GOD'S FEATHERS

         

                                   GOD'S FEATHERS                  What are they?

 

               She came in like a whirlwind and threw herself on the couch. She told me a story of

a friend who offended her, wounding her deeply. She spoke and conviction pounded me like a judge's gavel. I had done the same thing to one of my friends. Ouch! God's feathers!                            

                He spoke eloquently, sharing his message.

               "When you walk the path you're clearing it for the next generation."

                The speaker inspired me to ask myself questions. How could I walk the path for my

children and grandchildren so I would clear it?  What exactly is the path? What a message! God's feathers?

                 She served us an Italian dinner at the restaurant. When I asked her why she had

such a good attitude she said, "Why not. I'm thankful for what I have. I might not be able to do this someday. Glad to do it now. " I thought carpe diem ... a topic that had come often to my mind in recent days. Heavenly affirmation for the spiritual study to take? Some just call it coincidence but I have experienced so many of these before ... I call them God's feathers.

                 She came to me for counseling. Her emotions and appearance in disarray. I heard a voice within me say, "She has a gun. Careful." She did. God's feathers.

        God's Feathers?  What are God's feathers?      

         For me they're messages. Words needed at just the right time. On occasions  they have come to convict me. Other times these words came to inspire me or warn me. Sometimes, like with the waitress mentioned, they reinforce the guidance I have been drawn to already. Her words were a repetition of a theme running through my mind ... something  I wanted to study the following week. It just happened that the same theme floated from her lips and that my spirit did a flip receiving it? No. I don't think so.      

        Why do  I name them God's feathers? I choose the term from an instance in the Bible. From a Scripture that describes The Spirit of God, descending on Jesus like a dove. (John 1:32) I picture the Spirit's passage through the lips of a person that's giving me His message. I imagine that He leaves precious feathers, God's message, when he swiftly flies by. God's feathers.

        In my life, throughout the years, I've found interesting facts about The Spirit's  messengers. The Spirit is not partial. He uses multiple messengers of different ages, gender and nationalities. They come with diverse  skin colors and religions ... believers and nonbelievers. Often, the messenger doesn't even know he's giving me a message. The ways of The Spirit are mysterious indeed! Who can fully comprehend them? When the message came to my mind about the gun, was the messenger that whispered it an angel? The Biblical meaning for the word angel is a ministering spirit, a messenger. (Hebrews 1:14)

         I labor at staying open and sensitive but my life, at times, is like a subway train, flashing by with schedules to keep and passengers to get to their needed destination.  I dread to think of messages I've missed that came from such sacred distance.  Precious feathers I have overlooked or, yet worse, trampled.

       So, if at some time you see me gazing upon your face like one hypnotized by what you're saying, there's a good chance I have found, within your words, God's feathers!

                                                                  
                   

AN AMARYLLIS FOR AMARILYS

              
                AN AMARYLLIS FOR AMARILYS                From Memoir, A Dot In Time

                                                                            
                                                      An Amaryllis For Amarilys
                 

                          

           He blew into the demitasse and then sipped his cafecito. He liked it hot. I made sure it was. He took his cap off ... the cap that teamed so well with his peppered moustache to make him look like a Greek sailor, a captain of his ship.

           He brought me two packages. The bigger box he wanted me to open  the next day. The day of my birth. The other smaller one he said to open that day. Inside that one maybe, the answer to my inner question every year? Did my father remember?

           I came to sit with him at the kitchen table. Both of us drinking our coffee a bit fast in contrast with the conversation that usually began like the trickling of a melting stream.

         On occasion he would give me the blessing, that crown on my head, that I would wear joyfully for days. "With you I want to talk. Let me tell you...." Then he would go on to share about what troubled him. In many occasions after he finished his coffee one corner of his mouth would lift and be pinned up for a few seconds, like the first part of a piece of clothing one used to hang up on  clotheslines.  I knew then I'd soon be transported into my father's memory. 

         Themes ran into one another in some of these conversations. Loose wild animals seeking shelter. The poverty of his family when he was a boy, the difficulty of  immigration to a new land, the loss of respect and discrimination he experienced in some of  his jobs because of his nationality ... secret trauma he kept buried.

         I sat quietly, my heart, like a net catching his memories, sensing the sacredness of invitation into his sanctum. Usually, in the midst of his deepest reflections, he would look at his watch and say, "Your mother home soon. Gotta cook."  He would gather his cap with a swift jerk and fold his emotions away in the same way. In those times I moved  also in a whirlwind, catching him before he left.  Kissing him. Feeling the rough edges of  his day old beard.

           "There's an amaryllis bulb in there. Better open it."

           "An amaryllis? You remembered."

           "Sí. An amaryllis for Amarilys." 

                                                                (for my father, Tomas Gacio  1920-1990)

   

                   For A Very Loving Friend

             She came into Panera's with a bag full of presents.

             "Open this one first," she said.

              I stared at the box. The shape seemed familiar.

              "You told me the story about your dad. How he brought you ..."

              I ripped the paper and looked inside. An amaryllis bulb.

