Acts of Kindness

I often wonder how our goat is doing, and more importantly, how the family that heifer.org picked to give it to is doing.

Six years ago, my kids opened a beautiful card provided by the non-profit organization that announced their Christmas gift from me that year was a goat that would be given to a needy family in a developing country. It was somewhat anti-climatic given the array of electronic gadgets, chocolates, and power tools that littered the floor around the illuminated fraser fir that morning but I’d like to think that someday the memory will resonate in their minds when they consider how fortunate our family is.

At the time, it took some research to determine which charity tried to do the most with its donations but since then, MoneySense magazine began publishing an annual report that grades charitable organizations in Canada based on various criteria, and although no charity is perfect, some high-profile organizations didn’t fare well (see charitynavigator.org for American charities). Knowing where your fundraising dollars are going is just as important as knowing where your other purchasing dollars are going and some charities need to be held more accountable for the administrative or advertising costs spent on paying CEOs, airing commercials, and running lotteries rather than spending that money on the cause. I am suspicious of corporations trying to embed themselves in our “helping” culture: breast cancer pink symbols on every product imaginable or spending more money telling us how generous they are than the actual amount of the donation. I would also encourage primary schools to consider supporting a wider variety of charities instead of same ones every year, possibly something related directly to children their own age. Since I cannot control where my donation dollar goes, I would rather volunteer my time, or give our winter coats, or fundraise for events which are local. Again, this falls under my parenting philosophy: be well-informed in order to make better decisions; don’t let someone else shape your opinions, get involved and learn the facts. Okay, so I’m not the fun parent in this family.

I do gripe about how I managed to raise two ungrateful children but in reality, I think some messages have sunk in. Let me take a moment to say that I’m a proud parent of kids who are peer mediators, who attend leadership conferences, who receive school board awards for participating in the Gay-Straight Alliance to prevent bullying, who volunteer for VIP programs for drug awareness and reading programs at the library, and who take part in their school Me to We and Students Making a Change clubs which participate in good works such as Halloween for Hunger, flash mobs to collect canned food, bake sales to fundraise for mosquito nets, and the annual Me to We day to raise awareness for Free the Children while becoming better citizens both locally and globally.

The world has its problems, and the thought of how much help is needed can be overwhelming but I hope the lesson learned for my kids is how small acts of kindness add up to make a big difference, not just at Christmas but throughout the year.

What Goes In

I couldn’t imagine killing a wild boar in order to feed myself but ever since reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma a few years ago, I've seen this form of hunting in a different light. This month’s Utne Reader excerpted an article from the newsletter Counterpunch which asked progressives in the U.S. to consider the fact that some rural people fear gun restrictions because they need to hunt for food to feed their families in lean months. And I recognize that as a meat and fish eater, an animal had to die for me but being so far removed from that process of the food chain, this point is easy to overlook.
I’ve thought about all food sources differently since reading Michael Pollan’s books, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and Paul Roberts’ The End of Food, among others. However, fresh baked bread was always calling my name so I figured, even with this newly acquired knowledge of how food gets to my plate, as long as I was consciously choosing ingredients, I could sustain myself without feeling too guilty, or nauseous.

I was all over transfat-free foods long ago and, much to the chagrin of some un-named members of my family who didn’t understand why I chose to interfere with their enjoyment of processed cheese or artificial flavour, I have always restricted certain foods from our household. I’ve made the effort to source local meat, eggs, and greens that are organic or naturally-grown, eat in-season while shopping at farmers’ markets, and support manufacturers of organic and natural products at the store. I buy organic fair-trade coffee beans, refuse to buy garlic grown in China, and try to grow vegetables in pots on my deck in the part shade (to no avail). My next goal is to join a farm co-op where they deliver various vegetables to your door, and maybe then I’ll finally figure out what Swiss chard is.

The biggest change in the kinds of food I was eating happened more recently because I was fed up with a digestive system that was ruling my life and finally found out what was causing all the problems. After months of research, I came across the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which, in simple terms, explains how certain foods are harder to digest so once I eliminated those foods, I felt more like myself again. Unfortunately, the so-called illegal list consists of my four favourite food groups—pasta, bread, pizza, and chocolate. To be more specific, if I want to feel well, I can’t have any grains, lactose, sugar, or starch.

