The rain here in Austin, TX started up early this morning as just a drizzle. It was one of those mornings that never quite got light but all the green that was bursting with springtime took on a kind of phosphorescent glow lighting up the sky in a sort of mystical way. All day long, in intermittent bursts, the skies would go from drizzle to full on downpour, and then back to drizzle again. It was fairly warm too, long sleeve shirt weather, so it wasn’t the kind of day that made one shiver from it all. Rather it just made me want to watch it all unfold from the comforts of my own home. And that was what I got to do.

As a mother of four I don’t often get to be home alone but today, in all this rain and in all this glorious greenness of spring and darkness of a rainy day and purple of a stormy sky, I got to be home, all day, working. All alone. Slow doesn’t even begin to explain how I felt on this amazing day of color and rain working from my own kitchen table in the quietness of just one body at home. All alone.

And on Friday afternoon when everyone returned home from their various points - school and work and an urban farm and a friend’s house, the gift of hard rain presented itself yet again. Our plans of an evening gather in the park with friends were canceled and instead we made dough for pizza and spent the afternoon just hanging out in the kitchen. Intermittently reading, listening to music, playing, um, even having a few little arguments in there too from the decompression of it all. But we were all home our family of six in the noise of 6 bodies all at home. Just us.

We had an unusually busy weekend planned this weekend with soccer games and a birthday party and an anniversary celebration too. But they were all planned for outdoors. And the deluge that came today with more promised tonight and still more expected all day tomorrow, meant that every. single. plan. was. canceled. And so we will be home alone again. With the unexpected gift of a day without any plans.

When we plan such spacious weekends, they’re for sure fun. Time for a little settling and a bit of familial incubation. When they are presented like this however, as a sort of gift, they are positively magical. And we all settle into the homeness, knowing that it’s all us and only us. All Weekend. All alone.

Hurray! We say as we hunker down in the kitchen or on the screened in porch with a book or blocks or a baby doll to play with. Hurray for the gift of rain!

[I do apologize for the delay between posts, but it seems the beast that is high school had me firmly in its grasp for a few months.  Stayin’ slow isn’t always easy!]

 Most parents would like to think that their teens don’t cheat.  That they do their work honestly and faithfully.  That their eyes remain on their paper and all work is their work.

 Teens today, however, don’t quite operate that way.  If 10 students were assigned a reading assignment with discussion following it the next day, it would go something like this: 3 students wouldn’t read it all, 4 students wouldn’t read it, but WOULD read the Sparknotes/Cliffnotes/Offline Summary, and the other 3 students will actually do the assignment as intended.  I can honestly say that I fall into the category of actually reading the assignment. Shortcuts are becoming more and more appealing.  A recent study put forth by the Josephon Institute involving 100 randomly selected students from public and private schools showed that 64% of U.S. high school students have cheated on a test, 38% stating they had done so on more than one occasion.  Furthermore, 36% said they had used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment. 

 Who’s to blame for the alarmingly high statistics? Parents? Teachers? Internet? Television? Society? The easy way out is to blame us — the students.  Students are a part of the problem, but perhaps it’s the classroom that could be the problem.  Perhaps an overwhelming focus on, “what’s the answer?” as opposed to, “how did you reach that answer?” is the reason.  I attend a well-respected Private School with teachers who range from ex-NASA scientists to the Dean of Admissions and Sciences at a major state university.  At an institution that prides itself for it’s attention to detail and student understanding of the material, I have actually had a teacher say to me “It’s not important that you understand what you’re doing — just that you do it.”  I was at a loss for words.  Had I actually heard that?  I had.  There are times in life when just having the right answer is what’s required.  Yet there comes a point when you can only get so far with just the answer.  People will want to know the details. 

 And to some degree isn’t that what being slow is about; that the details often hold more weight and meaning than the big picture. 

We’re bogged down with practically unbelievable and unmanageable amounts of work!  Competition for University acceptance is worse than ever and I don’t see it getting any better.  It’s not the situation that people may want things to be in, but reality is what it is.  But maybe — just maybe being aware of what’s going on could improve where we stand.

 Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater?  I had enough sense as a 3 year old not to like the sound of it!  Still — for some, it does have a ring to it.  

All week we looked forward to this planned, no-car, Sunday at home, all together. Our big project was to clean out the screened-in porch, but our main goal was to have a day at home to connect.

My 11 year old pointed out that when we have these home days in which nobody goes anywhere and there is no big agenda, time stretches out so slowly and spaciously before us. We all loved the fact that at 1:00 in the afternoon we were feeling delightfully full of home-ness and rejoiced that the day was still fresh with many more hours to go. Of course at 6:00 or so we were reminded that it was daylight savings which meant we lost an hour, but even that news didn’t burst our slow bubble.