             "It's from your dad," she said.

             "An amaryllis for Amarilys," I said.

              I held back the tears. "Thank you, Maria."

              The Greek sailor ... still talking.

                
                                                                                         

                                                                                                   amaryllis photo by Lilja Taylor

              

MAKING FLAN! A Cuban Julia Child.

   MAKING FLAN!

                                                                             
           

  Making  A Lazy Man's or (Woman's)  Flan!   When cool, tip over into pie plate. I disconnect it from pan by rubbing a butter-knife around it.

   YOU'LL NEED ...    1 can evaporated milk

                                   1 can sweetened condensed milk

                                    5 eggs (works with 4 but I use 5)

                                                                  1/2 cup of sugar   

                                    2 tablespoons of Mexican Vanilla (the

                            real thing!) (of course you'll have to go get

                                 it.  Good excuse ... take a CRUISE!)

                                    1/4 cup of sugar  / metal pan (for me it

                                     works best ... have broken glass ones)

                                 

     Procedure:  In medium size bowl mix the first four ingredients.

                  In metal pan, put in your 1/4 cup of sugar, on low heat wait till it melts and turns gold or

                     medium brown. Do NOT LET IT BURN. Don't answer any phones or check emails  while doing this ... only disaster follows!

     Pour mixture of milk etc. into your melted golden brown sugar pan. Place this round pan with   mixture inside a rectangular cake pan. Some people call it the lasagna pan.  

 Fill the cake pan  with water. Up 1/2 to the level of your metal round pan with ingredients. The placing one pan within another and then surrounding it by water is called in Cuba, Al Baño De Maria, To the style of bath that Maria took, (whatever that meant. If you find out what that means tell me. Don't fill it so much that when it bakes it boils and flows into your FLAN!

Put a glass top on your Flan to be! If not, might burn on top, or not done in the middle! Glass helps you to observe it.

 Bake in oven at 375* if you got a hot oven bring it down to 350* Bake an hour. Sometimes depending on oven, bake more. The way to know if your flan is done is: Take a butter-knife and

stick it into the middle of your flan lightly. If it comes out clean you got yourself a flan!

                                     
                                           Metal pan works for me. In the family for years.    

                                                         Many happy flan memories!                   

                                           The cake pan above was my mother-in-law's pan.
                                       It's old but it's here to stay. Many good memories there too!

PRESSURE COOKER FRIEND OR FOE ... and casabe

    PRESSURE COOKER FRIEND OR FOE ... and casabe!       From Memoir, A Dot In Time

                                                                           
                                           September 1970    Gainesville, Florida  
 
                          I heard it speed like a horse determined to win the race, swish, swish ... faster, faster. My heart racing with the sound. Could I leave, the cleaning of our bathroom, dowsing my toilet with Pinesol, and make it to the little kitchen fast enough?
                       
                         Too late. It exploded, spitting madly its gray-black substance over ceiling and walls, vicious pressure cooker. What was I to do?  My focused mission to cook and serve my first meal to in-laws and family sabotaged. And there I stood, stunned. No car to go get more black beans. Grocery stores too far from our Gainesville apartment to make it on my bike.

                         It was then, once again, that my Abuela's voice sprang to my mind, like the little voice of Jimminy Cricket to the rescue. "Mayi, cuando no hay pan se come casabe." "Marggie when there's no bread we eat casabe." I had asked her, as a child, what that Cuban expression meant. She told me the story.
                        
                         The Indians in Cuba ate casabe. It was a staple food. Nothing fancy but a must to survive. The saying meant, "when you don't have something make the best of what you have."

                          I looked at the mess, feeling unglued but not broken yet, struggling to hold back tears.  From somewhere  inside the words of my grandmother were playing ... growing in tone ... sweet crescendo,

                          "Cuando no hay pan, se come casabe. Cuando no hay pan se come casabe."

                          I knew those words helped me before, clothed me in comfort in those times when, as a girl and teenager, I lacked what my friends had. Things my family couldn't afford.

                          I made my own little tune with the words and sensed the brewing of  inner spunk. I stared at the lonely beans, still in the bottom of the pan, and the remains of the ones on the counter. Did I dare to use those? Why not? Casabe.
  
                          When there's no bread, we eat casabe. When there's no bread, we eat casabe.

                         Two hours to count down before the family would arrive. Hands worked fast, making another batch of sofrito, water was added, seasoning was sprinkled in like pixie dust, more casabe magic was needed to accomplish this feat.
 
                         I left the mixture cooking again while I climbed on the few chairs we had to wipe the ceiling and walls of  all evidence.
 
                         And then, the casabe did its magic. The bean mixture stretched to feed the multiude and when the smiling parents came in the door ...

                         "It smells like ... good cooking."

                         "Yes," I whispered, "when there's no bread ... casabe."

                          They never knew!

                                                                             
                                                           Black Bean Soup

              casabe   a crisp flat bread prepared from the cassava (yuca) flour, it was at the center
                           of the Taino Indian diet. Tainos - Indians from the Caribbean