Work is love made visible.
Khalil Gibran

“I’ve got chicken pox!!!!!” announced my 15 year old nephew, Stefan, on his Facebook status.

As I read these words I knew our Christmas plans had just changed. In our household plans changing is normal. Sometimes we have a Plan B up our sleeve and other times we don’t. Even after all these years of knowing and experiencing this reality it still takes me a moment to process what has happened, what it means and what I am going to do about it.

My first instinct after reading Stefan’s words were to contact my sister and assess the situation. I needed to gather facts to help me make a decision.

My 27 year old son Damian lives with a rare chromosome disorder which means he lives with an impaired immune system. Even though he had all the normal immunisations and illnesses like chicken pox as a child his immunity to all these diseases was wiped as the result of undergoing treatment (chemotherapy and radiotherapy) for leukaemia when he was 10 years old. In normal circumstances once a child completes their treatment they undergo a re-immunisation programme but this was not possible for Damian. As a result he is immunocompromised all the time and diseases like chicken pox and measles have the potential of making Damian incredibly sick should he contract them. As you can imagine we have become super vigilant in trying to keep Damian away from any known infection possibilities. Taking risks with Damian’s health is not an option.

So today instead of driving to Auckland (an eight hour drive north of where we live) to join the rest of my family that were gathering at my sister’s home to celebrate Christmas together, we stayed put. Instead of sitting in a car as a passenger or taking my turn at driving I spent the day in the kitchen getting ready for our own Christmas celebration.

It felt good to be in the kitchen. I spent the whole day creating – my daughter Mira’s favourite bean salad, a homemade herbed soft white cheese, preparing a multi-layered jelly, ginger crunch, shortbread, meringues and a white chocolate rocky road were amongst some of the items I produced. As I was putting trays in the oven and seeing the products coming out I was reminded of the days when I baked all the time. The memories came flooding back when I had time to be in the kitchen and create all sorts of wonders that delighted others. These days cooking is a chore I want to get over and done with as quickly as possible because I never have the time to think about what I’m going to cook let alone actually making it.

Today was different. I didn’t have to go to my day job. Instead I worked in my kitchen to create treats for the people I loved. It felt much more satisfying than anything I normally do during my working week. As I worked I thought about all the people in my life and what they mean to me. Everything I did today was infused with a bit of me and it felt incredibly good.

How satisfying it must be to work every day producing something that manifests your love made visible.

Manifesto
11. Every day do something for someone else.
47. Every day you are responsible.
48. Every day there are things you can’t change. You can change the way you think about them and deal with them.

I love homemade gifts – both making and receiving them. Creating and giving a homemade gift requires giving a little of yourself to the other person. You need to think a lot about the other person in the process of making a gift for the -  who they are, what they like, what they need, and how they might react to what you’re making for them. The spirit of intention, connection and love is strong in the “homemade” label.

These days I don’t have time to create homemade gifts – or is it that I don’t make the time? – so I resort to buying things that I think the intended receiver of the gift may like. Sometimes I’ll see something and know immediately that it’s perfect for a particular person. Other times it is really hard to find that “right” something. In reality this whole buying process also takes a lot of time (in thought and physically shopping) only we don’t think about this.

Gift giving on the scale expected at Christmas requires planning and organisation, and this year I didn’t achieve either. I left everything to the very last minute (not so unusual I hear my family saying) and then my body decided to slow me down even more. Thank goodness my youngest daughter Mira was around to inspire me from my sick bed. She motivated me to complete a book I had started a few years ago for my one of my sisters. Burning with a temperature I sat at my dining room table surrounded by photos, coloured papers, glues and many other embellishments. I managed to create the final pages of this book so it was ready to give to her thanks to Mira’s ongoing prompting and help.

Today Mira also created a gift which I loved. She bought a gingerbread man (or woman or person?) cookie cutter. She put together all the dry ingredients together in a jar, printed out the recipe on a card and attached it along with the cookie cutter to the jar of dry ingredients. It was like a packaged cake mix all ready to go. I started to think of other recipes that you could do something similar to this. I’ll have to tuck that away for next year.

Christmas is almost upon us and another year of pre-Christmas frenzy will come to an end. When I’m surrounded by family in a few days none of this will matter and with some luck I’ll have another chance to be more organised next year.

Manifesto
05. Every day is now. The present moment.
11. Every day do something for someone else.
16. Every day looking at the order of things gives you power.

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.
–Thomas Edison

In our home we don’t say, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” even though I always try to have some apples in our fruit bowl. Instead we prescribe to the powers of a different fruit. In our home the saying is, “A banana a day keeps the doctor away!”

My husband Lynsey thinks bananas are a wonder product and slowly I have come to realise the same thing.  Check this out …

Bananas contain three natural sugars – sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fibre.

A banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy. Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout.

Bananas can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet.

[Check this one out - this is for all my Wellington friends who are waiting for summer to show her face and who are struggling with the longest winter ever] … Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Bananas can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer tryptophan.

When you compare a banana to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals.

It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around.

