At a show on Saturday night, a friend reached across a seat to shake my hand and I instantly said “Peace be with you.” His gesture and posture and my need to turn around in my seat to connect, took me back to all those Catholic masses my mom had made me attend as a kid. The “Rites of Peace '' — when we shook the hands of the people sitting around us in church accompanied by a “peace be with you” — were in the script, right before communion. I didn’t know I’d internalized it, though I’m glad I did. On Saturday, safe in California, I hadn’t yet fully absorbed the gravity of what had happened in Israel, but if there’s anything we need to be reminded of, it's the promise and possibility of peace.
As the week has gone by, I’ve doubly appreciated the daily prayers for peace that are built into so many cultures. “Aloha” translates into a broad wish to “respect and love one another, and live in harmony with everything around you.” The Hebrew word for peace ‘Shalom’ is a salutation. In Nichiren Buddhism, four daily prayers include one “for peace throughout the world and for the happiness of all humanity.”
I’ve also gotten quiet, my reaction to all the acrimony, misinformation and plain grief that’s been ping-ponging across the globe since Saturday’s horrific events. And anxious.
I haven't made cookies in years but the anxiety wave led me to the kitchen. While I creamed butter and sugar, eggs and vanilla, I thought of how wars of various kinds have been a constant of so many cultures, including my own, as much as the accompanying wishes for peace. I thought of how in the wake of WW1, my grandparents left the Adriatic coast by boat then train to finally resettle in the sliver of similar Mediterranean climate on the west coast of California. How no one wants to leave a home unless its untenable. How my grandfather had a quick temper — and likely a lot of untreated PTSD — but by the time I was born, after years of eking out a living, had found a peaceful existence on a San Mateo hilltop. How Nana grew vegetables, cheerfully walked up and down a steep hill to get to the grocery store, and always had some sort of buttery, sugar-dusted cookie to offer us when we visited.
My own ruminative baking efforts turned out pretty well. Gluten-free, chocolate-walnut, informed as much by California winters as Croatian grandmas and definitely homey.
Meanwhile, bird migration has been at peak for all sorts of species, from raptors to warblers, moving around the globe despite borders and strife. I’ve been keeping an eye out for who’s turning up in my neighborhood as much as I’ve been keeping up with the hawk migration. This past week, the Golden-crowned Sparrows and Yellow-rumped Warblers have arrived in Alameda. Both birds are quite audible, calling and singing their way through the shrubs and street trees, reminding me of how sound is as much a cue to memory as gesture and smell. In particular, the sound of the Golden-crowned Sparrows , a bird who summers in Alaska and Canada, and winters along the Pacific Coast. Their call, described as “melancholy” or as sounding like a person saying “oh dear me,” instantly takes me back to my early years in Corralitos. I hear that sound and I think of long-ago cool winters and wood smoke, my dad checking the barometer and making sure there was enough kindling for the fireplace. “Oh-dear-me….”
If you’re reading this, know I’m wishing you, and all humanity, peace.