I love that she too has a sense of history, significance of the past, in all of the pasts’ aspects that we, 20th/21st century folk, can conceptualize. I love that her sense of history is immediate, real, enacted daily in small, routine tasks. There is a wonder-fullness of watching someone feel so very comfortable doing similar things as you do, in so very familiar ways. The unconscious mundane movements which connect us to our past. These self-care things repeated thousands of time in our long lives. These things which a woman loves to see another woman do. And I include cooking as part of this rhythmic repletion of things women do over and over daily to maintain normalcy, a semblance of peace and routine in their lives. She not only possesses a significant sense of the past, she embodies the past.
And I have a deep love of the past, of attempting to understand how people before me lived, thought, created, died. I love imagining how women managed their lives, the things they took for granted juxtaposed with what I take for granted. She helps me see and remember these things, with her. I see my past in her knowing of her past.
We figured out how the Australian Aborigine women discovered the fact that emu fat helps decrease inflammation. The old women were sitting around the fire, sharing a delicious, very fatty piece of emu tail which dripped down their fat coated talking mouths and onto their hands. As they readied themselves for sleep, they smeared the fat from their lips onto their entire face working it in, and likewise rubbed the grease from their hands into hands, arms, body, even each other if there was extra. Noticing how good they felt with emu fat rubbed on into themselves, they rubbed it on their infants, children and all loved ones. They grew in their knowing that emu fat rubbed in feels so very much better than no emu fat in on or around one’s body. They moved easier, had less pain. They knew this surely and made a point of telling their daughters, their children, their loved ones what they knew and so it was easily passed on.
We tasted and smelled and looked closely at wild ones growing tall and beautiful, yellows, purples, pinks millions of miracles sprouted from the dirt and sand from the bone dry ground displaying the munificence of the Divine.
We tasted and appreciated food cooked and prepared and served one to the other, back and forth, easily, with kindness and generosity of deed and thought. And the food was delicious and plentiful.
The conversation too was deep and thoughtful perfectly balanced with delicious and plentiful silence.
And she could dance, oh she could dance and have fun, fun, fun sustained and plentiful.
I am appreciative and grateful and giving this accounting of my heart in total fullness and Mudita. In appreciation of the gifts of another and joy in their richness and plenty. Joy in their attributes and successful life. Joy in the appreciation of the joy in my heart.
…eldermuse.net…
April 18, 2010