"Please don't tell me what to do!"

On one of the early days of our Morocco trip, this was uttered by one of the participants (name withheld intentionally).  This is such a complicated dynamic and I have thought about it, and examined it almost daily since then.

We all have expertise and knowledge that we like to share with others.  Remember back to second grade when the teacher asked a question and hands shot up waiting to be called upon.  We were rewarded back then for having knowledge and the correct answer.  

So this sharing of knowledge is a good thing right? especially as some of us start forgetting things.  It is nice to have someone around who can remember the name that you cannot remember.  Or that place, or that person.

I want to come clean and just say that I do not like to be told what to do.  I already have a mother, and don't need another one, thank you very much.  So often the telling comes across as parent to child and protecting.  I don't need to be protected, although sometimes I do need to be warned about the pot hole I am about to step in.  

I think another reason I react to the sharing of knowledge is that I do not learn by lecture or by reading.  I learn by doing and talking about it, so when someone "shares" their knowledge I view it as a lecture and immediately glaze over and check out of the conversation.  

I know that almost all of the time, this sharing is done to be helpful, and has a positive intent.  In the last 6 weeks, and even during the Morocco trip, I was able to reframe the words and say "This person is just trying to be helpful and share all they know."  It is not because they are being a know-it-all or a show off, but they really are trying to be helpful.  This helped/helps so much to reframe their intent.

I will still react with the "Don't tell me what to do." and if I can catch myself I might be able to reframe it and not feel like the child in the classroom lecture.  The wonderful thing about being human is that if we choose to, we can learn about ourselves every single day.  AND we can reframe and hear things differently, if we catch ourselves and let ourselves.  It is a great day to be alive!

Morocco - Tagine cooking and eating

We got a tagine when we bought a table which is being shipped back

Prior to visiting Morocco, I knew that a meal cooked in a Tagine was a traditional way to eat.  I was not surprised then that most of the meals we ate were cooked in a Tagine and we had a pretty large variety of Tagine cooked/served meals.  I long for those meals now that we are back from that magical trip just over 3 weeks.

It really makes so much sense, and is like a crock pot is some ways.  Put the ingredients in a pot, and start the cooking.  It is also not exactly like a crock pot.  Most of the Tagines we were served were a beautiful shape, with beautiful covers.  There was a bit of drama each time we were served as the server removed the lid and the steam started rising out of the food.  Sometimes the vegetables were added as the last layer, and covered the rest of the ingredients and were laid at an angle rising toward the center.  Usually we were eating at a table, the Tagine was put in the middle of us, and we shared the serving dish.

Moroccans do not eat with a fork and knife but rather take a small piece of bread and dip it in the sauce from the Tagine and then pick up a morsel of meat or vegetable.  Other culture do not use utensils so I ask "Why do we have to have metal utensils with which to eat?"

In our lunch home visit, our table was set at the far end of the room, and the family ate at another table.  We had forks and spoons at our places but they did not.  Their two year old, Fatima, spotted our utensils and non-verbally started gesturing that she wanted our utensils.  They fetched her a spoon, but NO she wanted a fork, so they fetched her a fork.  At that point one of our members said "Maybe we should try to eat with bread and forget about the utensils."  It was one of those moments on the trip where we kept an open mind and experimented with their culture.

Fatima and Ali - her wanting the fork

At the end of the meal, the person whose initial reaction was "That would be pretty hard, and I don't think I can do that." said "The food tasted much better eaten this way."

There are a lot of efficiencies in Tagine cooking and serving.  You can cook it slowly, and it tastes better with all the ingredients cooking together.  There is a lot less wasted food, and you have portion control.  It is a more intimate experience and seems like the food tastes better.  Less dishes to wash, etc.

When we got back to the US and ordered our first humongous meal in NYC, I sighed a deep sigh.

We got a tagine in Morocco, and when we got back home, we cooked a few times in the tagine to keep the experience alive for a bit longer.  We probably will cook some in the tagine and bring those memories back, and probably have a more intimate meal than we usually do.  And eat with just bread and our hands.

Morocco - Hammam

On our Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) trip there is a "Life in the Day of Morocco" and ours was in Tineghir.  The most spiritual part of my trip took place in the Hammam.  There are tourist Hammams however, OAT takes the participants to a local Hammam and not the tourist one.  They do this based on tour guides input, and their goal to get OAT travelers as close to the local life as possible.  We were split by gender and they had hired two women to wash us in the Hammam.  They also hired men to wash the men in their side of the Hammam.

We were told to bring dry underwear, shampoo or soap, a towel and 100 dirham (10 dollars).  Honestly we were all pretty nervous as we entered the dressing room.  These were church friends, and we had not seen each other almost naked (we were allowed to keep our underwear on).  The two women said "Take off your clothes!"  Some of us were not quick enough so they said "Bras too!" and in one case they helped the woman take her bra off.

