ELEVEN

What Nourishes Us

Whatever we put into our bodies, minds, and hearts is what feeds them; but I am not sure that we appreciate the implications of this, and we are often very careless about what we consume. We think, “Oh, it’s just this once,” but these “onces” become habitual and can soon add up to a lifetime of neglect.

Our life depends on the air we breathe, yet we draw air into our lungs without really considering where it is coming from and what it will do to us. We know the difference it makes when the air is crystal clear and we take deep drafts of it as we stride across the fields. We feel invigorated, and everything around us sparkles. Contrast this with how we feel in a stuffy train or office where the air is recycled and who knows when there will be any new oxygen available. The mind becomes dull and the body sluggish. More and more places are suffering from air pollution because neither the authorities nor the population take the consequences of their actions seriously. I was recently in Shanghai, a city of thirteen million with a floating population of another three million itinerant construction workers, and I learned that all the children there are already affected by the polluted quality of the air, caused by heavy traffic.

When I grew up in England, everyone kept their windows open a little, no matter how cold or wet it was. We believed that the way to remain healthy was to keep the air circulating and allow fresh air to enter the house at all times. I still believe this and shut my windows only on those rare days when fierce winds cause grit to accumulate on the windowsills. I can’t honestly say whether it is because I have a strong constitution, I eat a healthy diet, or because the air in my home is always fresh, but I rarely suffer from colds and flu the way other people seem to. In addition to breathing fresh air in our homes, we need to get out every day and walk vigorously, so that our blood doesn’t start to curdle. This will do wonders for our constitution and doesn’t cost nearly as much as membership in a health club.

We also need to be careful what we drink. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that says we should imbibe eight glasses of water a day. Each person needs a different amount of liquid, depending on her or his build and activities. For many years all I drank was three cups of strong coffee a day and perhaps a few mouthfuls of water at lunch, but on reflection I don’t think that this was a very wise habit and I am lucky that my body didn’t rebel. I do know that drinking a great deal of anything during a meal is harmful to the digestion because it dilutes the digestive juices both in our mouths and in our stomachs. I prefer to drink either before or after a meal, and I have found that my system prefers it too. I also drink only when I am thirsty. Whatever your favorite beverage is, take a moment to consider how much of it you drink each day (be honest) and what the cumulative effect of this consumption may be.

A simple and delicious way to eat is to choose food that is as close to its natural state as you can find and then enjoy it without adding or taking anything away from it, that is, without cooking or seasoning. Lanza del Vasto described it as “putting as little space and time as possible between the earth and your mouth.” Choose fruits and vegetables that are fresh and in season and that have not traveled too long or too far before you buy them. If you can discover fruit that has ripened on the tree and was not sprayed in the process, so much the better. Then eat it at its best, with the taste of the sun still there. Resist the temptation to garnish everything, and you will find that an avocado, if it is a good avocado, has a flavor all its own. In fact, each avocado (or apple or apricot) seems to taste completely different from any other you have ever eaten.

From time to time I stock up my shelves with dried herbs; beans in all colors, shapes, and sizes; and a variety of grains, cookies, and crackers. They form a wonderful display in their glass jars, but months go by and I forget to use any of them. What I actually consume are the things in my short-term memory—whatever I have bought in the last few days. I go to the fruit and vegetable market and buy whatever is fresh and firm (beware of produce that is bruised or flabby). I am, after all, the granddaughter of a Covent Garden wholesale fruit and vegetable merchant. I do not buy more than I can use within two or three days because then it will no longer be fresh. This is hard to stick to when I visit a farmers’ market because there is so much wonderful stuff, but you have to be stern with yourself and buy with your head and not your belly. I also find it difficult to restrain myself when it comes to quantities of wondrous-looking fruit and vegetables. When I am putting them into plastic bags, I have to remind myself to buy enough for only one dish. This is particularly hard when I am cooking just for myself. But I believe that it is a crime to take home more than I can use.

When the moment comes to prepare a meal, I look in the refrigerator and see what is there and what combination of foods seems right for the day and hour. This is just the way I choose what to wear in the morning. The resulting meals (and outfits) can be quite stunning if you don’t have preconceived ideas of what goes together and what doesn’t. It is not that I never use cookbooks, but I tend to use them for inspiration rather than information. If I have someone coming to dinner, I occasionally consult a cookbook. I leaf all the way through and always come up with a recipe that includes ingredients that are not in season. This is because we are always attracted by something unavailable (or, at least, I am). Then I try to figure out how I can adapt the recipe I have chosen for ingredients that I can actually find.

