Afternoons in Japan: My Monthly Bokksu

Two years ago our son, Nicholas, flew to Japan for two weeks with some friends. It was a wonderful trip with extended stays in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Yokohama where they ate new foods, saw amazing sights, and experienced a different culture.  

When Nicholas flew back home, a wonderful merging of schedules resulted in Nicholas and Jonathan being in Atlanta at the same time, so my husband and I (along with their baby brother) picked up our international traveler from the airport, checked into the Renaissance Concourse Airport Hotel, and the five of us stayed up late into the night hearing about Nicholas' adventures before he had to drive back to Arkansas the next morning. And as he talked, he passed out gifts--architecture books, Japanese Pokemon cards, anime and manga collectibles, and a Japanese cooking knife with NOVAJOSKY engraved in Japanese characters on the blade. 

Nicholas learned a great deal about Japan on that trip, and we learned a great deal through him.

And we continue to learn.

This past Christmas, Nicholas gifted me a Bokksu subscription, a monthly delivery of Japanese snacks, candies, and teas sourced directly from centuries-old small family businesses. The bright orange box that arrives on my doorstep is filled with never-ending delights, and my afternoon cappuccino time now has a Japanese flair. 

The theme for my first Bokksu box was Seasons of Japan, and a little booklet explained the various snacks and the regions from which they came. Nicholas suggested I first try the Hokkaido Red Bean Doughnuts which were absolutely delicious! Every day I tried something new--Matcha Chocolate Stick Cake (bittersweet chocolate cake), Stick Potato: Suppa Mucho Plum (crispy potato sticks with floral notes of plums), Edamame Senbei (edamame baked into a cracker), Black Sesame Taiko: Kumamon Design (pressed discs of almonds and sesame seeds), and Puku Puku Tai: Chocolate (giant red snapper shaped wafer filled with a chocolate mousse). 

Then, just when I finished all the snacks, the next month's box arrived. 

The theme for this month's Bokksu is Sweet Love and I immediately learned something new: In Japan, the women give gifts on Valentine's day and the favor is returned one month later on White Day. See? I love learning cultural facts like this! The first treat I tried was the Okayama White Peach Castella, a fluffy cake baked with Okayama's famous white peaches. So, so good and it paired most excellently with my cappuccino. 

Tomorrow ... I have my eye on the Genji Pie.

Some photos from Nicholas' trip to Japan two years ago.

Hero Worship and Silent Heroes

We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day.

~Brad Meltzer, author of Heroes for My Son

Perhaps it’s because I am all too aware of my own imperfections that I am very cautious about putting someone on a pedestal. To be sure, there are people I admire and respect, but there's a difference between admiring someone and thinking they hang the moon.

I am bothered by the fact that many times people are held in high esteem for no other reason other than they can throw a football, or look pretty on television, or lose weight, or make multi-million dollar deals. And I am bothered at how willing some of us are to look up to someone who is, when it comes down to it, very human.

When you cross the line into hero worship, you are basically setting yourself up to be less than that person . . . which is almost like saying God (who made us in his image) somehow made a mistake in how he made you.

I once accompanied a group of local doctors to Haiti for a 10-day mission trip. Part of that experience included a lot of rough travel, the most grueling of which was a 14-hour truck ride through mountains, desert and jungle until we reached the small village of Jean-Rabel.

During that long, long trip I was surrounded by doctors and missionaries who spent that time talking. One discussion involved the misdirection of youth, and a young missionary made a comment that the distractions offered by today's society were nothing more than a substitute for the Holy Spirit.

Oh, brother! I remember thinking.

But over time I’ve come to realize what she was trying to say. There’s nothing wrong with getting excited during a rock concert, or cheering a star athlete, or looking up to someone, or recognizing them as a leader.

The problem occurs when we lose sight of the First Commandment and lay those feelings of enthusiasm, admiration and even hope at the feet of someone who is merely human.

The problem occurs when we measure our own self-worth by human rather than spiritual standards.

The problem occurs when we don't see the value in  those around us (teammates, co-workers, family members) because we are so blinded by the star quality of one individual.

I am grateful that the world is full of many wonderful people -- people I admire and respect and who inspire me to be a better person. But putting them on a pedestal?

I know of only One who can hang the moon.

In response to this post, my zia Tiziana left this comment about the silent hero (like my Nonna). After almost 14 years of blogging this comment is one of my favorite.

