The Bread Diet & a Bun Recipe

I chuckled over a Facebook post about the number of loaves of bread to buy for a snow storm partly because though I think of going out for milk, toilet paper, and salt, I don’t think about buying bread. We make it at home because finding a decent loaf of bread in the States is difficult. The transition of where foods are prepared, from home to industrial food processors, means that the way food is valued, made, stored, and shipped has also changed.

Bread is about shelf life, not taste, in the States.

Despite having been the staff of life for thousands of years, bread's reputation has lost its luster in part due to the rise of gluten intolerance. Please note that the industrialization of bread baking with its reduced fermentation times has been noted to play a part in the increased prevalence of gluten intolerance. It’s therefore not merely the fault of gluten but also the quick fermentation and industrial processing that need to be avoided.


Last Thanksgiving while slicing up cheap white sandwich bread for stuffing, my husband noticed an odor emitting from the loaves. After seven years of making our own bread or buying sandwich bread from a baker in Japan, it was a revelation to then handle processed bread. It stinks.

On a recent morning, coming down the stairs, I spied the step ladder in front of open pantry doors. Flour coated the kitchen counter and floor. A bowl of barely mixed dough was sitting in front of my beaming child. Despite my frustration with the mess, I help him cover the dough and clean up while sharing in his delight for having just created something.

This child often rises with the sun in a cheerful manner and sometimes begins unsupervised projects like making bread dough. I’m not sure exactly what posses him, but his bread concoctions are amazingly good. He uses all-purpose flour with a high protein content and instant yeast because that is what is accessible in the pantry. (The long acting yeast is in our fridge and he’s yet to use it.) I tend to let the dough sit around all day, sometimes overnight, and then shape it right before he comes home from school because of course he wants to see if it turned into something. We bake it and voilà, it’s always tasty, moist, and somedays it even has lovely holes, think of the no knead bread method. I’ve decided that part of his bread’s success lies in the long fermentation process and the beauty of playing with food.

In these parts of Ohio, the vegan (CHIP) diet is heavily pushed. However, there are still plenty of us around who eat a few animal products and like our bread to contain gluten. I eat plenty of vegetarian fare, but I have an intense dislike of faux food or food that is vegan but is supposed to taste like meat or something else. I prefer eating foods that are what they are, and processed whatever food is usually not so good for you anyway.

When I worked as a cardiac nurse, I asked patients and their families about their diet. Americans eat too much processed food. It’s one of the reasons I learned to cook real food. It’s also the reason I eat butter, bread, full fat yogurt, and drink whole milk— it’s real food. I’ve also noted that people the world over who eat and cook what they like in reasonable amounts and that exercise to some degree are not always on a (calories restricted) diet. For the love of food, eat the real stuff and get it locally. If I was  dishing out diet advice, I would say consider this from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I might add that wheat is a plant.

Do you remember the National Geographic article about longevity and diet that highlighted the blue zones where people lived for a long time which included the Sardinians, Okinawans, and the Seventh-day Adventists of Loma Linda, California? They ate diets that included bread, cheese, meat, and small amounts of alcohol along with the vegan and vegetarian fare. A National Geographic researcher, Dan Buettner, commented on blue zone diets in a later interview, saying, “Hanging out with unhappy people who drink and smoke is hazardous to your health.” My point here is that bread and cheese can be part of a healthy diet (and it helps to socialize and be part of a community).

Recently, I've been reading Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the  Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World by Sue Shepard. I was shocked in the preface to read that in 1800 archaeologist in Egypt were eating honey thousands of years old until they found some hairs in it and then the perfectly preserved body of a small baby. Apparently honey keeps almost indefinitely and gives self-preserving new meaning.

