More Gift Economy

Yesterday was town day for Pete, and Crockpot-filling day for me. We shop every five days or so, and add the post office and re-filling our water bottles on the list of errands. I had a chicken to cut and prepare for the Crockpot. Chicken adobo dinner to share with our friends and neighbors, Jude, Steph and Dan. While Pete did the shopping and errands onions and garlic got chopped and glazed, a whole Three Sisters chicken was cut into pieces, marinated in apple cider vinegar, coconut sugar, coconut aminos, mushroom broth, pepper, bay leaves and late in the cooking all were topped with stewed organic tomatoes. The big enamel pot steaming short grain brown rice was part of the meal, great for soaking up the flavors that remind me of my Filipina aunties.

The very surprising and wonderful thing about stopping at the post office is there are sometimes goodies with our names on them.

Among the many gifts in the boxes was a long string of small globe-lantern lights! With just the simplest of effort, and three push pins from me, Pete strung the vardo with her very first outside Solstice lights. She looks so pretty all lit up. And what a difference it makes when we walk out in the dark at night.

Another gift was tucked into a little packet. Inside was another plain brown paper envelope with inimitable handwriting ... it was something from our friend Liz. 

Yowsers, and Holy Moly. Rhinestones on a safety pin!!! There at her feet in a parking lot."What could I do?" she writes.

You can't make this stuff up (well, maybe you could ... but this is the honest true fact as my parents used to say).

And then as the night slipped into her deep cloak of cover I sent thank you gifts to our friends and family, a short and sweet e-mail showing them the joyful shine of Vardo for Two in her Solstice regalia. "Lights!" In response? Reciprocity. Aloha. 

"Lights welcome back the light," wrote our friend Joan.

From Kane'ohe came "Looks good. Lights out here" with a picture of Mom and swaddled child out for the count. Melts your heart, au'e.

This morning frost and freezing has come to Camp Bamboo. 28 degrees. We'll need to pour rainwater from our rain buckets to flush the toilet, but the little cooking unit will heat up a pan of water, a sprinkle of salt, cups of oats and a spoonful of Astragalus root powder will simmer into a warm nourishing delicious breakfast. We've plenty enough, and grateful to enjoy today's abundance.

Messages of gratitude from our friends and neighbors tell us the food we walked up the hill was "yummy", satisfying a reminiscence for chicken dinners unexpectedly; we have stored the excess of our chicken adobo in the bellies of our sisters and brother. Gift Economy. 

"There is never scarcity, if you share...Without good neighbors you'd be alone, and that's worse." - Robin Wall Kimmerer The Service Berry: An Economy of Abundance