Perspective / Reflections – Frozen Spaghetti

It’s about 6:38a on a Friday morning. I am in a hybrid of my post St. Croix morning routine (sun before screens / OMs and breathwork first thing / protein as king). It’s a little bit different as I am not walking the dogs today, or until their new harnesses come in, really.

David leaves this morning for some time down in Alabama. Once he returns, we have no travel scheduled until October – outside of some college move in dates. Three in college this year. We are here.

I don’t know if it was that thought of arrival into this chapter where the majority of our 5 kids were post high school or something else, but I found myself staring off thinking about Frozen Spaghetti. Imagining my 8th grade self finishing up her autobiography (a final project for our lit class) and coming up with a name. “Frozen Spaghetti”. And there you go – typed it on the word processor and the rest is history.

A little over ten years later, somebody asked me if I was a writer (I was writing in a moleskine on a beach) and I almost said “no, not really”. But I was a writer. I wrote all the time. So I returned home from that trip and started a blog… what should I name it?

Frozen Spaghetti.

In reflection, I understand the depth behind the name. At the time I wrote the autobiography, 1994-1995, my dad had just had a heart attack. Life changed tremendously – I remember being told that morning we weren’t going to school / would be late. I remember a lot of casseroles. I remember a box of movies being dropped off at the house with some in there that we would have NEVER been allowed to rent from Blockbuster.

It’s not new to me that Frozen Spaghetti was a nod to my mom’s resourcefulness for 5 kids and a traveling preacher husband. Big batches of homemade sauce, thawed out for a convenient homemade dinner on a busy night. Intention behind efficiency. A short cut, the long way.

But it is actually new in this moment that I thought to name Frozen Spaghetti the year after my dad’s heart attack when he was in his recovery phase, walking one lap around the dining room table to start exercising meaningfully. (He would eventually get up to power walking 5 miles a day.)

It makes me wonder just how much frozen spaghetti we were having, and it makes me feel more tender and supportive of my mom. How exhausting, really. But how exhaustion can be kind of sweet when you are doing all the things from scratch, with your grandmother’s recipe and great-grandmother’s bowl.

Looking at my era ahead with the majority of kids in college, the business growing, the upcoming travel and recording / writing projects… I am thankful for the reminder to be resourceful, to make something out of nothing, to save a little of the good sauce for a rainy day and to bring through to the present moment, gifts from my ancestors – traits from my matriarchal line, to help me see it through.

What can you remember to pull into your present moment today that connects you and resources you from your lineage?

Just a few moments ago, I wrote on a blank sheet of paper:

“How present can I even be?”

A notion that occurred to me as I found myself – for mauybe the second or third times today, looking for a thread. The things in our heads: financials, plans, tasks, stuff to do, stuff to buy, stuff to search, things to consider… they are….

things.

And here I am wondering – in a world of things, how do I look for threads?

Little relationships between a moment and my awareness. The kind of thing that makes colors pop, necklaces seredepitious and plants look like they knew you in a former life.

In moments today where I found myself thinking a little bit over lot, I asked myself: do you see a thread?

And I would move to outside. I would go look at the plants. I would take my shoes off. I would consider the cat.

…..back to the present: the cloud almost looks like it is turning circles as it changes in front of my eyes: either a darker part of its past has come forward (fitting lol) or conditions have created it to come to be. Either way… it is different than when I first wrote the title of this post on Frozen Spaghetti… guess you’ll have to believe me.

I am listing to a new favorite artist Hermanos Gutiérrez (been following for months… year(s)?)

My bedtime reminder just went off (it is 8:14pm cst) but the USA v Belgium is on and it is the top of the second half. I have payroll to do, schedules to update, invoices to send, college orientations to drive to, dogs to walk (things) and what has really gotten me curious is the riddle of it all. The simple humor of surrender – “this is what it is” kind of thing…

It’s about ten minutes later than that last paragraph… Belgium just scored its third goal and I can’t tell if it would be better for me to just check out or further dial in. The cloud is now completely gone and I am back to wondering how present I can be… back to looking for threads.

The way threads were described to me (by the way I am not looking at the computer so there may be typos, you will have to deal…)

The way threads were described to me was like to consider a time or times you felt the most alive – you had an experience of a thread. I thought of this day I was in Sedona, playing on BellRock, looking for a hiking hankie I left there a few days prior – it was a light misty rain – the grey sky and the red rocks were insane – the green greens felt like B1w shots to my soul and I. was. alive. I was laughing. I was skipping. I was slidding. I was feeling the cool rock in my warm jacket with a curiosity of a new born puppy opening its eyes and seeing grass, flours and milk. I was joyful. I was experiencing a thread.

But it had me thinking today – threads… if they are really reminders of the big woven universe – the cosmic connection – then… why would we ever not have that experience of a thread available to us?

What if threads were always and everywhere and it was our trained and faithful awareness looking for the feeling of aliveness… where green greens are one thing but black blacks and brown browns are just as capable of making you feel your experience as *a human freaking being* like the yellow suns and orange oranges.

Life… is a thread hunt.

A thread search.

A thread invitation.

A seeking out of the living and alive – the nourishing and the heart breaking truths that bring us into the present in a way that… well… saves our lives.

On that note – I also gave blood today and you should too.

OK. Decided to dial in. GO USA 🇺🇸 ⚽️ ❤️