We had so much in our day at home and so much also includes time to do nothing at all. We reveled in the doing but we also celebrated the just being and the just being together.

We always remember when we’re in it, how much we all enjoy it, but sometimes, when we’re not in it, we forget just how delightful it can be. We all promised to remind each other in the future to schedule a day at home to slow down, connect and enjoy being a family.

And our screened-in porch is ready for Spring!

We’ve started this great Friday tradition of going to the park for supper. Rather, I should say, we’ve reinstituted an old idea and it feels like a brand new tradition.  We came about it because of our urban hikes during winter break when time was spacious and schedules had no bearing.

When my older 2 were little we spent many hours doing this very same thing - loading up the double stroller and hitting the streets, eventually winding up in the park with friends and some snacks and around evening time a bottle of wine (or two) to share.

As our older 2 went off to school and life included a few more tasks, errands, social obligations, our aimless walks swindled and there were a lot more drives and our younger 2 spent less time in the stroller.

Winter break reminded me of my love of walking the streets and exploring and saying hi and stopping and going when and where we wanted to. Rediscovering a favorite neighborhood park was one of my favorite parts of that reminder - a park covered with live oaks and filled with grackles and kids and families, where we had logged countless hours years past and where there was a minimal playscape but lots of imaginative play to be had.

Since then we’ve been hitting this same park most every Friday afternoon loaded down with scooters and snacks and a bottle of wine or two to share with the friends we meet there. We stay until dark and beyond - building little wood fires in the grill for light and warmth - and when we return home everyone is tired but happy and ready to clean up and crawl right into bed.

It’s slow and connected and each week I am grateful for its return and I can’t imagine anything I’d rather be doing.

Now that it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, I feel I should openly confess to a longstanding love affair - with my red Staub cocotte.

Every few weeks, I would visit this cocotte, or classic French oven, at our neighbourhood kitchen store. There, on a smooth wooden shelf, was just one small round red cocotte. On one of our nightly after-dinner walks, I pulled my husband into the store, to show it to him. 

“Ah!” he said, bemused. “A red pot.”

“No, it’s not just a pot! It’s a Staub cocotte, just like they use at Le Regalade! Remember that meal we had there, last winter? Remember how the meal made me cry?  It was so beautiful.  It was like the meal was an intense reduction of all the wonderful meals that we’ve ever had in France!”

He smiled.

I made him lift it up, to feel the heaviness of the cast iron. I made him feel the smooth, shimmering red enamel.  I showed him the self-basting spikes on the inside of the lid.  I made him touch the brass knob on top. I had never seen such a sensuous piece. (Since we live in a small loft, with few possessions, each purchase must be made with purpose, joy, and intention.)

It could be at the centre of our family. It could be taken from its long slow simmer, and placed in the centre of the dinner table. It could connect us all.

Then the cocotte disappeared.  I was worried.  It’s not as if I could pick up a Staub cocotte at just any store. I’d have to drive at least three hours, into another country, to find another one. That’s not a slow life.

Another week passed. Le Creuset had replaced the Staub on the shelves in our local store.  Staub was discontinued. Le Creuset? They had matte enamel, and phenolic handles.  Phenolic? “Ah, oui, I have a phenolic handle.”  Honestly!

Then, on my birthday in August, my children placed a square box on the table. Their gift of the red Staub cocotte was so unexpected, so joyful!

I slow-cooked them Lemon Chicken en Cocotte with tomatoes and basil.  The chicken melted on the fork, the vegetables had been suffused with the aroma and flavour of the lemon and tomatoes.  We were all in heaven.  We were connected. 

My daughter and son-in-law now come to visit, and almost secretly, touch the cocotte, just like I did in that store.  They live a slow food life. Their love for each other infuses their food. They do have another brand of French oven (which I shall not name), but they covet my small round red Staub cocotte.  My son and his girlfriend visit, and ask for my recipes like gifts.

One day, because I love them all, I’ll make the long drive, and buy one each for their kitchens.  But it may take a while, for we must do things slowly, at the right time, with intention.

Jacqueline’s Lemon Chicken en Cocotte

This is a relaxed recipe.  With slow food, you make your meals with love and generosity and forgiveness.  If it’s not perfect, it won’t matter.

Cut 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts into chunks, then dredge in flour, salt & pepper, and quickly brown with a generous amount of olive oil in the cocotte (hopefully, you have a gas burner, on medium). Put the chicken aside in a bowl to rest happily.

Pour some red wine (shiraz, perhaps?) and have a glass, then cut up your vegetables, however you like, and sweat them en cocotte with a generous dollop of butter: 1 large leek, 1 large onion, 3 carrots, 3 cloves garlic, 3 celery stalks.