In order to broaden my meal choices, I’ve had to adapt recipes, make my own yogurt, mayonnaise, sauces, dressings, and bake using walnut flour and almond flour (an expensive commodity, and if I were a betting person, I suspect more people will eat this way in the future so we should all invest in the lucrative almond market right now). What I can eat are fruits and vegetables (except potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn), seeds and nuts, including peanut butter, lactose-free cheeses and dairy, butter, certain beans, unprocessed meats, eggs, fish, coffee, very dry red wine, and, although no pigs will be harmed by my own hand, a few pieces of crisp, naturally seasoned bacon are permitted. The only sweetener on the allowable list is honey and I keep a jug of it big enough to feed an army; that’s when my family knew I was going whole-hog with this lifestyle change.

After a time, you can slowly introduce more things back into your diet and see if your body chemistry has adjusted itself enough to digest these foods again without unpleasant symptoms. That’s the stage I’m at now and knowing how to help myself means I feel I have control over my well-being again. I would recommend this diet change to anyone experiencing digestive upset, insulin-resistance, or general lethargy because it's the foods in our typical North American diet that may be part of the problem.

We often take food for granted, especially because hunger is a strong instinct, but food has a chemical make-up and its sources have an impact on people and our environment therefore I want to stay aware of what goes in and where it comes from.

Smart Cookies

Have you ever put your shoes on the wrong feet by accident? It takes less than a second for your brain to register a malfunction and alert you to the fact that you’re not paying attention. Your brain is like a computer program that uses cookies to collect information unbeknownst to you. This subconscious data-gathering usually isn’t noticed until something goes awry, such as when you get a cavity filled at the dentist; your tongue has a map of your mouth and when this anomaly shows up, it grabs your attention for a couple days until this new bump assimilates in your brain. Speaking of getting used to new bumps, we’ve finally said goodbye to the original blue bathroom fixtures in our guest bath but I must say, they knew how to design a comfortable toilet seat back in 1960. Our new toilet lid will softly close by itself and you don’t need to workout in order lift it like our hefty blue one but getting used to the feel of the new seat will take some time, and a few new brain cookies.

I also find it interesting how vivid a first impression can be when you’re in a new space or driving through an unfamiliar town, until you spend enough time there and these images become glossed over. Even things which were once annoying or ugly will blend into their surroundings after time and are no longer noticeable. Your mind is still processing these feelings but you have become unaware of it. For instance, I’ve recently spent hours stripping the paint off our hallway door trims. As the old layers were scraped off to reveal the grains of old-growth maple, a weight was lifted off my mind as the visible reminder of previous owners disappeared. It was hard work but I am rewarded on a constant basis because I pass through this section of the house countless times in a day and not only do I feel better about correcting this erroneous decorating decision but there are no lingering negative thoughts toward past occupants of my home (or maybe just less negative thoughts until that purple carpeting is removed from our bedroom, and their bad tile job is replaced in the foyer, and well, we have a ways to go, but we’ll get there, eventually).

One thing my brain loves is to see everything looking neat and tidy in its place and I feel a strong compulsion to correct anything out of order. Also, I often get mixed up when I go to get something where it’s always been even though I know it is somewhere else because I just moved it. And more than once a day, I will walk into a room and completely forget what I was there for and have to backtrack my steps until I figure out what prompted me into action. Apparently my cookies aren’t what they used to be, although, I’ve never had a good short term memory. I think it’s because my brain is too full of important facts to worry about retaining information used only for mundane daily activities. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I don't worry that I’m not hardwired to remember everything. And I don’t know about you but I’m grateful I can’t recall every sad story or disturbing picture I’ve ever seen and I can honestly say that I forgive and forget because I really don’t remember what happened or what was said. My husband, on the other hand, remembers everything (except what I told him five minutes ago) and doesn’t hesitate to remind me about something foolish I mentioned at one time or another in our twenty years together, long since forgotten, that he will pull out of his bag of tricks in order to push my buttons. As a result of his overconfidence in the memory department, he’s the type of person who sees a product manual as an affront to his masculinity. He gets it set in his mind that he knows exactly how to assemble something and lets himself get to an exasperating level of frustration before the job is done. That’s when I pull out the crisp set of directions still neatly folded in the box and casually point out that he missed Step 4. I’m okay with not understanding how to do everything, that’s what instructions are for, and my brain is full.