Source: A banana a day? from the vitalhealthnews.org web site

Every morning as we’re getting ready for work Lynsey asks me if I’d like a banana – his secret pick me up treat when the energy levels start to flag during the day.  Sometimes he doesn’t even ask me if I want one, he just pops one in my bag and I find it in there when I get to work.

I dutifully place the banana on my desk but often I forget to eat it. If this happens a few days in a row I end up with a pile of bananas on my desk, slowly going brown with each passing day. The other problem I have is I only like eating firm bananas which are not too ripe so once they go beyond that point I am not interested in eating them anyway.

One morning I walked into work and a colleague (a Pacific Islander who likes her bananas very, very ripe) turned around to face me and started to apologise for having eaten one of my brown bananas. I was relieved, she felt guilty. “Please eat them all,” was my response. She was surprised.

From that day on I would walk into work every morning, head over to my colleague’s desk and hand her my banana. It became a daily ritual. When Lynsey realised what I was doing he started to give me two bananas to take in to work – one for her and one for me.

My colleague began to call Lynsey her “banana man”. He faithfully supplied her daily fix and I was his carrier.

When I resigned from that job my colleague was devastated. “Who’s going to give me my bananas?” she asked.

My new job was working for another are within the same organisation. So if I see a browning banana, or two, sitting on my desk I’ll go and seek out my former colleague to give them to her. However, this is happening less often these days because I am now eating my bananas. I simply make sure the bananas don’t get a chance to go brown.

As I spotted two browning bananas in the fruit bowl today at home I smiled and thought of my colleague. She is not around, so these two beauties are destined to become either banana cake or banana and blueberry muffins.

Into the kitchen I go …

Manifesto
19. Every day make time for yourself.
29. Every day eat, drink, rest, work, exercise, play, love, create for your own good. And the good of others.
45. Every day you are a different person.

Ten things I know about lemons are:

1. They’re yellow which reminds me of the sunshine and always makes me smile.
2. They are acidic – some varieties are more so than others. Lemonade lemons are the best. You can eat them like an orange. They are tangy but have a sweetness and freshness about them that is quite unique. We are trying to grow a lemonade lemon tree in our garden – a slow process but things are happening.
3. Lemon juice can stop fruits like apples and avocados from going brown.
4. Lemon juice can be used to stop bee stings from itching.
5. To remove the smell of onions or garlic from your hands, rub them with lemon and then rinse.
6. Lemons are a rich source of vitamin C.
7. Starting the day with lemon water gets the metabolism going.
8. Lemons are great in baking and cooking – Lemon and ginger cake; Rossi’s lemon muffins; lemon meringue pie; lemon slice; lemon icing on banana cake;  mum’s lemon honey; lemon marmalade; lemon sorbet; Danish lemon pudding; lemon chicken; lemon with fish and other seafood – I could go on endlessly with personal and family favourites.
9. Lemons make fantastic drinks and garnishes in drinks – lemon barley water; brandy, ginger ale and lemon; gin and tonic with lemon; lemon, honey and ginger; lemon tea; lemon balm and lemon verbena herb teas with slices of lemon.
10. Nothing beats a real lemon. ‘Lab’ lemon is not the same (or even similar).

Let’s face it, lemons are wonder products and there is nothing quite the same as going into your own garden and picking them fresh off the tree.

Manifesto
14. Every day the ordinary can be the extraordinary.
30. Every day use all your senses. Touch. Smell. Taste. Hear. See.
33. Every day try something new.

Today is eDay, a recycling event which enables us to get rid of all our electronic waste in an environmentally sustainable way. We decided to take advantage of this opportunity this year, so this afternoon we headed down to the Westpac Stadium to hand over those old computers, cables and associated paraphernalia that had outlived their usefulness to us. The scary thing is that we know there is sill a lot more of it lurking around in our garage but we weren’t organised enough to have it all ready to go today. Oh well, there is always next year I suppose!

As we were driving back home we were planning what we would cook for our evening meal. Lynsey and I both love to cook. In fact we make quite a formidable team in the kitchen. My thoughts were however diverted by a more pressing need, the need for a cup of coffee. I definitely needed my mid-afternoon caffeine fix sooner rather than later.

While thinking about coffee another idea popped into my head.

“How about you make some scones when we get home? You haven’t made them in a while.”  Lynsey makes great scones. He uses his mother’s recipe and she has taught him all her tricks for ensuring a perfect batch every time. Each of us has our signature strengths when it comes to cooking and scones are definitely one of Lynsey’s, along with many other things.

“Sure,” he replied. “Only I don’t think we have any self raising flour left.”

“Not a problem,” was my quick response. “Let’s go to the supermarket now and I’ll run in and get some. It won’t go to waste if we already have some at home.”

By this stage I was determined nothing was going to stand in the way of me having my afternoon coffee with one of Lynsey’s scones. Guess what I was doing some 30 minutes later?

Did I mention that Lynsey also has a passion for making fruit jellies?  Today we were treated to his divine quince jelly with our scones.

Afternoon tea at our place was perfect. As Nina Simone sings so beautifully, my baby just cares for me. I am so incredibly blessed.

Manifesto
05. Every day is now. The present moment.
11. Every day do something for someone else.
15. Every day make a difference to yourself and others.