Even if you have a large family, try to estimate quantities accurately. Almost everyone would prefer a new dish rather than leftovers day after day. Yes, I know that nowadays there are such things as freezers, and people are always encouraging me to make enough for several meals and tuck portions away in the deep freeze. But psychologically this does not work for me. I just can’t believe that eating food that is canned, bottled, dried, or frozen is as good as eating produce that is only a few hours old. Of course it is possible to survive by eating foods that have had all these things done to them, but over the long haul I suspect that they take their toll. You can also be nourished by foods already prepared and available in stores; however, you will be far more nourished by food you have prepared yourself, and it will also be cheaper and simpler.

I well remember going home to England shortly after I had become a strict vegetarian. My mother had saved the first fruit and vegetables of the season so that she could offer them to me when I visited her, but she had frozen each and every one. I adamantly refused to eat any of them, even though she claimed that they were “freshly frozen.” I have relaxed quite a bit since those days. I am no longer a complete vegetarian, and when I am in someone else’s house, I do my best to eat what is put in front of me. It probably won’t kill me, I may never go to heaven (being a vegetarian is probably not a good enough reason for ending up there), and it is rude and unkind to make a fuss if you are a guest unless the food is going to make you ill.

At one period in my life, I ate everything raw except for bread and cheese, and I also ate only one thing at a time. I shared an apartment in an old Federal house in the Village with two other women, and we would bake our own bread and put an extraordinary selection of fruit, vegetables, cheese, nuts, and honey on the table every day. Whatever we had in the house was offered at every meal. This simple diet is not as boring as it may sound because the variety is constantly changing. Visitors were wide-eyed at the cornucopia.

Each of us would choose what to eat by consulting our stomachs. Generally we carry around some idea about what we would like to eat, but it is often a desire we have been nurturing for some time. If you sit at the table and actually ask your body what it wants, the answer may surprise you. So you might start with some cherries. You would put on your plate only as many cherries as you were sure you could eat. When you had finished them, you could certainly take more or you could move on to something else, but you couldn’t combine foods except with bread, i.e. bread and cheese or bread and honey. This measured way of eating gives your body just what it needs at any given meal, and there are never any leftovers.

Perhaps you are wondering how this works with children? In my house it worked very well. I provided a large selection at every meal, and Adam could pick anything he wanted from what was there. Because everything was already on the table, he was not tempted to ask for something else because he knew we didn’t have it. Children like a choice, just as we all do, and they should be given the freedom to make it. Having in the house only foods I believed would be good for him meant that he exercised his choice from what was available and I never had to say “No.”

Eating like this simplifies life enormously. The food is quick and easy to prepare (most of it just needs washing or arranging on a plate), there are no pots and pans to cope with afterward, and when you rise from the table, you never feel weighed down.

I no longer eat this way (except occasionally when I am lunching at home alone) although I really like it, but if you have never tried it, do experiment with it a little. It really fine-tunes your ability to recognize and respond to what your body actually needs. The way most of us tend to eat is by putting a lot on our plates and confusing our taste buds by putting two or more things in our mouths at the same time. Keep in mind that if fruit and vegetables are not in a good enough condition to eat raw—if they have no taste or are not yet ripe—adorning them with a sauce or adding flavoring other than salt is not going to benefit you or your stomach. Nowadays I cook my vegetables by steaming, stir-frying, or roasting them in the oven with a little olive oil, and I keep the cooking time to a minimum.

I have focused on fruit, vegetables, and grains because they are the foundation of what I eat, but much of what I have said also applies to meat and fish. The principles are what are important here.

One thing that may change your attitude toward food is saying grace. In 1992, Bell Tower published a little book by Marcia and Jack Kelly entitled One Hundred Graces. In the introduction I wrote about the function and nature of mealtime blessings:

Saying grace is an ancient and vital tradition the world over. To begin with, it provides a space, a moment of stillness, in which to relinquish the activities of the day, and allow the mind to settle. Then, as we acknowledge the source of our nourishment, we are filled with astonishment at the generosity of the Creator, with gratitude, and with praise. In bringing the body, mind, and heart together, we come to ourselves, and remember who we are and why we are here. For some families, a meal is the only time everyone is present and so the opportunity to enjoy one another and really celebrate the occasion is not to be lost. For many, a meal is also the only time that there is any memory of the Divine. Saying grace establishes an immediate connection with that memory. In such a moment, when our minds are clear and the truth is reinforced by being sounded aloud, we can dedicate the meal and the strength we receive from it to the service of whoever or whatever is before us.

Once you have the food in front of you (cooked or raw), the next thing is to remember to taste every mouthful; otherwise, it is such a waste. How many times have you wolfed something down because it was your favorite food and realized when your plate was empty that you did not actually taste any of it? So smell it, taste it, chew it, and swallow it only when you are sure you have experienced it.

