eating more processed foods, because they were easier to prepare.

This illness has been the first time that my body let me down. I have considered myself to be healthy and strong my whole life, trusted my body to deal with illness and injury: I have broken only small bones, thumb and a toe, despite numerous falls on skies and on foot. I learned to fall easily, when I got a big dog, because falls happen with a dog when you are out in all weather. If you "let" yourself fall, you are less likely to break something. I had pain that can only compare to childbirth, which is easier to handle because it has a purpose. I begin to appreciate the lessons that I learned through the pain. I can glimpse an understanding of others' suffering, especially the pain of the elderly and those with chronic debilitating illness. I was a senior-care worker for some years, and looked after my parents, too, but I was not fully appreciative of their situations and feelings. 

Now I am back. I do feel like I am growing younger! I no longer use a walking stick. I can lift and carry three or four pieces of firewood at a time, I can shovel snow, I can prepare a healthy meal every day. Yesterday I made sourdough bread again, having made a spritely sourdough starter with ease. All the skill of bread-making has come back to me, surfacing like some innate memory, though it isn't really, it is just the learning I did when I used to make bread and sourdough all the time. It was completely submerged somewhere when I began and I had to look up the process on-line. How all the knowledge flowed back was amazing. It has happened with mosaicking too: as I began to do it again, the methods and skills returned to me. There was a moment, a few weeks ago when, as I rested at the top of the meadow, I had a flash-memory of how my body used to feel: so confident that all physical awareness could be left to my subconscious, or perhaps to the body itself. The feeling was gone in that moment, but perhaps it will return to stay. Then I will have achieved youngness again. 

Here is the sourdough starter: made with whole wheat flour and water, left out for the wild yeast in the air to find it and move in. After a few days of "feeding" the starter will be ready for use in a bread. 

Yesterday I made one loaf of regular white bread and one loaf of sweet potato bread. I folded baked mashed sweet potatoes into the dough and it resulted in a soft sweet loaf. The bits of sweet potato taste like fruit in the bread, like dates. (I didn't remove the potato skin, waste of the best part!)

Here is the plain dough, ready to turn out and kneed; on the right, punched down and ready to make into a loaf and rise again.

      

Here is the sweet potato dough ready to rise.

  

The loaves, out of the oven. The sweet potato bread sliced.

 

*****

Last week there was a  thaw and the stream on the ridge began to run, then on Saturday we had a blizzard. 

Everything white again.

Today, K, Rocky and I went down to the old pond for a look and Rocky and I returned up the ridge stream to see how it ran. Rocky doesn't wear his collar any more on the hill. Today I even forgot to take his leash. I have never used it out walking, only in town.

Above the old cow pond on the ridge is a small almost-island, like the invisible island in the children's book of that name, except theirs was bigger. 

Today it is seventeen degrees and the sun shines. I took a sun bath. 

Keep well. Send loving energy to the people who had to leave their homes today, and to those who wait and wait, far from their homes and families. 

Mumma Yaga 

Angels today: