Story Medicine

I am thinking about my grandmother’s lemon chiffon pie. This was my mother’s mother, Mary Imm, the oldest daughter in a family of 11 children. When my grandmother came to our house, she’d make chicken broth with celery and beer, pot roast, and homemade coleslaw with green peppers, and the whole house smelled rich and inviting because Grandmama would also put on a pot of coffee in the morning that would brew all day. Neither of my parents liked coffee, but I loved it, so to me, this was heaven. Once I asked her if the coffee she drank from morning to night kept her up, and she said, no, it didn’t bother her. She’d started drinking coffee at age five because that’s what she and her mother did first thing in the morning, sitting on the steps to the kitchen by themselves before everyone else got up and started screaming.My grandmother was brilliant. She never finished high school because when she was in 7th grade she had to go work at a cork factory to help support the family, but she read Proust and Kierkegaard and was a fierce critical thinker. She wanted to be a nurse, but ended up opening a restaurant with my grandpapa, who came here from Germany to get away from fascism. He was also a wonderful cook, although according to my mother, he wanted to be a lion tamer.Their restaurant was in Lancaster, PA, near the New Holland factory. They served dinner—the midday meal—to the factory workers. Roast turkey, pot roasts, mashed potatoes and green beans, freshly made gravy—you get the picture. My grandmother was known for her pies, particularly lemon chiffon.Years later, when my mother was on dialysis, I said, “Let’s do something fun! Let’s cook our way through Grandmama’s recipes!” We started with her lemon chiffon pie. When I asked Mom where the recipe originally came from she didn’t know—she doubted it came from my great grandmother because lemons would have been too expensive—but she had written it down down she first got married. She tried making it for my father once, burned the crust, curdled the lemon and that was it for years. In the middle of making the recipe, Mom said, “You know, about a year before my mother died, I called her up because I wanted to try this pie again. I told her the lemon usually curdled, and she said that was because the heat was too high. She started telling me how to keep the right temperature and while she was talking I started crying. And she said, ‘For goodness sakes, Barbara, what’s wrong?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know! I just…what will I do when you’re gone?’” “What did she say?” I asked.“She said, ‘I don’t know, you’re a putz,’” Mom laughed. “And then she said, ‘Oh, Barbara, you’ll be fine.’ And I was.” “Sort of,” I said. “You grieved your mother for quite a while.”“That’s how I was fine,” Mom said. A week before my mother died, I was in the kitchen, making a quiche. Mom was in bed, resting after dialysis. I was looking for a rolling pin in the “random kitchen things we don’t know where to put anywhere else” drawer and found a metal spoon with little animals on the handle that my sisters and I used when we were little. The second I touched it, I had a full sensory memory of being a child at our kitchen table, a round oak piece that Mom bought at a garage sale for $10 that pulled apart to seat 12. The memory was so vivid and full-bodied, it was as though time folded in on itself and I was back to those years when my parents were young, and the house smelled like wheat germ and fresh tomatoes and there were so many cats. I remembered family members and my parents’ friends—academics, and beekeepers and musicians and anti-war protestors—that filled our house in the 60s and 70s. I remembered how we’d sit at that table or by the fireplace in the living room talking about politics and telling stories and singing Pete Seeger songs, and how every day when I woke up the whole world shimmered with love. It felt like a visitation—like the house was full again—and I had a sense of time being precious and everything changing, and tears came to my eyes.Mom called to me from the bedroom asking for some iced tea, so I put the spoon down and brought her a glass. I set it on her bedside table, and when I saw her there, tucked into bed, her wig off, wisps of hair on her head like a sweet baby, I started to cry. “Oh, honey, what’s wrong?” she said.I said, “I don’t know! I just…What will I do when you’re gone?” “You’ll be fine,” she said.“I guess,” I said.“You will,” she said. “You’re pretty good at being alive.”I didn’t ask her what she meant because at the time I thought I knew, and also, I was crying. But now I wish I had! I wish I had said, Thank you. That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time! What do you mean?What does it mean to be good at being alive? Trusting that the world is full of so many small miracles I can’t even count them, but each morning I look for them anyway? Asking every day to be pointed in the direction of love? Maybe it's making friends with death. Maybe it’s enjoying a fight with your family because you know it’s love in a different form. Maybe it’s enjoying all of it, even the days that are full of complaint, because complaining can be fun if done with gusto!Most likely it’s to know and appreciate all parts of your truest self, so you can enjoy all those same things in others. (That takes a lot of practice, but I am. working. on. it.) Anyway, when I asked to be pointed in the direction of love today, I remembered my ancestors and wanted to tell you this story.The pie was the only recipe we did together because it turned out that we wanted to do other things, like sit by the stove and talk about people’s psychological problems including our own. (Mostly mine.) Which, to be honest, we were so busy doing when we made the pie that we forgot about the heat, so the lemon curdled a little and we burned the crust. “That’s okay,” my father said when we sat down to eat it. “I like a burnt crust.” “Me too,” I said. Here is my grandmother’s lemon chiffon pie recipe. It tastes like the sun.Mary Imm’s Lemon Chiffon PieIngredients:¼ cup cold water4 eggs1 envelope Knox gelatin (7.2 g or about 2 ½ tsp)1 cup sugar, divided into ¾ cup and ¼ cup¼ tsp salt1 tsp lemon rind½ cup fresh lemon juicePie crust, either homemade or storeboughtWhipped cream, either homemade or storeboughtInstructions:1. Sprinkle one envelope of Knox gelatin over ¼ cup cold water(don’t stir or it may clump). Let stand a few minutes to soften.2. Separate 4 eggs, placing the yolks in one bowl and the whitesin another, then beat the egg yolks.3. In the top of a double boiler (or a heatproof bowl that can be set over a pot of boiling water), whisk together ¾ cups of sugar, the egg yolks, and ¼ tsp salt.4. Place over simmering water—remember to keep the heat as low as you can and pay attention so the eggs don’t curdle!—and cook, stirring, just until the mixture thickens to the consistency of custard (it should coat the back of a spoon).5. Remove from heat, then add the softened gelatin to the hot custard, stirring until dissolved.6. Stir in the ½ cup fresh lemon juice and 1 tsp grated rind and set the custard aside until it’s cool to the touch and looks like loose jelly, about 15-30 minutes.7. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, gradually adding the remaining ¼ cup of sugar.8. Gently fold the cooled custard into the beaten egg whites, using a spatula to lift and turn until combined and taking yourtime so the whites stay fluffy and don’t get runny.9. Pour the filling into a baked and cooled pie shell. (You can follow a standard pie crust recipe for that—I don’t have one, I buy them premade. I do know that Grandmama used lard or Crisco, not butter, for hers.) Chill until set (at least 4 hours or overnight), then top with whipped cream before serving.10. Enjoy, ALL IN.Thank you so much for being here! You are the best! A couple of things:* Meditations for peace: As you may know, I host periodic group meditations for peace, and will be doing another one sometime this month. If you are interested in this, let me know either in the comments or you can DM me. I’ll put you on the list when I send out the invitation. * Introducing the Caretakers Cafe. Since many of you are taking care of elders, family members with dementia or other chronic illnesses, or other people, I thought it would be fun to host a gathering where we hang out on zoom, talk about what’s coming up for us, and support each other as caretakers. The first one will be Saturday, September 27th at 12:00 pm EST. You can sign up for it here: https://luma.com/v43iyqv2 * Writing Sprints at the Trumansburg Public Library I’m teaching a generative writing workshop at the Trumansburg Library on Monday, September 22nd at 4:30. I would love to see you there! This is a public episode. 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Hi Everyone! I wrote this piece in response to an article I read about the blue whales. It seemed to want to be read out loud, so I made an audio recording of it as well. To praise the world I remember violets. I remember working on a strawberry farm when I was nine with a woman swore gloriously and knew how to gather just the right details to make a story worth telling. I praise songbrids and lemons trees and peacocks screaming their heads off. I praise fields of golden rod, waterfalls, and monkeys that steal sugar off the tables of restaurants in tropical places and laugh and laugh when the waiters get mad.I love this earth so much I would marry her.The blue whales have stopped singing.You guys.The blue whales have stopped singing.Not completely. But their songs are slowing down.Do you know what those songs hold? They hold the memory of the planet. They hold the love of a whale’s heart, which is the size of a car, and whose beat can be felt for two miles. They hold a vibration so low and sacred we can barely hear it, but it heals the earth soothes the water. Their songs are getting quiet. They are hungry. The ocean is getting warmer, the krill are harder to find. It is also loud because we keep doing seismic testing under the sea for oil and for weapons, which causes their ears and brains to bleed.I am asking for a miracle. The miracle I am holding out for is that we somehow stop all this and bring back their full songs. That it isn’t too late, and that we can help them. This is on my vision board, except it’s not a vision, it doesn’t come from my mind or intellect. It comes my deepest heart.So it’s my felt board. My feeling board.We need those earth-holding ballads.My mother had a good friend named Sandra. She was big and had a huge laugh and made a lot of what I can only call exclamations. Barbara! Look at your table! Oh! Those flowers! Becky! Look at your hair and long legs! You’ve become beautiful! This girl! This face. This kitchen! This music!No one in my family did this. When she came to see us, the whole house changed and there was loud laughter and it was like we were all speaking Spanish or Italian even though we weren’t.One night when she and her family were visiting all of us kids went up to bed. We didn’t want to go--it was a summer night and the moon was out. We weren’t ready to go asleep, we were jealous of the adults staying up downstairs, laughing and playing cards and putting on records. So we were bad. First we threw pillows and ran around. Then we broke something, I think it was a lamp. Then we put pajamas on the cat. Then we kept going downstairs—first me--for a drink, because there was a mosquito in the room, because my sister was making too much noise, and then my sister went down to say I was being annoying, and then Sandra’s daughter went down because she needed a band-aid, and finally my mother sent. Sandra. Up.And she put her hands on our backs and rubbed them and opened her throat and sang a song that held all the sorrow and grace and love and beauty and knowing of some gorgeous ancient mother.Bed is too small for my tiredness.Give me a hill covered with trees.Tuck a cloud up under my chin.Lord! Blow the moon out!Please.When it was done we went to SLEEP.That’s how powerful that song was.I believe in the power of song.Oh blue whales, I will sing to you! I will write letters and use even less plastic and do other practical things, but I will also stand on the shores of the ocean and sing to you, you who hold all the compassion in the world, the knowledge of a million years of swimming the seas and are so evolved you don’t have to change one more thing.I will stand in my kitchen and I will sing to you.I will stand with my sisters and we will sing to you.Don’t give up.We will sing to you.Don’t give up.Oh, my friends! Don’t you give up either.There are beautiful ways to live on this earth.We can know all of them. Or one of them. Or three.There are people in the Hopi water clan dancing hoop dances, where each time their body passes through a hoop, it gives another day to someone who is sick. I saw this dance performed this summer and it was so wonderful, so generous, I felt blessed just being near it.There are monks who chant daily, asking that all beings be happy, all beings be safe, all beings be free of suffering.Not far from my house, a family of women lives together, rehabbing an old estate bit by bit, growing flowers and sheep and knitting and tending the land. There is never enough money. They don’t care. They have each other and the barn swallows and the sheep are healthy and loud and their wool is gorgeous.There are beautiful ways to live on this earth.Choose one. Or three.The water, with her vast intelligence is waking up. The miracle I am asking for is that she hears my song and carries it the whales, and this music becomes a healing vibration that helps grow a new garden of krill, or the whales feel better, and/or people put down their plastic forks and spoons and start calling in a new way. I know how this sounds. I don’t care. When you ask for a miracle you get to do what you want. Last night the whales came to me in a dream. They said, It’s true. All is not well in the depths of the sea. Humans can assist with making this better, and we thank you.They said, also, listen! We have something to tell you!The shift that comes from this time is truly unbelievable! By that we mean, you will not believe it!It is like a rogue wave—a sudden, surprising collective joining of the hearts of all living things that is so wonderful, so freeing! it is hard to imagine right now! But you can start weaving it in, with the way you look at your neighbors and the people and animals that cross your path. Whisper, Your heart and mine are one. Your heart and mine, are one. Make it a game. Make it light.There are beautiful ways to live on this earth.Choose all of them. Choose more.Sing to your big family of all living things.After all, what is a song, if not another gorgeous form of water?Here is a video of Sampson Sixkiller Sinquah, one of the hoop dancers I saw perform this summer, along with an interview about the dancing. (I tried to video the performance I saw, but I liked the dancing so much I forgot about my camera and ended up making a video of my shoe.) And a few other songs that remind me of beautiful ways to live on this earth: If you’d like to help the whales, here are some things you can do: * Reduce plastic use. Plastics affect krill, among many other parts of the living ocean. * Reduce your use of fabric softener, or stop using it altogether. A) it comes in a giant plastic container, b) it is unnecessary, and c) it’s full of non-biodegradable chemicals, including PFAs, which harm marine life and can contribute to harmful algae blooms, which make water unsafe for everyone. * The MMPA (Marine Mammal Protection Act) is currently under review due to a proposal by Nick Begich (R-Alaska) that would soften language about what causes harm to marine life, including noise pollution, which makes was for more seismic testing. If you feel called to, especially if you live in Alaska, you can research this and write to him. * Support organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity, which keeps tabs on legislation that can be harmful to whales and other marine animals. Oceana.org is another one I like, as well as the Ocean Conservancy. * Otherwise, sing, dance, send love when you meditate, write poems, and do all the other things you do every day to keep your spirits up and the world happy. I believe in the power of all these things, too!Have a great week, everyone! Thank you so much for being here. You are magical. Love, RB This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rebeccabarry.substack.com/subscribe

I don’t know about you, but this week was a wily one for me. Every time I tried to write, there was a voice in my head telling me that whatever I was working on was garbage. You know what I mean? You sit down, ready to make something, and then a voice comes in saying things like, “Oh, forget it.” “Who wants to read that?!” Etc, etc. Maybe you have your own versions. I have a technique I use whenever this happens called, “Change the Tone.” There’s a story that goes with it that is better told out loud than written so the technique and the story are in the audio at the top of this post.Here’s how you can work with it on paper. (This will make much more sense if you listen to the audio first.) Write down all the disparaging things your mind has been saying. ie: What if I’m not good enough? Why do I even try? Who cares? Why don’t I write more like so and so?Then you change the tone to a more lighthearted, curious one, like my 3 year old’s version of “F—! The police!” in the audio.ie: Who cares? (in despairing tone) becomes a sincere question. Who does care? (I guarantee there are a few people. You, for starters. Your dog, who loves everything about you.)Why don’t you write like so and so?Then you answer the question in writing. Keep doing this until your mood shifts. You might find that when you take the question more lightly/sincerely you get a wise answer. Or a surprising one. Or you realize that it’s not even an interesting question because you’re going to do what you’re going to do anyway, so all of that noise your head makes doesn’t really matter. (This is what usually happens to me.)Here’s what happened with my mean voice this week:“All of this is garbage,” (Womp womp tone)became:“All of this is garbage! Hooray! I can stop working on it! Also, beautiful things can grow out of garbage! ”I put the garbage aside to grow something. Then I went back into my journals where my happiest writing is and played around with a piece I started last year about the song Ring of Fire. (It’s at the bottom of this post.)Then I painted a cat:(I would have painted a cat singing Ring of Fire, but I didn’t feel like drawing a guitar.)That felt pretty good, and the next time that voice came in—which