Add a large grasp of Herbs de Provence (just because I love the place), the rind of one large lemon (use your beloved microplane zester, if you dare), plus the remains of the lemon (roughly chopped), a dash of salt and liberal freshly ground pepper, and a large handful of fresh basil.

Add the chicken to the vegetables in the cocotte. Then sprinkle some more flour on everything and mix it all up with a smooth wooden spoon. It should smell wonderful already.

Add 2-3 cups of homemade chicken stock to the pot.  

Then, add a large tin of your best tomatoes…or you could improvise with 1/2 cup tomato ketchup with 20 cherry tomatoes cut in half. (Splash some wine in in lieu of some of the chicken stock, if you like.)

Put the lid on the cocotte and place in your oven at 350F, then go out for a walk with your family.

After 2 hours, light a fire for the tired and cold walkers, then open the oven, and lift the lid to make sure that everything’s not too dry or too wet.  Adjust the liquid (as my mum says). If you don’t know how to do this, call your mother (She’ll tell you to make a slurry and add to the chicken to thicken.  Good luck!)

You can leave the lid off for the last while if you need things to reduce, and fill the house with the aroma.

Taste and adjust seasonings. Pour out the wine. Set the table.

Enjoy the Lemon Chicken en Cocotte with your warm family, served over large egg noodles (don’t serve the family over the noodles…serve the chicken). Enjoy!

Despite my very best intentions today, I got overwhelmed. Ironically, it all began with the brrrriiing of my phone.

I thought I’d be smart about things. Start the day off right. Despite the snow, I took a trip to the grocery store shortly after 8 am. Taking it easy down the aisles, I reviewed my shopping list, compared prices, and carefully placed my purchases in the shopping cart. I even walked slowly to my car, ignoring the swirling flakes that were ruining my hairdo. For a moment, I even stopped to breath in the carbon dioxide-laced air of the parking lot, gratified about my decision to take it easy this morning.

As I came back to the house with all my groceries, I spied the UPS man parking behind me. “Oh, let it be my manuscript!” I almost cried, overjoyed that I had smartly cleared my calendar for the morning to take it as it comes. Seconds later, the doorbell rang. Sure enough! Package from Macmillan! I signed the cold monitor of the delivery man’s device, then took another deep breath.

How lovely! I’ll just put away these groceries and…riiiiiiiiing! The phone jostled me from my controlled reverie.

It was my friend, wondering where I was.

“Is it Thursday already?” I could feel my practiced calm being effortlessly replaced by the all-too-familiar panic of the overscheduled.

“Um…yes….” Cold silence on the other end. I quickly placed down the UPS package, tossed the rest of the food into the fridge and raced over to my friend’s house, whom I had promised to brunch with a full week before. How could I have known seven days ago that I would need this morning to breathe? I entered her house with a smile and a hug.

That was the moment when things surreptiously fell apart, as if by slow motion. The children seemed to come home early, even though they arrived at the same time as they always do on Thursdays. For the rest of the afternoon, I raced, pounced, and raged against myself, wondering what had happened to the sovereign, placid person who had stepped foot in the grocery store nine hours before.

Despite my very best intentions, I failed to keep the calm I had so desired. And my book manuscript is smiling at me, reminding me of the power of slow in all its glory, that I too am not immune to the stressors of life. Next time I’ll make a better choice to look at my calendar before I smugly think about how well I can manage things. Lo! To err is human. To forgive, well, you know…!

That’s often a question that comes up in our house of four children and two adults and was brought to mind by a recent article in the NY Times about spending time together with your kids.It took me a long time to learn that what my kids (and my partner and myself) really want is a feeling of connection and we’ll take it in all its forms.

It took me a long time to realize that what my 6 year old was seeking when she was whining about me going out the door or about her little brother getting more (of whatever) or not getting to go to the store as all her other siblings get to do, all the time, everyday and then some - what she was really seeking was a little connection. I have a new game with her and I play it often when I see her spiraling into this place of “not enough”. I pause. Settle myself. I sit down on the floor, criss-cross style, and I put her in front of me, face to face, and I hold her shoulders and stare into her eyes. Really and truly. I make goofy faces or blank faces or loving faces or whatever face seems to be matching her energy at the time, and we stare into each other’s eyes. Sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for 2. And when she is full, she hops up and runs away back to whatever she was doing before or onto whatever new game she wants to enter.

It took me a long time to learn that what she was seeking was my attention - full on, undeterred, loving gaze and attention and relaxed, present connection. And when she gets it she feels fully sated.

It took me a long time to learn too that a full on crazy weekend of plans and errands and parties and all of us together doing it all, definitely does not fill us up. At all. Any of us. Instead at the end of that we feel crazed and a bit cranky and oddly underwhelmed and overwhelmed at the same time.