The book is full of interesting bits on the competitive food chain— “if we don’t quickly take advantage of a food, something else will.” The history on the ways that this has been done is quite interesting. Think of travelers, refugees, soldiers, sailors, and long winters with no food and add to that the myriad locations around the world with varying conditions, food stuffs, and learning curves. The fermentation process and ingredients like vinegar, salt, honey, and sugar were found to transform perishable food stuff into storable and transportable foods like crackers, breads, cheeses, yogurts, and wines. It’s kind of interesting to realize that butter and yogurt weren’t about being healthy or unhealthy but about putting food by for another day.

Our industrious forebearers found that fermentation can make inedible foods edible. The Sudanese love of rotten meat evolved in a region plagued with food scarcity and benefits those that consume every last calorie available to them. Fermentation gives us cultural icons that are now eaten throughout the world— German saurkraut, Vietnamese fish sauce nuoc mam, katsuobushi and miso from Japan, thousand year old eggs from China, Korean kimchi, and even bread.  Allowing yeast to ferment is part of what makes gluten digestible.

If an eight year old boy can come downstairs and mix up a bowl of dough that turns into a delicious bread, so can you. Here's a recipe for buns that are delish. Put some jam on it. Live a little. Eat bread, but make it yourself.

Buns for Breakfast or Burgers

Make 8 to 12

These breakfast buns work with or without a burger. I adapted a recipe from the online The Bakers Circle hosted by King Arthur flour.

Ingredients

Whole Wheat flour, 2/3 cup

Bread flour 2 1/3 cup

Sugar, 1/4 cup

Salt, 1 1/4 tsp

Warm Water, 1 cup

Yeast (regular), 1 Tbsp

Egg, 1 large

Butter, 2 Tbsp melted & slightly cooled + 3 Tbsp for topping

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, whisk together whole wheat flour, bread flour, sugar, and salt.
2. Melt 2 Tbsp of butter butter and set aside to cool slightly.
3. In another mixing bowl, whisk together 1 cup of the flour mix, warm water, and yeast until smooth and shiny, about 1 minute.
4. Add the egg and slightly cooled butter to the mixture and whisk again until smooth and shiny, about 1 minute.
5. In a standing mixer fitted with a dough hook or by hand, add the remaining flour mixture to the dough mix and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Add additional bread flour as needed if extremely sticky, should just be tacky.
6. Cover the dough, and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 to 2 hours.
7. Gently deflate the dough, divide into 8 to 12 pieces (8 for burger size; 12 for bun size, 24 for slider size). Shape each piece into a round ball; flatten to about 3-inches across. Place the buns on a silicon sheet or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise until noticeably puffy, about 1 hour.
8. Brush buns with half of the additional melted butter. Bake 375ºF until golden, about 15 to 18 minutes, Remove from the oven and brush with the remaining melted butter.

Athens Food Culture & the Hungry

Walking uptown on a recent humid evening, it occurred to me that I have been at home most evenings for a very long stretch. I felt giddy heading off alone to see the film, A Place at the Table. Earlier in the day I had tried to purchase tickets for Bounty on the Bricks, but they had sold out the week before.

Athens's food culture has long been about "real food." My first introduction to real good was the Athens Farmers Market, offering beautiful fruit and produce; natural and organic meat; and eggs,honey, and other homemade products like apple butter. My appreciation of Athens sky rocketed when we lived in Washington, D.C. and could only dream of finding fruits, vegetables, and meats of the quality and with the prices available here in Athens. We stocked up on visits.

Later, I got to know some of the local businesses around town. At Donkey Coffee we fell for the coffee and eventually began ordering it from their supplier. Products like Crumbs Crackers were hoarded, and, once, we had them ship as many packages as they could stuff into an APO shipping box to us in Japan. Our Japanese friends loved them too.

One summer while visiting Athens, we called Snowville Creamery and asked for a tour. The bucolic setting, my personal fascination with food production, the chocolate milk samples,and the kindness of the staff were all wonderful. However, the cows were the real memory makers with their line stopping long appraisals of us. From our home in Japan we hoped for the day they would make yogurt from a Kickstarter campaign; the day came after we moved here.

Summer visits to Dow Lake often included a pizza from Avalanche and al fresco dinning on my in-laws patio with pressure fried chicken from Millers. Annually, whatever the season, we trekked uptown to my husband's favorite grad student bar, O'houlies Pub, now defunct, but it eventually became Jackie O's which now brews beers that you can now buy in a can at Krogers. Wow! 

I was happy to move here even if the restaurant scene was low key compated to Japan and geared toward college students. Plenty of the basic ingredients are locally available to the home cook.

However, the change from visitor to resident of Athens has been an introduction to other aspects of the local food culture. Most striking, the number of people that don't get enough food-- one in three children in our ten county region are hungry.

My husband, as part of his work, asks children and families questions like, "When do you eat breakfast?" The answer is often, "At school," which means school food programs. Another question, "What kinds of snacks do you eat?" The answer is often some kind of processed food like the coveted "Hot Pocket." Kids sometimes ask their parents if they can go to McDonalds after a visit to his office. The answer he hears is, "We can't afford that."

The film, A Place at the Table, looks at the hunger problem in America through the experience of a couple of kids, clips from experts, a movie star cameo, and statistics and information graphics related to the hungry, food policies, and food access. The points I found compelling were:

• Subsidized foods are cheap which is why processed foods made from corn, wheat, and soy are cheaper than fruits and vegetables
• When your food budget is small, you stalk up on cheap (processed) foods 
• Obesity and health problems increase with a diet high in processed foods & fear over where the next meal will come
• Ohio has $7 billion dollars of health care costs that are diet related
• American taxpayers are paying corporations through the Farm Bill subsidies to make cheap processed foods
• Fruit and Vegetable growers do not get the same subsidies as mega farmed corn, wheat, and soy growers who have powerful lobbies in Washington
• The Farm Bill has cut funding ($40 billion) for food programs (think SNAP, food stamps, etc.) but not funds to Corporations
• Food Stamps, if you can qualify, provide $3 a day for food, breakfast, lunch, and diner and no money for gas to get it
• 75% of food deserts are urban which means you have to travel, spend more money, and have time to acquire real food like a carrot.
• 90 cents of the school lunch fee is for the food costs
• Hunger in America has increased since the early 1980s as funding has been decreased to food programs that feed people
• Food pantries, churches, food banks and other community resources have grown immensely, from one food bank in 1967 to the rapid growth in the 1980s to now, yet still can't touch or keep up with the demand for food
• The US Government committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to Wall Street compared to $106 billion on food aid in 2012

Congress is considering major cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP a.k.a. food stamps) with automatic cuts taking effect in November. We're not meeting the need and we're cutting the program?  Jeff Bridges in the film says, "If another country were doing this to our children, we would be at war."

What to do? 

"Join us in telling (your) U. S. Representative that the answer to our nation's concerns about balancing the budget should not mean taking food from the most vulnerable among us." For the locals, that means contacting Senators Brown and Portman and Representative Stivers to rescind the cuts before the first of November.

The most powerful scene in the movie? When the fifth grader tells you she has trouble concentrating because she keeps seeing her teacher as a giant banana or sometimes an orange. Then, she pats her belly in a way that let's you know--she's hungry.

A Place at the Table

  

Just Ask

Over lunch yesterday a friend encouraged me to "just ask." I want to write an article but I don't have a publisher for the article so I am hesitant to approach people and ask for their time. When she said, "Just ask," she was encouraging me to let people decide (not me) if they would open up. Her experience is that if you ask about something people are passionate about, they love to talk and they share willingly.

Scrolling Facebook after posting the sushi cake recipe, I saw this video from a friend. It's from November 2008 by Playing for Change: Peace through Music project. It is a cover of  Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" by street musicians from around the world. It struck me that someone probably just asked these guys to sing and forty million views later, we're all still experiencing the magic of those moments. Admittedly, I have a history with this song, from nursing school, that makes me pause, go back in time, and savor a magical moment. In a Florida nursing home filled mainly with elderly people shuffling about in a common room and quite a few wheel chair bound folks, a fellow nursing student began playing this song on the piano key board with some abandon. Patients, nursing students, and even some of the staff belted out the lyrics and then as if it never happened, everyone returned to normal. It was the quiet afterward that seared the memory for me. 

How beautiful we are when we let the light from within Shine! 

Visibility

A suffering Star on the cover of People Magazine can draw me in at the checkout aisle, but the story of Job in the Old Testament has not tempted me until today when I heard the ending. I knew Job suffered, but somehow I missed that in the end, Job was humbled that God became visible to rebuke him and that this humble response resulted in the restoration of his fortunes. Why was seeing God enough for Job?

Some of the harder moments of my nursing career were being with patients at the end of their life. Some people seemed to want to die alone as if they waited for the visitors to leave and so they let go on the night shift. Some seemed like they were lonely and in need of visitors, hanging on longer than expected as if something might change. Maybe I imagined it, but in some cases I felt people needed someone to be present with them even as they were leaving the world behind. I would go home confused, unable to articulate this thought, but feeling it almost pulsing in the air around a patient lying in the twilight of the pumps, machines, and gizmos of the modern hospital setting. They wanted someone to sit at their bedside, maybe hold their hand, but mainly just be with them, as if they mattered to someone for a moment longer.

I'm not a nurse anymore, but what I experienced while I was a nurse has stayed with me. It wasn't about suffering, but it was about the need for presence. This sort of means bearing witness, it sort of means connecting to each other, and it sort of means holding a space open. The need for presence goes on unabated.

Children demand it of us. "Look at me!" When we are searching for a mate, we might wear provocative clothes or bright colors to call attention to ourselves. In middle age, it's the sports car, the shiny ring, or the plastic surgery that renews our image and our quest for visibility. A penchant for being witty, knowledgable, or helpful, might be developed to keep the input of presence incoming. No matter our age, our ability, or our success, presence is vital to our being.

Sometimes we need to know that we are visible. Sometimes being visible is humbling. Sometimes we are known and it is all we need. I like when I can be with someone and it is enough-- maybe we talk, maybe we don't, but we are both there and fully present.

My take on Job is that he was happy to have God show up. Showing up, being present, it sounds like a little thing, but it means a lot when you are out there in the dark. Sure, God showed up to give him an earful, a comeuppance or so it sounded as it went for four chapters I hear. I don't presume to get God, but I do get that when people show up in my life that it is as if a beacon is lighting a way. It is hard to feel forsaken when you are flooded with light.

Observing again

Observing Shogakko

At last I met the Mule's sensei. We had an observation period, followed by a class meeting, followed by an all second grade parent's meeting. I went a few minutes early and found the kids wildly engaged in cleaning the school at fairly high decibels- running up and down the halls with zukin cleaning cloths, sweeping haphazardly, and a notable cloud of dust floating in the air. It made me chuckle. Not much of the discourse was translated from the class or meetings afterward so I heard a lot of, "waha, waha, waha," as Charlie Brown's teacher said in those Peanut TV Specials, but here is what I discerned.

The lesson the parent's observed was a discussion of what the class goals would be. They each had to write a goal, read aloud what they wrote, then nominate the goals they liked from their classmates, and, finally, vote on the selection of goals. From what I could gather they banted about: being friendly, listening to their teacher (she loved this one), eating all of their lunch, and helping each other.

