Coconut Ice Cream with Candied Hibiscus Flowers

 

The year is 2020, but in many ways it feels like I imagine what 1850 was.

The family Jeep takes the place of a covered wagon, piled high with essentials like food and dried beans, and cherished possessions like favorite toys, books, fishing gear, my great grandmother’s silver.

This time, the destination is not west, specifically. We are mandated to shelter-in-place with the exception of executing critical activities. Every time we walk out the door of our downtown apartment, masked and gloved like forensic bandits, I fear. It is nearly impossible to maintain 6 feet of distance. First they close the pool, the gym, then the garden level of the apartment. Quickly our outdoor space diminishes to a scant 4 feet by 20 feet outdoor space, our balcony. Oh, the gratitude I feel for that balcony! I am even more grateful for friends to whom we wave out the window. We leave each other signs,

We love you.

Hope.

When my daughter Townes was a newborn I would rock her, day and night, and often I too would weep. I would weep out of joy for this precious new life, out of sorrow for missing my old life, out of gratitude for an army of angel warriors, out of inexplicable exhaustion, out of unconditional love. Also, the hormones. Always, the hormones.

Fast forward a couple years, in a downtown Denver high rise instead of a house in South Austin, I was rocking in the same chair, but this time I begged to be left alone. Two little yellow daffodils we planted months ago with friends bowed in the breeze from the inaccessible garden below. Yellow flowers, my God sign, hope. Look, don’t touch.

Tears streamed down my face as I gazed longingly toward all the little grids of windows outside my own, people in apartments just like me, many feeling just like me. Joy for this precious life. Sorrow for missing my old life. Gratitude for an army of angel warriors. Inexplicable (emotional) exhaustion. Unconditional love. And hormones, always hormones.

But alone, together.

Collective suffering.

Collective yearning.

Collective hope.

From the outset, I was as concerned about the concomitant mental illness pandemic as the actual Covid-19 pandemic. With significant histories of mental health and addiction issues, I grew increasingly concerned for my family, who relied on nature for a lot of our healing. It became clear to me that we had a critical activity to execute: leave. And don’t stop anywhere until we get to another place where we can isolate completely. We would not risk being patient 0 in a small, rural community.

And so, we have been here, on miles upon miles of lush Texas land, completely isolated, for 5 days now. While we brought some food with us, I wanted to hold off going into a grocery store, so we have been doing a bit of living off the land. It may sound whimsical, native and adventurous. It is. I spend hours researching native plants like evening primrose, ways to cook nopales, how to skin a turkey.

But let me tell you, easy it is not. I have a newfound admiration for all of the blood, sweat, tears and ingenuity of our ancestors, who gifted us the ease of walking across the street for a gallon of organic milk and every kind of fresh, unmarred fruit and vegetable under the sun.

But in many ways, I am done with it. I am done with taking it all for granted. I am done with the fast, unconscious, disconnected, frenzied manner of overconsumption and unfulfillment. I want to slow down, read a story, tell a story, hear a story.

I’m reading children’s books like The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and classics like Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Mother Earth is begging for us to slow down and listen to her story: warm spring breezes breathing ripples over swaths of green grass, urging the oaks to billow and bow, inflating the larks’ lungs with cheerful melodies.

Yesterday Townes, with ice cream dripping from her perfect porcelain chin (hence the recipe) looked at me and proclaimed,

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Townes…”

Fighting the urge to inquire about what happened next, “What a beautiful, true beginning!” I exclaim. Her story has endless possibilities, I think to myself.

Maybe mine does, too.