"How true are your words. We all have heroes, and sometimes it is difficult to believe that they are only poor humans like us, with faults and weaknesses. For our Nonna, however, the true heroes were people like her parents who, even though they weren’t rich, worked hard – without running water, heat, electricity, refrigerator, washing machine, dishwasher, iron, television, etc. – and yet they were able to raise their four daughters in serenity, happiness and faith. Nonna always remembered her childhood as the happiest time of her life. She would always say, 'Yes, we were poor, but how much fun we had running in the fields, talking and singing in the barn (the warmest place to gather), and we appreciated the simplest things.' Maybe the true heroes are those who silently help others and perhaps they are the only ones who can truly help God 'hang the moon'”.

~Tizi

An Early Morning

This morning I woke up early. One minute I was asleep, and the next I wasn't. 

I was excited, looking forward to something, but what? The day ahead would be like yesterday, and the day before that, full of the ordinary and mundane. 

Walking downstairs, I quietly made a cappuccino and went outside to stand on the front porch. 

The streetlight cast a light so gentle it was like a whisper, creating shadows that danced softly in the breeze. 

I breathed in the crisp, cool morning air and gazed at the blue-black sky, stars sprinkled haphazardly as if someone had grabbed a bucketful and threw them heavenward. 

Stillness blanketed the morning until a bird, perched in a crepe myrtle, trilled a song heralding a tiny hint of pink above the horizon. 

And I had a moment, the kind that isn't planned, or thought out, or cluttered with the craziness of life. The kind of moment that is a gift so pure it simply requires you to reach out and take hold of it. 

The kind of moment which is nothing, but everything. 

In Which My Son Quotes Poetry

"How was Book Club?" my son asked, as I carried in chairs and blankets from the around the fire pit where we had discussed Jodi Picoult's latest book, The Book of Two Ways.

"It was great," I replied. "We discussed choices, and how some choices are black and white--that is, it is very clear what you should do--while other choices are not clear but you have to decide anyway. The book was about those kind of choices and what happens after you made the decision when, years later, you wonder what would have happened if you had chosen differently."

It was a simple answer for a very intricate and complex book. But it got Timothy thinking.

"That reminds me of the poem by Robert Frost," he said. "You know, the one called 'The Road Not Taken.'"

After our poetry discussion earlier this week in which he declared all poets dumb (his words) for not saying what they mean to say, I was pretty impressed. 

"Look at you," I said. 

And he grinned. 

I Love You with a Book

Every December our wedding anniversary, Joe's birthday, and Christmas occur all within a 10-day period. It is such a busy time that we usually postpone our anniversary celebration until things are a little quieter. But last month we were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary, so Joe planned a weekend getaway and I thought long and hard on a gift I could give Joe to commemorate this special occasion. 

And I found it with LoveBook Online, a website that allows you to write, create, and illustrate your love story to make a special, one-of-a-kind gift. 

The website was incredibly user-friendly. After creating an account, you select a cover (hard or soft), come up with a title (decide on the color and font size), make characters that look like you (the possibilities are endless), and then create, write, and personalize pages using both the templates provided and pages you can fully customize yourself. The book can be as short or as long as you want. After  you edit and submit your creation, the book is printed, professionally bound and laminated, and then mailed back to you. 

When our book arrived I was so impressed with the quality! The pages were thick, the illustrations were exactly as I created, the colors were bright, and the overall quality was excellent. 

So last month, in the midst of a birthday and Christmas and a pandemic, we celebrated our anniversary with a weekend getaway to Asheville, NC where we spent a magical two days exploring the Biltmore House and grounds. 

And I gave Joe a copy of The Story of Us. 

Which he really, really loved.

Here are just a few pages from our book ...  

Poetry, Art, and Italian Beef Stew

Last night at dinner Timothy was most unhappy because after a successful sememster of hybrid learning, he was now back in school full time. Then, if things couldn't get any worse (and never mind that the U.S. Capitol was stormed because high school has its own drama) his literature class was beginning a HUGE unit on poetry.

Timothy. And poetry.

I was positively delighted. 

I told him to think of poetry like art; that when an artist paints on canvas, the final result is not one dimensional but rather contains multi-layers of symbolism, color, mood, composition, and brushstroke; then, one must consider the medium, the genre, not to mention tone and perspective. 

"Poetry is like art, except with words, punctuation, and spacing, " I explain. "And like a work of art, a poem is meant to be interpreted." 

"Why can't people just say what they mean?" he grumbled. 

A few minutes later he grabbed a sticky note, scribble 4 = 4, and then asked us if the numbers were the same. 

Joe immediately said that they were the same, but with the equal sign it would make better sense if the equation had said something like  4 = 3 + 1, or 2 + 2 = 4. 

Since we had just been discussing poetry, though, I disagreed and pointed out that if you were to approach it poetically, then those numbers were not the same at all. 