The Mule's teacher is noticeably older than the four other second grade teachers, all of whom look like they just graduated from college. She was dressed conservatively in a navy suit with a skirt, but wearing a pair of sneakers. She has the legs of a woman who has been on her feet for many years; she looks strong. She doesn't waste her breath yelling at the kids; she talks calmly and seems to know when to intervene and when to let chaos reign. She doesn't waste her energy with props and rearranging the furniture; she keeps a traditional classroom with all eyes ahead. With one distracted child caught talking out of turn, she asked him to please tell the class what so and so said which resulted in a blank stare as the child had no idea. She reminded everyone to listen to the student with the floor. When it is their turn to speak, the children get up from their desks, push their chair in, and stand to speak. It clearly delineates who has the floor to speak. Later in the class meeting, she talked about some of the experiences the class had together in the first weeks of school garnering laughs from the mamas. I have no idea what she said, but she struck me as a storyteller who goes for a laugh. I will attach my ever wobbly clip from the lesson.



At dinner time, I asked the Mule, "How do you like your teacher?" She replied, "Why? Did she ask you to ask me?" I was surprised by that response, but said, "I was just wondering what you think about your teacher? Is she hard? Is she friendly?" The Mule responded to this line of questioning more readily, "Oh! She's easy. That man sensei, he is tough! He yells at his class all of time." I laughed thinking that perhaps the Mule's sensei is more at ease with the give and take of chaos and energy, maybe that's an advantage of being the older teacher.

Attention Deficit Disorder

In Japan there is little acknowledgment or comfort with neurological conditions like ADD (attention deficit disorder) not that we are all on the same page even in the U.S., but here it is not even acknowledged. I feel for the kids who are missing out on opportunities to learn and grow socially. Perhaps if given treatment and help, they might focus, listen more attentively, resist impulsive actions that often socially isolate them, and they might be able to learn. Every class has at least one kid with untreated ADD and in the class sizes of Japan maybe even two or three.

Medical literature reports that seven to eight percent of kids have ADD. Within the reported group only half are identified. Of the half that are identified, only half receive treatment. Even in the U.S. a lot of  children are left to struggle with this on their own. Here, no one seems to believe it exists and yet at any school event, I see at least a kid or two who could benefit from an evaluation- except there are no trained child psychiatrist here.

When I have tried to help Japanese mothers understand there are options for kids with ADD type of behavioral issues to include treatment with medications, you can hear crickets chirp. Perhaps because it is a stigma, perhaps because general medical doctors lack training in this area, or perhaps because the Japanese generally avoid pills. Instead these children are left to tough it out as in "boys will be boys." Yet they get labeled as trouble makers and harangued about their behavior. It is unfortunate no one wants to talk about brain scans and prefrontal cortex development since this demonstrates that brains with ADD are indeed different. It is unfortunate that these children do not get a trial on medication to see IF it could help them.

There was a boy in my second grade class named Randy. He was always in trouble. He made me laugh; he made the whole class laugh. He was always going to see the principal. He infuriated the teacher. He seemed to never listen to any instructions and he always did things he should not have done. Sometimes the other kids cautioned him, and sometimes they encouraged him, but he could never stop himself either way. I have often wondered whatever happened to Randy. I am pretty sure he would have benefitted from an evaluation for ADD if it had been an option back then. He wasn't a bad boy, but he couldn't follow directions, stop an impulse, or sit still to save his life. Most of the Moose' and Mule's stories from school involve little boys who get in trouble repeatedly for these same reasons.

The Mule seems happy yet again in school. There are no complaints about looking different. Her class portrait was identifiable by its blue eyes and blonde hair- makes it easy for me as I have to scan every name carefully as I can't read Hiragan or Katakana so well. She told me about her various best friends. She happily skips off to school daily. The other day she complained about having to study English at home. Two languages are tough and time consuming when there are fairies to catch, ballets to dance, stories to tell, and friends to visit, but she does it.

Funeral Thoughts

I feel such pain at funerals. I haven't thought about it enough to know why- is it the collective pain? Is it the appropriate place? I think its all the love you feel in the room; it is so much love; it is hard to bare.

Sara died two weeks before she was due to retire with no indications that she was at the end of her life. Her death came as a shock to her family, friends, and co-workers. The service was held at the chapel at NAS Whiting Field. She was known for her kindness, her cooking, and her rock collection. The first thing I noted when I entered the chapel was a box of rocks with the label, "Sara's Rocks." My aunt explained that as Sara worked around aviators and those going to different places she asked folks to bring her rocks. It was quite a pile so I think people enjoyed bringing them to her. Cyn, my aunt, said Sara had a story for every rock and kept a record of them. Her nieces made a cookbook with a collection of her recipes and things she had said or written in her email messages to share with everyone who attended. It was wonderful to read through it at home afterward. I think many will cherish it for a time to come.

This one, about her trip to Boston, gives you an idea of Sara, "I had a wonderful trip! I went everywhere I really wanted to go and enjoyed some places more than I thought possible. I was sitting on someone's steps in Beacon Hill, eating my Havarti and pear from DeLucca's Market when the post lady walked up and sat down beside me. She told me several places I just couldn't miss seeing and one of those was Acorn Street, 'the most photographed street in America.' I can see why as it appears to be just the way it looked 300 years ago, except perhaps with more blooming plants. Went to Cambridge and walked around Harvard and loved that, me, thousands of students and about an equal number of tourists. It was really fun to just sit and listen to the kids gripe about their housemates and discuss their plans. And found a little take out place with pay as you weigh stuff and had the very best spicy slaw ever." I loved that Sara both enjoyed the moment, had the post lady sitting with her, found fun in listening to griping college kids, and mentioned the food she ate. My mom's phone calls always include food- must be an Ohio thing; Sara grew up in Ohio too.

Her co-worker Sam, also an ordained minister, spoke at the memorial service. Sara once told him that if she died she wanted Sam to say a few words. Sam is a big black man with a soulful boom in his voice. Sara was a slim white woman whose gentle ways and open heart made her many friends from all walks of life. Sam's wife had died a few years back; Sara was at his door with food and kindness. Her nieces each shared wonderful memories. A telling story was from her niece, Anne. Anne said a few years back she got married in a very small ceremony. Sara gave her a gift; it was a set of dishes. Anne was happy to receive them. But later Sara pulled her aside & took her out to her car- to show her the whole set plus the serving dishes. Sara didn't want to upstage anyone, but she wanted Anne to have all of her dishes like if she had had a big wedding. Sara had a good heart. The memorial service was a good way to say goodbye and it was wonderful to hear all of those stories. Her spirit will be around reminding us all to be kind and gentle, but she will be sorely missed. On her memorial card it said, "In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the American Red Cross, PO Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013-7243, noting donations are in memory of Sara McBride to benefit the Japan Earthquake." Sara had plans to visit Japan in her retirement.

On the phone this morning, my husband told me it was cold in Yokosuka. He saw snowflakes falling as he left the office. It reminded me to come back to add this last quote from Sara, "I just had to go outside last Friday and feel the snow. I just so love the quiet. There's nothing like it." I don't like to be cold, but I do feel peaceful when I watch the snow fall.

Better Caretakers

Close to fifteen years ago I attended a wedding in Sasebo, Japan. It was my first visit to Japan and having traveled from Bahrain in the Middle East the first week of May which is known as Golden Week in Japan, I was blown away by the cleanliness, the green vistas, and the hillsides blooming with azaleas. I vowed on that trip to return to Japan if the Navy ever offered. I washed my hands in the fountain outside of the shrine, wished I had on a kimono, and drank in all of the beauty. Our friends, Rob and Kimiko, were married in a Shinto ceremony wearing traditional dress. It was a visual feast to my eyes grown accustomed to brown sand, tumbling trash, and faraway camels herds.

Rob asked us to sit near the altar as part of his family. We sat facing Kimiko's family. The chairs were lined up opposite each other. We Americans felt a bit more squirmy than our Japanese counterparts sitting stoically across from us. The priest began by blessing the rice and every other item. I began to feel very anxious. It hit me sitting there watching the priest that Shintoism believes that everything thing has a spirit even the rice. I was momentarily unsure of how to process this as it conflicted with Christian teachings I had received. I settled my unrest with the thought that I was here to support my friends and thus their way of celebrating this event.

In the first year that we moved to Japan, we discovered Hayao Miyazaki and his lovely film "My Neighbor Totoro." I noted again how every living thing has a spirt in the Japanese way of thinking. Totoro is a tree spirit. I loved the film and the spiritual aspect it presents of kindness, helpfullness, childhood imaginations, and that tree and along with that tree its spirit, Totoro.

Reading John Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity" recently, I came across his discussion of Shintoism and how his parents who were Japanese used this viewpoint to see even a piece of paper imbibed with spirit which meant wading up paper or wasting anything was discouraged. Everything has a spriit so nothing is to be wasted! We must care for every little thing. I thought wow! I like how that raises the value of every little thing.

Yesterday, I was listening to an old podcast of "On Being" with the nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai. She helped to plant over 30 million trees to restore soil erosion, provide firewood, and fruit for sale for women in Kenya. Part of the story was about when she was a child there was a kind of fig tree that her mother told her that should never be used because "that is a tree of God." Her quote was, " I used to collect the firewood for my mother. And I remember my mother telling me not to collect any firewood from this tree called a fig tree, the so-called strangler fig tree. And when I asked her why not, she told me, 'That is a tree of God. We don't cut it. We don't burn it. We don't use it. They live for as long as they can, and they fall on their own when they are too old."

She went to America to study and returned five years later to find those trees had been cut down and that over the course of another five years soil erosion had drastically changed the landscape. The women walked further and further in search of clean water and firewood. These godly trees had been part of traditional African spirituality so when more of the people became Catholics, the missionaries encouraged the no longer sacred trees to be cut down and used. Interestingly, those trees and that myth had served a greater purpose to preserve the ecological system of the environment. Her inspiration was to plant trees as a way of undoing the unplanned changes. In light of these thoughts of reconciling that everything has a spirit and the Christian idea that God is every where, I am choosing to embrace this Shinto idea more fully as I see that with everything having a spirit, we are better caretakers.

Departures

I have been intimate with a lot of skin in my life. My first clinical assignment as a student nurse was on a medical floor. I was instructed to bathe the patient. The patient was a ninety year old man who weighed maybe ninety pounds. He could not talk, didn't open his eyes, and had gnarled hands that were folded together. I was baffled. I was prepared to talk, to connect, to yibber yabber as is my want. I was not sure how to elicit his permission or interest.

Perplexed I returned to my nursing instructor for some sage advice. She told me sometimes doing is the best instructor- just take in everything you need for a bath and as you do it, tell him what you are doing. So I did. That was one tough learning experience. I was scared. I'd say at that point in my life I had only touched a few people beyond drawing soap bubble pictures on my cousin's back, and I had never bathed another human body. It was an intimate and yet necessary task.

I could see by the dull sheen of his skin that others had wiped his skin, but no one had scrubbed the dead skin off, cleaned the folds of his underarms and groin area, washed his feet, or cleaned his nails. His body odor was so strong that I had to fight a wave or two of nausea and the impulse to run. I rubbed off every dead skin particle with a wash cloth saturated with soap and hot water. I polished him until his skin shone, and then I slathered him with lotion. I shaved his face. I applied deodorant to his armpits. I changed his bed linens and gown. Then I wondered how a nurse could do this job since this one patient had taken me three hours to clean. Afterward, I went across the street to the mall as if on auto pilot, I say this because I could not stop myself and I could not say where I was going. I walked into Victoria Secrets and bought a bottle of lotion that smelled of flowers and natural oils. I needed something beautiful to smell after that bath.