it did right before I hit publish on this post—I said, “So what?” (“So what?” is another really good response to that voice in your head that’s a jerk. It’s effective on other people, too.)I don’t know if this will work for you, it’s just an idea. You have plenty of your own wisdom. But for me, changing the tone always brings new openings into my work. And thoughts. So if you find yourself saying things like, “What is the point?” “Why bother?” and it’s dragging you down, you can always try asking the same question in a different, more excited tone. Because some part of you knows. You know why you’re doing this. You know why you bother. Because you can’t help it. Because you like doing what you’re doing. Because deep down you know that the creative self matters, and so does your voice. Or maybe you bother because some part of you won’t stop, even if you think you should be doing something else. Our hearts and souls are so busy, even when we think other parts are in charge. I love this about being alive. Here is the piece on the song Ring of Fire.It was written in response to a prompt I gave in a workshop last spring. The prompt was: “Tell a story about one of your favorite pieces of music—what you love about it, how it sings to you.” If you want to use this prompt I recommend putting on the piece of music you love and writing for 15 minutes without stopping. Here’s what I wrote—links to the songs are in the piece.“One of my favorite pieces of music is Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. Of course, it isn’t really Johnny Cash’s song. June Carter wrote it before she was June Carter Cash, when she was married to Rip Nix. She had already met Johnny and had fallen fiercely in love with him even though she tried everything she could not to. What I love about that song is the trumpets, the way they come charging in and sing back to the first line. They are mariachi trumpets and the story I was told was that when Cash was getting ready to record the song he heard them in a dream. When he woke up he thought, “Yes. Mariachi trumpet. That’s what this song needs.”  This song makes me so happy. Every time.It was the recessional for our wedding because I felt like that when I met my husband—like I couldn’t stop myself, like my heart spoke to my head, and there was no choice but to marry him. In our marriage I haven’t experienced the kind of burning desire for someone else that June Carter wrote about. I know lucky that is. That kind of longing is so sexy, I’m amazed that we’ve lasted 23 years without that particular brand of trouble.If you hear June’s version of the song it is completely different than Johnny’s. He plays it on the guitar, with the “freight train” rhythm he was known for. She plays it on the autoharp, and where Johnny’s version gallops into form, hers comes in softly, like she is caught in an irresistible tide and can’t believe this is happening to her. And then in the middle when the fiddle comes in the song blooms with sweet, helpless longing. I don’t know which version I like better. It depends on the day.Both are wonderful.Once, before my children were born, I was in the kitchen of the house we lived in when I was in graduate school in Ohio. It was my birthday and I was listening to one of my favorite shows on the radio and they were playing Johnny Cash and had a live mariachi band and I could not believe it! All that joy, all those eruptions of sound.That’s what’s so beautiful about trumpets--the way they burst into a room, taking no prisoners, amping things up until your feet can’t stand it and have to start moving. All these things happening in my kitchen made me so happy, I was bouncing around behind the counter by the stove when my father-in-law walked in the door.He said hello and I said, “I am having the best day!! Mariachis are playing Johnny Cash on the radio and it is my birthday!”My father-in-law, who was an engineer who worked for years at Lockheed Martin just laughed. I loved that about him. He was a quiet, mysterious person, but he always recognized delight in other people and met it with deep appreciation. When he was on his deathbed he said that he liked seeing that kind of happiness in his son’s life, because when it hit, I couldn’t contain myself. This was a big compliment coming from a man who was very self-contained.Years later, my sons and I learned to play Ring of Fire on the guitar. We sing it as a family--slowly and not very well. We’ve never quite been able to get the train rhythm that Johnny Cash had. But the song carries its own brand of joy and longing when we play it, and if nothing else, it is ours.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rebeccabarry.substack.com/subscribe