Hettie's TED Debut

Last week, Charity gave not one, but two fantastic presentations at TEDMed. She spoke on the main stage at the Kennedy Center Opera House, and snagged tickets for the whole family so we could see her (and the other fantastic speakers) live and in person. Not to brag, but my little sister is pretty amazing. And so are her visual aids. Especially Hettie.

Holi!

Mercina and I spent a large portion of today hurling magic rainbow powder at each other (and Jennifer). It was a good day.

Something came in the mail today......

As Glorianna mentioned last week, I've decided to take the next year and a half to serve a mission for my church.

One of the crazy things about going on a mission is that you have no idea where you'll go until after you submit your application. Family members and friends usually try to guess where you'll end up, but no one really knows until the big, fat, white envelope with all of the official details arrives. Well, mine came today.

Out of the 75+ official guesses, no one guessed the location correctly. Crazy, huh?

^^^^^^^^Clearly I was pretty surprised!^^^^^^^^

I never expected I would be going to

TOKYO, JAPAN!

I'll write a more thoughtful post about my motivations, my church, my reservations, etc., later, but for now I give you:

Thoughts on India

ELEPHANT!

In the weeks before going to India a couple words kept coming up in conversations related to our trip. The first, echoed most commonly among our American friends, was “colorful.” As in “Oh my word India! All the colorful saris and spices and flowers, be sure to take lots of pictures!” or “India! I love Bollywood, such a colorful culture!”  The second word, more frequently employed by family and friends from India was “uncomfortable.” As in “Why are you taking her to India now when it’s the middle of summer? The poor girl is going to be terribly uncomfortable!” or “Be sure to bring toilet paper with you everywhere, lest you get into an uncomfortable bathroom situation.” and “You must take your malaria medication. It will make you very uncomfortable, but the alternative is even worse!”

As the conversations started piling up, my mind compiled a sort of rough sketch of what I ought to expect from my trip. I tried to wrap my head around what all this color and discomfort would be like, and every so often I’d catch a brief vision of Technicolor mosquitos and gorgeous women dressed in saris dancing around a primitive bathroom.

So, here I am, two weeks, four (Indian) states, seven cities, thousands of miles and one elephant ride later, and what have I learned? I know it sounds basic, but I’ve realized that asking someone to describe India as a whole is an even more cumbersome task than whittling down our own US of A to a unified notion. You see, in the States we at least have the luxury of a common tongue and a more or less agreed upon national narrative going back a couple centuries. India however, combines similar geographic diversity, with countless dialects, distinct governing bodies, and millennia of foreign occupation. Attempting to package it neatly into an idea that can be communicated in a couple of sentences is enough to make anyone’s head spin, I might even go so far as to say it’s impossible (baring testament to this is the 700-page history of India Premal picked up—my husband and his “light” reading—with graphs that cross this researcher’s eyes).  

And now, as I’ve worked—and failed—at writing a post that is comprehensive and compelling and pays appropriate tribute to each station we stopped at along our way, it has finally dawned on me why these words kept cropping up in conversation. The labels given to the nation by people I love were less about the country itself, and more about their hopes and dreams for my adventure.  They were little blessings, put out into the world as vague ideas and loving caution. And it seems they worked. The prayers for beauty and color delivered abundantly. And somehow all that talk of discomfort must have hardened me for the adventure. And  Premal and I had a magical time.

Premal's parents' old clinic

Ahmadabad night market

a beach near Mumbai

vegetable market in Mumbai

the Tata tea gardens

walking into Tamil Nandu

lake punnamada

the gates of the old synagogue in Cochin

Recipe for a Perfect Birthday

Yoni and I moved to a new place in February. While the 6 large pane windows are enough to make me giddy, the park outside my front door is the true source of glee. Yes, it's nice to have a park. But what is really nice is we seem to celebrate EVERYTHING here now!

Today, it was Willa's birthday, and what a birthday it was! Willa, now one, had siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, mom, dad, her own photographer sent from the Washington Post (Seriously. Look for her in the Lifestyles section in the next few weeks) and the piece de resistance, the most incredible sweet edibles I've had in quite some time. Imagine Ben&Jerry's was in a cake and that's pretty much what these confections were. Tiny little dense chocolate cakes filled with toasted marshmallow, graham cracker bites and chocolate chips, covered in a malted graham frosting. Revelatory and revelratory.