I am not going to talk about smoking or taking drugs because I have little experience of the former and absolutely none of the latter. I have never found either habit appealing, and I cannot believe that introducing these substances into our bodies can be beneficial in the long run.

During my pregnancy I amassed a few books on child care that I trusted would stand me in good stead for the first few years of my baby’s life. I was ill for most of the nine months and did not feel like focusing on how to cope once the pregnancy was over. Once Adam arrived, there never seemed any time to read, so the books remained almost untouched on my shelf until he grew up. I did consult Dr. Spock once but wasn’t thrilled to discover that he offered three solutions to whatever the problem was. I had been expecting just one foolproof answer, and I never tried Spock again.

However, I got the very best advice one day from a huge black grandmother sitting next to me on the Broadway bus. I don’t know how we got into conversation, but to this day I can hear her telling me that the most important thing you can do for a boy is give him his independence as early as possible. What she said went right in and stayed there.

I wasn’t one of those mothers who fret about their children when they leave them at home with someone else. I stayed home for the first seven weeks, but Neil was out of a job, and, to be honest, I itched to get back to the office. So I started work again quickly. I worked at home three days a week and on the other two days went in to the office from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I found a friend with a small child. She was willing to earn some extra money by coming to my house to look after both her child and my own two days a week, and that left me free for a few hours. It never occurred to me that disaster could strike in my absence, and Adam tended not to notice that I was leaving. I kept up this schedule for a year, but after the first six months, he was so active that it was hard for me to get any work done at home. He wanted to be out in the park running around, and I felt tied to the telephone during office hours.

So then I found a wonderful West Indian woman who had a raft of children of her own. She came to my house every day, enabling me to go back to the office full-time, and Adam would often go home with her for the weekend and sleep in a big bed with several other kids if I had to be away for some reason. People regarded me with some horror, I think, because when I left town, I didn’t call every day to find out how Adam was and speak to him. I reckoned that he was probably fine. If he wasn’t fine, she would let me know. After all, I had left him with a woman I trusted completely. It seemed to me that calling him all the time would remind him of my absence, and he was better off without this thought.

Once I returned to work, the most difficult moment was coming home in the evening. As I walked through the door, both Adam and Miss Grace, our blue-gray Persian cat, would fling themselves at me, wanting both food and affection. There was no chance to sit down for a while and catch my breath. I talked to Ram Dass about this, and he pointed out that I was teaching Adam how to come home and deal with whatever the situation was without missing a beat or losing my temper. This was an important lesson he might not learn during the “quality” time I never seemed to have an opportunity to spend with him.

Just how quickly independence took over became very clear on Adam’s first day at preschool. When I returned from work, I was anxious to know how everything had gone. (You guessed right: I was not one of those mothers who hovered in the wings for the first day. I took him to the front door and simply handed him over with a hug.) So I asked him to tell me what he had done.

“Ate cheese sandwich,” was the only response I got. Because I myself had made this cheese sandwich, his eating it was not a great surprise. I was curious to know about everything else, but he either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me. Perhaps the cheese sandwich was the high point of his day. It was then that I realized that never again would I know what he was up to all day. But he was fine. He was enjoying everything, and now he had lots of company to play with and learn from.

Although motherhood was the most exhausting experience of my life, it was also the most rewarding. The strength of the bond that I felt with Adam was something I had never anticipated. And then there were all those moments that are etched into my memory forever.

I remember him asking me one afternoon when he was a year or so older, “Does God have a birthday every day?”

I wasn’t sure where he had picked up this idea, but I liked it.

“Yes,” I responded. “I think you could say that he does. He creates everything new every day.”

“And does Mrs. God celebrate his birthday with him?” Adam asked next.

God, it seemed, was often on his mind. There was another occasion the same year, when he was six. This time he wanted to know:

“Why didn’t God interfere when they were trying to kill his son?”

“God doesn’t interfere. He just makes the rules and watches to see what happens,” was the best I could manage. (Why didn’t Dr. Spock have some ready answers for this kind of question?)

“I would have interfered,” Adam announced.

“So would I, if someone tried to kill you,” I said.

“It’s a shame Jesus didn’t become an angel before he died,” was his next remark. This was a little bewildering. I wondered where he was going with this one.

“Why do you think he should have become an angel?”

“Because he was such a nice man,” Adam replied. I had never heard Jesus described this way, but it was probably true. Still, I was curious:

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“He always wore a sun on his head,” came the answer.

Finally, there was a conversation about death. I don’t think that any of us are ever ready for this, but we do our best. We were walking down Broadway one day when he asked me what happens when we die.

“No one really knows,” I responded, “but many people believe that first you have a rest with God for a little while and then you come back here and live another life.”

“I’m not coming back,” he announced with some conviction.

“Well, I don’t really think you have a choice,” I offered, no longer certain of my ground.

“You mean I may have to come back, whether I want to or not?” said Adam. And that is where we left it.

It became increasingly clear to me that not only does a baby in the womb use all a mother’s resources—literally feeding on her body—but this process also continues throughout childhood. A mother provides nourishment for her child at every level, whether she is aware of it or not. Some of this food may be good and some not so good, but everything that she thinks, feels, says, and does affects her offspring as well as her. There is no holding any of it back. It is an open system.

When he was about nine years old, he told me that he wanted to come home from school on his own. He felt too old to be met by a baby-sitter every day. I would walk him to school in the morning before I went to work. I would take him as far as Seventy-eighth Street and West End Avenue and watch as he crossed the street and entered the gate of Collegiate School. In my heart I would say good-bye to him, knowing that there is never any guarantee that we will see our loved ones again, although we always count on doing so.

I was comfortable (well, almost) with the idea of his walking home on his own. I had taught him not just to check the traffic lights before he crossed the street but to watch the eyes of the driver of each car. I explained that some drivers weren’t very awake and you could not always count on the fact that they would obey the lights. But if you observed them carefully, you could easily tell what they were planning to do.

Neil freaked out when I told him that Adam was now making his own way home, but I explained firmly that this was New York and the sooner Adam learned how to be self-reliant the safer he would be.

As it turned out, only one incident occurred on the way home, and it was about a year later. I was very proud of the way Adam handled it. He was walking up Broadway where there were always lots of people, and several boys he did not know jumped him and ran off with his backpack. He chased them down the block and eventually, I think, they abandoned his backpack because it was so heavy. Then he went to the nearest phone and called the police to report what had happened, before walking the rest of the way home.

How we choose to feed our minds is just as important as what we put into our bodies. At every moment of the day we are receiving impressions through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. If we are deprived of these sensations, we start to feel disembodied. So we need to take a fresh look at everything we are inviting into our minds.

It is no secret these days that older people who keep learning new things enjoy themselves and live longer than those who don’t. In addition to stretching the mind with some form of study (it doesn’t have to be something new, but it is good to keep the mind engaged in intellectual pursuit), have a look at the books you read, the art and sculpture you admire, the music you listen to, and so on. Spectator sports such as football and the Internet are fine occasionally, but we need to watch that they do not become a steady diet so that we forget to eat anything else.

On subways and buses when I am forced to share some of the music other people are listening to because their headphones are leaking, I worry about what such an insistent beat and screech is doing to their brains. Some music appeals to our sense of rhythm, some to our emotions, and some to our intelligence, and we need to make sure that none of these three is being starved. There are times when I realize that I have spent too long in front of the computer screen and I am all in my head. This is the moment for me to put on some Cuban music and dance myself loose for a little while, but I wouldn’t dream of listening to this music all the time. There needs to be a balance here as in all things. There are times when I yearn for Mozart or Hildegard of Bingen, and there are times when I don’t.

Again, I am concerned when people I know spend a lot of time watching horror or action movies. I go to the movies to be moved (isn’t that why they are called “movies”?), either to tears or laughter. I don’t want to be shocked or scared for entertainment. There is enough of that in real life.

Then there is conversation. How rare it is these days to participate in a real conversation. So much of what we share with our friends is gossip, complaints, conjecture, or reminiscence, and none of this is nourishing in the least. For three years I hosted a monthly meeting for friends and acquaintances for whom this kind of talk was no longer enough. We gathered together for a couple of hours, beginning with a short meditation and then proceeding to an open discussion of “what really matters.” There was no set theme, no one was in charge, and once someone had begun to speak we all listened carefully without interrupting. The one rule we had was that during this short and precious time we wouldn’t talk of anything else. Just once a month we attempted to devote at least two hours to speaking the truth.

We all need good company, friends we can depend on for spiritual sustenance. It is not always possible to meet on a regular basis the way we did, but everyone needs friends and relations who will always be there for them and vice versa.

Each day it is good to set aside some time for nourishing the body with exercise, the mind with reading and contemplating scripture or wisdom teachings, and the spirit with some form of devotion such as meditation or prayer. These things are as vital to us as a whole person as those foods with which we choose to feed our bodies. For each person, the timetable for doing this will be different, but I have found that starting the day with yoga before breakfast, and meditation and reading afterward, is a good preparation for everything that lies ahead. Then, again, in the evening, it is good to preface it with more exercise (in my case, tai chi chuan) and meditation so that there is a clear separation from the workday. The quality of what we feed ourselves on every level will manifest itself in our lives and in our relationships with other people.