"That's EXACTLY what my literature teacher said!" he shouted, kind of proud that I got it.

Then he started laughing and said this was a perfect example of how Joe and I are completely opposite. Joe immediately saw a math equation, whereas I saw a poem. 

It WAS pretty funny. 

Timothy continued to grumble about school and dumb poets until I passed him a heaping bowl of spetzzatino (Italian beef stew) served on a mound of polenta. And ... just like that all was right with the world.

Spetzzatino and polenta ... now THAT is poetry.

The Great Reading List of 2020

 People often ask me how I find the time to read, and my answer is this: There is ALWAYS time to read. I am not being snarky; it is just that reading to me is like breathing. I read whenever, wherever, whatever. If I am waiting for the water to boil, I read. Stuck in carline, I read. With my afternoon cappuccino, I read. Reading is how I end my day because no matter how late it is, I cannot sleep unless I first read. I also listen to books on audible while I am cooking, cleaning, working out, or driving. 

Joe calls me Reader Rabbit.

Below is a list of books I read in 2020. I read 52 books (I listed any book series as one entry but included each book individually in the final count). 

One book on my list, 2666 by Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño, should count as 15 books. I am not kidding. My son, who is not only an avid reader but a very eclectic one, gave me the book Christmas of 2019 because he wanted to know what I thought. The story revolves around an elusive German author and the unsolved and ongoing murders of women in Santa Teresa (a fictitious city inspired by Ciudad Juarez and its many female homicides). At 893 pages it was literally and figuratively a heavy read. It took me all year to finish it. While I was reading it, I had flashbacks to my college Spanish literature classes where we watched films by Luis Buñuel, analyzed poems by Pablo Neruda, and read novels by Gabriel García Márquez or Miguel de Cervantes, all of which culminated in a summer study abroad in Salamanca, Spain. 

So, this book reminded me of those Spanish classes and surrealism and bizarre dream sequences and sentences that go on and on and on without any paragraph breaks. At one point I texted my son to tell him that ONE SENTENCE--from the beginning capital letter to the final punctuation--went on for almost FIVE pages.

I'm glad I read it just to be able to say I did, but sheesh that was work, let me tell you.

I have also included my 2020 Top Five picks, only because people ask. Truthfully, I am always reluctant to reveal favorites because my selection does not necessarily mean it was the best-written book on the list. Just one that spoke to me at a particular moment in time. 

What’s next? Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak), a Christmas gift from the very same son mentioned above. This cloth-bound book was commissioned by The Folio Society of London, and it is illustrated with original paintings by Boris Pasternak's father, Leonid, with an introduction by the author's niece. I might need to wear white gloves to turn the pages. 

My Top Five Books for 2020

The Secret History (Donna Taart): I love a good book that sets up good discussion, and there was much to discuss in this book. Also, the book was about an elite group of students studying classical literature, and when a murder takes place it becomes a modern day Greek tragedy. 

Pat Conroy: Over the Christmas holidays I re-discovered Pat Conroy. I read several of his books and I was reminded of how beautifully he wrote. All the books I read were beautiful, tragic, sad, and peppered with witty conversation.

The Dublin Murder Series: I love a good mystery, and Tana French delivers. The books are moody, the characters are flawed, and the mystery keeps you guessing until the very last page. I cannot wait until her next book. There is an 8-part television series called Dublin Murders that is based on the first two books. It is oh so good. 

Where the Lost Wander: I listened to this on audible, and then listened to it a second time because it was that good. The story is about a family traveling on the Oregon Trail. It is also a beautiful love story. 

Ghost Boy: My goal this year was to read more non-fiction books. Ghost Boy is the true story of Martin Pistorius who, at the age of 12, became ill with an unknown degenerative disease which left him in a vegetative state. What no one realized was that while his body was unresponsive, his mind had awakened only to find himself trapped in his body with no way of communicating. The book is a triumph of the human spirit, but it was also sobering to think how many people are trapped without any way of communicating to the world that they are STILL THERE. 