If we have a day of that however, and then a day or an afternoon even of slow connection, we can return to the world on Monday morning feeling full up and completely sated.

I like the parties. My kids do too. I like the hanging out all together getting everything done that needs to get done. But I’ve got to mix that up with a little slow, relaxed time too because if I don’t, everyone feels cheated. Myself included.

What’s your take on the matter? I’d love to know.

I was in a local “lifestyle” store the other week, standing stock still, looking at a phone that reminded me of the lovely, heavy black “old school” phone that we had when I was little. You know, the one with the rotary dial that, when you dialed 911, took such a long time for that 9 to rotate. No wonder North America didn’t stick with the British emergency code of 999 - the emergency would have been over before the dialing was done.

So, there I was, in a trance (yes, I’d been up all night at a birth), thinking about my low-tech childhood in the ’60s and ’70s, how I skipped to elementary school in my skirt and walked through an old door marked “Girls”, and how my parents decided that it was totally unnecessary to have any of the new high-tech things that were starting to come into the stores (they made it through the Manchester blitz in WWII, so they could do just fine without, thank you very much). 

I remembered that we shared a party line (Watergate for kids), had no answering machine, no voicemail, no calculators, no computers, no videos or DVDs, no recording devices, dishwasher or washer/dryer. We just had one little black and white TV with rabbit ears, a clothes line, and a hand cranked mangle to make life easier. Our car was so slow that we had to have a police escort whenever we drove through our local tunnel. Mine was truly an “old school” childhood - life was slow, and time was our ally.

I finally realized that people were starting to notice me, staring at the old black phone.  But, I didn’t care.  I was in my post-SlowBirth zone.  I walked out of the store, and started to remember the birth that I’d been at through the night, and the day before, and the day before.

Seeing the phone had triggered a memory-tumble, which ended at some multi-coloured cut-out letters pasted onto a window at Women’s Hospital - “I DO IT OLD SCHOOL - ASK ME HOW”. I had kept those words in my head as I helped a client through an almost 48-hour unmedicated, uncomplicated “SlowBirth”. After 31 hours at home, hours of showers and dancing, walking the dog, giving/getting back rubs and marching the hallway, we had finally headed to the hospital. 

At the labouring mum’s request, the tools at hand were our hands and eyes and ears and wisdom (other than me, my client and her husband, “we” also included our nurse and the family docs who had the guts to turn their eyes away from the clocks, and go “old school”). Time, on this day, was our ally, for we needed a lot of it to accomplish this woman’s goal. The high-tech equipment didn’t seem to know how to behave with us. The blood pressure cuff kept pumping itself up even when no one was there, and that brand-fangled-new monitor didn’t work as well as the older doptone, so it was turned off.

Things were kept as simple as possible. We left linear time. The mum was dancing in the shower, rocking and rolling on the birthing ball, just one contraction at a time, one breath at a time, listening to music. To get rid of a puffed-up cervix (kind of like a fat lip) at 9 centimetres, we had her lie on the bed with her feet higher than her head (no epidural necessary) and gave her LOTS of encouragement. We used hip squeezes, hip shakes, swirling and spiraling, visualization, trance-inducing techniques, foot rubs, squatting, kneeling, walking, tears, hands, eyes, and love, liberally (then repeated). Her body’s endorphins helped her to sleep and dream in between contractions.

This amazing labouring woman drew on all her past life experiences (with the aid of a few sherpas), and did what all women have the power to do, climbed the highest mountain ever, and birthed her baby with arms outstretched to touch his body.

And when that baby came, it was pure joy! No exhaustion, just sparkling laughter and smiles and a giggling shout of, “I’m as high as a kite!” (love those endorphins) and an eager, wide-awake little boy who came out with his meaty fist stretched to the sky. Ahaa! That was the culprit! His little hand had slowed things down.  By taking it slow, and using time as their ally, this little man and his mum had worked it out.

When the bustling pediatrician came later to say “Hi”, she actually bowed down before the new mum, saying “I am not worthy.” The doctors all agreed that, if any drugs or technology had been used, it would have been a different story.  Mum and baby would have been in the OR, having a cesarean. All the nurses on shift that day were in awe, knowing that there’s a new initiative in our local hospital to reduce the intervention and cesarean rates by encouraging low tech/high touch birthing, and wishing that they could have seen how it was done.

I am in awe of the couple at the centre of the whirlwind, this vortex of birth. I thank them for trusting in birth, for trusting in the body, for trusting their baby, and for trusting me to calm their spirits and their wild eyes, whenever I’d say, “It’s fine, it’s normal, you are safe, you can do it, just take it slow.”

On this day, I think all three crossed the portal, the “Old School” way. They had discovered SlowBirth.