Here's Kimber's recipe...

Willa's Birthday Cupcakes, S'mores Edition

1 box devil's food cake mix
1 small box chocolate pudding
1 cup sour cream
1 cup milk
4 eggs at room temperature
1 cup good milk chocolate chips, gently melted
2 cups miniature marshmallows, divided
1 sleeve graham crackers (i.e., 1/3 of a normal box of grahams -- I think it's 12 whole crackers)

Mix together all but the last three ingredients and beat on high speed for three minutes. Then, fold in the melted chocolate, 1 cup marshmallows, and the crackers, crumbling the grahams very roughly with your hands (pieces about as big as a quarter are perfect). Mix until just barely combined, then put into cupcake liners and top with addition marshmallows (I suggested 3, but since Hettie and Phineas were in charge of the process, it ended up being more like 17). Bake at 350 for about 22 minutes, or until the top is set (as best you can discern through all that toasted mallow!). 

Weird and Delicious Graham Cracker Frosting
(inspired by this, which was inspired by this, which I looked up because of this)

In a blender, make an unusual smoothie using 1/3 cup milk, 2 sleeves graham crackers (i.e., the rest of the box that you got to make the cupcakes), along with 1/4 cup powdered milk, a generous pinch of salt, and 3 Tbs brown sugar. Then, using your mixer, cream 6 Tbs butter with 1 Tbs of powdered sugar. Slowly incorporate your cracker sludge, and whip it to a frenzy, adding more milk or powdered sugar as needed to get your desired consistency.

Dust to Dust

 Last Summer, when my cousin Lulu was visiting, we wandered down to Denver's annual chalk art festival. It's a lovely event: They close off some of downtown's busiest streets, and artists come from across the region to spend three days on their hands and knees, covered in sweat and sunscreen and chalk dust of every color imaginable.

I think they might also spend some time on their knees praying for good weather. But that afternoon, as we cozied up in a diner booth a few blocks away (enjoying what might actually be the world's greatest pancakes,) those prayers were heartily ignored. It rained. Hard. One of those sudden, vengeful thunderstorms that never struck me as unusual until I'd spent a summer living somewhere with less passionate weather.

The rain came down so hard and fast we kept waiting for the clouds to twirl us away to Oz. And in those few violent minutes, all that rain and all this beauty and all those hours turned the sidewalks into a brilliantly jumbled tie-dye, before the magic swirled away forever. 

I wonder how those artists feel. Some of them come back, year after year after year, filling the same 24 square feet with vision and sweat and love, over and over and over. They must have made peace with the temporary nature of their masterpieces, accepting the serialized ruination of a football field's worth of art.

I cleaned my house this morning. And, though I wouldn't call my tidy front room museum-worthy, there is real satisfaction when that job is well done. But three adorable little thunderheads provided an impressive rainstorm this afternoon. And it looks like a post-play-date apocalypse over here. I haven't yet given up hope, but I would really like one of those artists to come share the secret to lasting inner peace in the face of inevitable destruction....

So Long, and Thanks for all the S'mores

Mercina dearest has officially submitted her papers to serve a mission this next year. This is awfully exciting news for her and all of the people who'll get to enjoy the pleasure of her company for the next year and a half; it is less exciting for me. Mercina has been my nearly-constant companion for the past . . . 19 years. Apart from ensuring I perform basic hygienic upkeep, she is also the person I'm closest to on this earth. I'm not sure how I'm going to get along without her next year. This song keeps playing over and over again in my head, and I have a nervous feeling that if I died in my room next semester, nobody would notice I was gone until the smell of my decomposing body in the hallway overpowered those of stale beer and man-sweat. But, all things considered, I think I've been taking her imminent departure in stride -- graciously, even.  To support this point, I even threw her a Sorry to See You Go S'more Soiree. Apart from some grumpy pan-handlers dressed up as entrepreneurial grad-students (seriously though, they kept asking us for money and telling us to turn off our youth music), it was quite a delightful evening. Together with a few friends, we ate giant raspberry goat cheese s'mores, ukuleled, and enjoyed the fact that Mercina's not gone quite yet.