Touch

My husband has been gone for almost a year. It's just the kids, and me. I get to see Sparky in about two weeks, for two weeks. Of course, I'm excited. Nervous, too. It will feel strange, i think, to be touched by somebody other than my kids. My daughter is constantly crawling all over me, cuddling on the sofa, curling herself into the curve of my body when she has a bad dream and comes to sleep with me, hugs from the boy, nudges from the dog when I have something in my hand that she wants. That's about it. I am and always have been, a touchy-feely person. I'm sure it annoys some people, even if all I do is put my hand on their upper arm to emphasize what I'm saying, or to reinforce my sincerity. That's just me.

I've always understood the importance of touch, and valued it, incorrectly sometimes, even. And it's not all about sex. It's about a mental connection that extends into some kind of subconscious understanding. I miss holding his hand, the way he runs his hand down my arm, the soft brush across the back of my neck when he puts his arm around me in church. Touch is a very personal thing. In my relationship, it's many things: acceptance, understanding, as I stated earlier, love, compassion, joy, and of course, desire. I feel bad that I've forgotten what he feels like. How soft his face is right after he shaves, the rough hair on his arm, the warmth of his hands on my shoulders when I'm working at my desk, resting against the solid security of him, while we listen to the Lord's word preached and proclaimed every Sunday, all of it. When I met my husband, he wasn't a "touch" person. His family just wasn't that way. Somehow, after 12 years of marriage, he misses me touching him, and misses touching me, too. Don't get me wrong: The Afghan People are big huggers, and I mean BIG. But it's always men, and it makes him uncomfortable, and besides, I smell way better then they do.

The way I touch my daughter has caught my attention, too. I stroke her long hair as she sits on my lap, I feel her soft cheek against my own , and tell her how much I love her, holding her tiny hand when we cross the street or parking lot, gently examining ber "boo-boo" when she comes to me after she has hurt herself, brushing her hair, trying not to pull to hard when I find a tangle, rubbing her with lotion after her bath, to keep her skin from becoming itchy.

It's trickier with the boy. He still likes his hugs, but not in front of people. And he usually pulls away when I ruffle his hair or give his shoulder a gentle squeeze. Stinker..... :)

I try to touch with love, even when I am meting out deserved discipline. And to some degree, I know that I am successful: I see it mirrored in the way my daughter plays with her own dolly, pretending to be its mommy, or watching the boy with her, when he is teaching her how to do something. I also feel it in the way my kids touch me. My daughter cups my face in her little hand, mimicking me, and the boy pats me on the back every now and then.

All of this tells me how much touch means to me, and to my family. It's funny how something so simple can be so complicated at times, but also how fulfilling it can be.

I miss that from my husband the most. I don't know how I'm going to let go of him long enough to drive to the time share we are staying in for those two weeks, and how I'm going to put him on a plane at the end of those two weeks, knowing that he will be home four months after that.
After all of that, I can hardly wait......

The politics of shopping

Politics and shopping...ne'er the twain shall meet, at least you'd think so.

I happen to disagree, and here's why:

OK, a flat screen TV at Costco is from $2-5,000. A pair of Prada heels goes for more than $850 at Saks' Fifth Avenue. You can buy $200 tee-shirts, $400 pairs of jeans, $3,000 dresses, $200 iPhones, the list goes on and on.

So, why do we balk at a $300 grocery bill? A family of four can eat at Applebee's for about $50. You can eat at home for almost a week with that much money, if you break down the cost of each ingredient at an incremental level. All of civilized America and Europe pays an endless amount of money for clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup: material possessions, all. But we don't like to pay for groceries. And organic? Who can afford it?

But how can we afford not to? If you ever wonder how your dinner gets to your plate, watch Food, inc., or read any number of expose books on the subject. One of the things you'll learn is there is very little regulation, and that labeling is a joke. USDA Certified Organic means about as much as "The check's in the mail". A handful of companies have complete control over what we eat, how it's processed, and what we pay for it. What you don't see behind the smiling artifice of TV and print commercials should be enough to scare all of us into buying everything we eat at the local co-op. The brutality of the meat for food business (and not just the animals are needlessly brutalized) This is the main reason I am a vegetarian. I really can't walk past the chicken case at the grocery store and not wonder if that poor animal was still alive when it was dumped into the scalding tank, to make its feathers come out easier. I know God gave us meat to eat, but He couldn't have meant for it to happen this way. We have a responsibility to treat lesser creatures than us in a humane manner, or we risk our very own morality and humanity.

So, yes, you can make a political statement by your choice of store. If enough people forsake their local Safeway or Albertson's for the store that sells organic and safely produced foods, that tells the politicians in DC that we as a people don't care for their relationship with the owners of "big food". (Tyson, Monsanto, etc.)

The catch is that we have to work a bit harder at keeping our food, and buy more often. Organic fruits and vegetables have not been sprayed with nasty chemicals, nor has the soil been treated with anything that was made in a factory by a chemist. The apples aren't as pretty, the oranges spoil a bit faster, as does everything else that hasn't been inundated within an inch of its life with chemicals. If we can make that adjustment, our bodies will feel better, and mass producers will have to figure out a safer way to sell their wares. This will also mean eating food that's actually in season, not imported from Chile or Argentina, where food standards will never be as demanding as America's admittedly flawed regulations. Is that so bad?

I'll never understand why we spend thousands on what we put on our bodies, but complain about what we have to spend to put in them. If we don't keep the inside working and fed properly, then eventually it will find its way to the outside, something we are all so concerned with.

Think about. Join your local Co-op. Find a CSA, and pay into it. Grow you own food, if you can. The things we harvest from our own soil tastes 100 times better than anything we can buy n the store.

Try it and see! ;)