We then entered the hot room, or steam room.  They put plastic for us to sit down.  The locals brings mats to sit on and a bucket with their cleaning stuff.  When we entered the next room, where the two women washed us, there was a mother washing her 8 year old daughter.  She proceeded to wash her for the nearly 45 minutes that we were there.  While she washed her she sang to her.  It was probably a bit overwhelming to have us arrive, 8 women who were chattering and nervous and speaking English.  Part way through this, one of the woman washing us sang a song from Titantic to us, I think to get us to sing.  None of us knew the words, so she said "Sing, sing."  We then did sing some songs we knew, as the two women washed, scrubbed and then rinsed us by pouring buckets of warm water over us.  We were warned that there was a cold room, and a cold bucket of water, but that did not happen.  In the middle part of the experience, the 2 women scrubbed, and I mean scrubbed us, all over pretty roughly.  It felt wonderful.

Moroccans go to their Hammam once a week, and get really clean and wash each other.  Two twenty year olds were there washing each other when we first arrived.  The ritual of washing another person, and the ritual of getting scrubbed, washed and rinsed really well once a week is very spiritual.  The ritual of singing while you wash each other is so tender and magical.

We all grew fairly comfortable with the experience.  Apparently the men all did not have the same experience.  They did not talk to each other and lay like stiff logs.  I wasn't there so I cannot say, this is just what some of them said.

Sunday in church I was describing why I gave a sweater away to my friend Amy.  "It did not fit right around my breasts",  I said.  One of the woman who was in the Hammam that day said "Yes, and we all know how big your breasts are now."  It was pretty funny, the remark that is.

The experience in the Hammam however is one I will never forget.  I am trying to find one around Boston.  It was not be such a good deal as we got in Morocco, in that it will be more like a spa experience, which is part of the reason I have not gone yet.  The local Hammam, where the local Moroccans go, and the mother singing to her daughter are images I will never forget.  It did get us involved in a day in the life of Moroccans.

Leaf Raking over the years

While I was outside today at 7:30 am raking leaves into bags I reminisced about my leaf and fall memories.  I don't remember raking any leaves in Colorado.  When we moved to Vermont and lived on Park street we loved the fall and leaves.  We raked them into piles and jumped in the piles.  We made entire houses and forts similar to snow forts out of them with very wide walls between the rooms.  Eventually we raked them to the curb and I think the town picked them up or maybe we burned them.  I cannot remember which.  Those leaves provided hours and hours of entertainment for the 6 and then 7 of us.  The smell in the fall brings me right back to 69 Park Street and playing in the front yard with the leaves.

My next big leaf memory is when we moved into our current house when Christopher was 12 years old and Bethany was 3 years old.  Our Arlington house had some leaves but not like this house.  We raked the leaves into a big pile and jumped in them and played in them and eventually bagged them.  I was probably recreating my childhood on Park Street but my kids played outside in the leaves, at least at that age.  Our first Christmas card in that house was them in a leaf pile.

Over the years, we became busy, and leaves became a chore.  There were lots of them, we were working full time, raising two wonderful children and even some graduate school thrown in there.  One year we dragged the leaves onto the boundary line between us and our neighbors.  That was the only complaint we heard from Dot and Neil, who otherwise were the best neighbors in the world.  Their granddaughter used that hill in the winter for sledding and he was upset that it would ruin her sled hill.  One year we dragged the leaves onto tarps, loaded both of our station wagons with the tarps and drove them to the DPW recycling pile.  This was my favorite method but it was a chunk of time we no longer have/had.

At a certain point we started hiring someone to clean up our leaves.  We threw money at it and a noisy machine arrived twice a year and blew our leaves away.  I am sorry to offend anyone including my husband, but I hate those blowy leaf machines.  They ruin the sounds and smell of fall and leaf raking.  Gasoline and noise are not what I think about for leaf raking.  This spring we decided to mow our own lawn and clear up our own leaves.   Rodney has done all of the mowing this year and we were able to keep ahead of it.  Fast forward to the fall and the leaves that are accumulating.

Rodney decided to sail to the Bahamas.  OK, he is sailing from Marathon, Florida to the Bahamas with my sister and brother-in-law helping them move their boat/home south.  Right now they are waiting for a weather window to make that sail and then he is headed home to do his part raking the leaves.  Hopefully the snow we are expecting will arrive after he is finished with his part of the raking.

SO in the meantime, I set a goal for myself of bagging two bag a day of leaves.  I enjoy it but it is a solo activity and I am not a solo person.  20 minutes is my tops for a solo activity.  That is why gardening is out, unless someone is there talking to me.

I thought of inviting someone to rake with me, and then I would rake with them at their house.  Any takers?

I admit it, I am stubborn and am not going to hire a landscaping company to spread noise and gasoline smell once again in our neighborhood.  Picking away at it by two bags a day will get the job done, and Rodney will return from the Bahamas to finish the task.