I went on to bathe many others in my nursing career. I worked on a surgical trauma unit where we took care of patients on ventilators, with head injuries, and even harder for me emotionally, patients with quadriplegia- usually young men, all of whom tended to stay for weeks, sometimes months. We bathed most of the patients on the night shift, and I worked the nightshift. Shiny glowing skin was the hallmark of Nurse Kim. My patients smelled good or they got a bath. The nursing aides would poke fun of me  as I was one of the few nurse who insisted on bathing my patients not that I ever turned down help, but I had a standard. Skin is the largest organ of our body. The glow of the bath never lasted long- you'd be surprised at how quickly a bed and a person get dirty staying in bed all day.

That was a long time ago for me. These near four years in Japan have been about home- cooking, cleaning, and kiddos mostly. I continue to have a special fondness for bathing- now it is in a hot bath or onsen. I love the way the Japanese take a bath. First, is the way the bath is set up. The bathrooms, even at home, have a shower outside of the tub. You sit on a low stool and wash yourself. You scrub up, rinse off, and wash your hair all outside of the tub or shower as you know it as a westerner. Once you are sparkly clean- that shiny skin that says you rubbed off all of the dead skin cells, you get to soak in the nice hot water. It is a beautiful thing. The Japanese are quite modest so it seems to me, but all of this bathing and soaking is often done in an open setting usually with your family members. I have never felt uncomfortable being naked around all of the strangers, but oh I have loved all of that hot water.

I love love stories. I like to know how couples met. I like sappy romance movies. It is comfort for me even when it is formulaic. I will watch a romance and never lose hope that it could turn out to be good story. Sometimes I like the costumes (A Room with a View), sometimes I like the squeaky bed sounds (Delicatessen), sometimes the cinematography and humor (Amelie), sometimes I like the story of falling in love with a place (Local Hero), and sometimes I like the failure of love (Raise the Red Lantern). I have often liked foreign films.

Yesterday I watched a movie that touched me in these two surprising areas- the memory of bathing many human bodies and of love. Departures is a Japanese film that struck this memory cord with a bang. The film is richer for having lived here too. I could understand only the customary greetings and comments that are daily used in Japanese so I read the subtitles. The relationships and how they are portrayed seemed so right on. My Japanese mama friends, when they have talked of troubles in their relationships, have always commented that they just ignore their husbands for weeks at a time. (If I am upset you hear about it especially if you are my husband. He'd probably like it if I ignored him.) The film captures some of this overlooking or ignoring things in relationships- it seems very much alive and well here. There is a lot of the being positive attitude that I see here shown in the film in the main relationship which made me wonder if I had never lived here how I would look on it. The real beauty for me though, was the protagonists experience with cleaning all of those bodies, preparing them for their departure through the last threshold of this life. It is done with much love and sincerity. We could all learn something from watching our loved ones being prepared in such a way. I particularly loved the teenage granddaughters who insisted their obaachan or grandmother would want to depart this life wearing thigh high knit socks under her kimono; and through their giggles you knew their grandmother would have- she had giggled a lot with them. It was a quiet and moving film, worthy of one's time.

A friend of ours recently died as a result of a horseback riding accident. She was someone I thought I would have time to catch up with again when we returned to the states-all those plans that we put on hold as we pursue new adventures.

Life is such a rough road- I think that is why I crave more beauty in my day. Beauty, as depicted in "American Beauty" as in the wrinkled hands of my great grandmother, the plastic bag floating on the wind, a touching song, a meaningful poem, an act of kindness, a show of respect. Those kinds of beauty seem more important to me now as they touch a dark, deep place within me that after a long fast need to be nourished.

Departures in our lives make us aware of our own shortcomings and short time. I want to drink in beauty with all of its ugliness as it is what is real and nourishing to me. Cleaning the skin sets the stage for the departure in the film, but in cleaning it, and in being present, love is released. Now for a hot soak.