Maria’s Reading List for 2020

The Island of Dr. Moreau (H. G. Wells)

The Things We Cannot Say (Kelly Rimmer)

I am Forbidden (Anoux Markovits)

The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Heather Morris)

The Chain (Adrian McKinty)

The Lost City of Z (David Grann)

Greensleeves (Eloise Jarvis McGraw)

The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Christy Lefteri)

The Silent Patient (Alex Michaelides)

The Chestnut Man (Soren Sveistrup)

Educated (Tara Westover)

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (Kim Michele Richardson)

The Dutch House (Ann Patchett)

American Dirt (Jeanine Cummins)

The Dublin Murder Series (Tana French) – all five books

Tobacco Road (Erskine Caldwell)

The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae (Stephanie Butland)

I know Why the Caged Birds Sing (Maya Angelou)

Gather Together in My Name (Maya Angelou)

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (Maya Angelou)

Carnegie’s Maid (Marie Benedict)

The Island of Sea Women (Lisa See)

2666 (Roberto Bolaño)

The Book of Joy (Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu)

Lost Roses (Martha Hall Kelly)

The Devil’s Punchbowl (Greg Iles)

True Evil (Greg Iles)

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry (Gabrielle Zevin)

Christ Stopped at Eboli (Carlo Levi)

The Secret History (Donna Taart)

Ghost Boy (Martin Pistorius)

One By One (Ruth Ware)

Fair Warning (Michael Connelly)

Song of David (Amy Harmon)

The Law of Moses (Amy Harmon)

Running Barefoot (Amy Harmon)

Where the Lost Wander (Amy Harmon)

Layla (Colleen Hoover)

Blood Washes Blood (Frank Viviano)

The Dreamers (Karen Thompson Walker)

Beach Music (Pat Conroy)

The Prince of Tides (Pat Conroy) 

The Great Santini (Pat Conroy)

South of Broad (Pat Conroy)

The Book of Two Ways (Jodi Picoult)

The Summer Before the War (Helen Simonson)

The Enigma Game (Elizabeth Wein)

The Light Between Oceans (M. L. Stedman)

Speak to Me Sunday: Putting Away Christmas

We usually keep our Christmas tree up until January 6, but sometimes I'm practical. For example, when I realized January 6 was in the MIDDLE of the week, and that next weekend everyone is busy, I took advantage of the fact that everyone was home TODAY so TODAY the tree was coming down.

It was a three-hour process to undo everything we did over Thanksgiving weekend. Joe and Timothy took down the ornaments from the tree and placed them on the kitchen table so I could put them in the storage boxes. Back and forth they carried ornaments, from tree to table. We had a lot of ornaments on the tree.

Joe pulled off the lights and coiled them carefully because we replaced ALL the lights last year and he believes that they should be good for another year or two. Maybe. If we're lucky.

There were a million trips carrying boxes up to our third-floor attic. 

One of the last things I packed away was a Christmas signboard. Painted on its surface are the Three Wise Men with the words, "REJOICE in the gifts of the season."

I thought about those words as we cleared away the ribbons, tags, packages, boxes, and bows, all the garland and lights, the trimmings of Christmas that make the season sparkly, cozy, and exciting.  

Then, this evening at Mass we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany, and I thought back to earlier in the afternoon when we were putting away Christmas. 

"REJOICE in the gifts of the season."

Rejoice. 

In the gifts.

The gifts of the Magi, the angels' Alleluia, the shepherds' witness, and the Christ child in a manger. The gifts of faith, peace, goodwill, forgiveness, and salvation for all mankind until the end of time.

A gift given is a gift received, and while every Christmas we are reminded of these gifts, they were given once a long time ago. And we still have them.

Even the curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge's Christmas epiphany (see what I did there?) recognized that the precious gifts of the season, unlike the coins he hoarded, were free from the boundaries of time or place. 

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year," he says at the end of A Christmas Carol. 

Rejoice.

In the gifts.

Always. 

Stepping into the New Year with 20/20 Hindsight

 “Close the door on the way out.”

I feel as if that is the prevailing attitude as we prepare to leave 2020 behind and step into the New Year.

There is no doubt this past year has been many things—disruptive, challenging, scary, deadly, restrictive—and life as we knew it changed: barriers, in the form of closed borders and mandatory masking separated people; closings, from schools to churches to government offices meant re-structuring our day-to-day lives; and health recommendations that changed on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis left our heads spinning.

Between the Pandemic and the political vitriol, life was heavy. You know?

So, I can understand why so many want to say goodbye to 2020. But not just goodbye (which implies a possible return) but adieu (with a firm kick in the backside, just to be sure) because there is a finality in those words. Go with God. The end. Gone forever, and no coming back.  

But as I sat down to write this end of year post and reflect on the past 12 months, I had to acknowledge that I cannot dismiss an entire year; after all, a year has 365 days in it, and not every one of those 365 days was bad.

Do not get me wrong. We were affected. The travel restrictions were depressing, and we worried for our relatives in Italy. Our youngest son’s high school ended abruptly when classes moved online and his soccer season was cancelled. Our other son’s final semester in grad school also came to a screeching halt, and in May his graduation was held in our living room. Then, to get ready for a job in Atlanta, he had to do a virtual apartment search, eventually signing a lease based solely on tiny photos we saw online. He moved to Atlanta during the height of the Pandemic, and when a tree fell on his car a few weeks later he had to handle everything—insurance, police reports, car rental, and purchase of another car—all by himself because we were under a shelter-at-home order.

Then, both my brother (a doctor) and my son (living in Atlanta) contracted COVID-19. Thankfully, they both recovered without complications. Additionally, two times during the pandemic I had one of my parents experience a health crisis that required hospitalization. Neither hospitalization was due to COVID-19, but because of COVID-19 we could not be there with my father during his heart catheterization, and we could not sit next to my mom in the hospital room as she waited alone for test results. They were isolated in the hospital while we waited anxiously at home for a doctor to call.

And darn it, my book club has not met since last spring. 

So, without a doubt, 2020 was challenging.

BUT there were silver linings.

Because of COVID-19 we also learned, grew, and adapted in ways we never thought possible.

When I think back on this year, I can see how this teeny, tiny virus was a beacon calling us home, reminding us that there is more to life than the business of running here and there. For the first time, we stayed home. We worked in our yards. We cooked meals prepared by our own hands and we sat around the table to eat it. We dusted off boardgames and worked on puzzles. We waved to neighbors we usually never see and, from the safety of a driveway, compared notes on Pandemic Survival. We enjoyed being outdoors. We hiked, biked, played golf, and sat around the fire pit talking.

For the first time, we had the gift of time … not to do more, but to be still. And the fact that this was not true for everyone made us more grateful of our circumstance; after all, if all we were asked to do was stay home while others were on the front lines, then we had no reason to complain.

The pandemic also reminded us of the importance of faith. Not the faith that is practiced out of routine and obligation, but one that is treasured because we gather it close. When churches closed, we searched for alternate ways to worship. We set up laptops to livestream services, converted the credenza into an Easter altar, and gathered for prayer around the kitchen table. Instead of lamenting that we could not go to church, we rejoiced that we had the prayers and traditions of our faith. It was admittedly not the same, but faith never felt more real. This was a faith of wars, and famines, and yes, even pandemics; a faith that you can find anywhere.  

During this past year, we—the entire world—were reminded of the fact that we are dependent creatures and not the invincible, self-reliant, all-important people we think we are. This is humbling, but eye-opening. We need each other. We are dependent on farmers, factory workers, truckers, pharmacists, garbage collectors, and mail carriers; we need grocery stores, utility plants, and factories to remain open; we rely on health professionals who care for the sick and law enforcement to maintain order.

And from a place of dependence comes an awareness of the wonderful interconnectedness of humanity; that life is a balance of needing and being needed, and if we all do our part it works.

The pandemic has also reminded us of our own mortality. We can get sick. We can die. We do not like to think of these things, but the Pandemic showed us that while there are variables in life we can control, there are just as many we cannot, and this is frightening. There is a huge lesson here because we can let that fear dictate, or we can use it to take precautions to still live life the best we can. So, we learned to adapt, and we learned that just because life was now different did not mean it still could not be lived abundantly.

Last spring, as we were sheltering at home, I wanted to do something to change April from a month that was one big joke on what life should have been, to one that was about living life to the fullest. So I initiated the “Something New Challenge”, and each day my friend and I posted on Facebook something new we did that day. Some things were simple (hosting a ZOOM book club meeting for the first time, reading Sunday’s Gospel in Italian, finishing a 1000-piece Star Wars puzzle) while others were more elaborate (completing a photographic study in green, making homemade gelato). When I look back at those April days, there is a list of 30 new things we did.

Then in August, my friend initiated the “One Good Thing Challenge” whereby we posted one good thing every day. And there were MANY good things—a summer thunderstorm, an organized closet, coffee and a danish. Again, when I look back at that time, there were blessings in abundance. Even on the bad days.

So, no, I cannot dismiss the entire year. How can I when it was the year our eldest son got engaged, when we had so much family time, when we wore goofy hats during our weekly family ZOOM meetings, when I participated in the Camino de Santiago Virtual Challenge, or when we had lovely vacations at the beach and the mountains while honoring social distancing and mask mandates?

I am not naively ignoring the challenging moments of 2020; I am simply choosing not to forget the good ones.

January is a month named after the Roman god, Janus, who had two faces so he could look toward the future and back to the past. And as we get ready to step into the future of a brand-new year, we bring with us the experiences and lessons from the previous year. We are who we are because of yesterday, stand in the present of who we are now, and with both march forward into tomorrow. 

And with that, I wish you a Happy New Year.

Because so many loved this image, Marina Heiduczek is offering it as a free download 

(personal use only). You can download it from her website