“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” –The Little Prince

Greetings Dear Ones!

Those of you who were there know this is a True Story:

Once upon a recent fiddle camp, a known chaos addict entered a walk-in fridge and could not find the potatoes. She searched high. She searched low. She couldn’t find them. She left the fridge and went elsewhere to search. Along the way, she got distracted and made four batches of scones. Then she remembered she was looking for potatoes. She searched the walk-in pantry. She checked the ovens. She got involved in making coffee, even though that was not her job. She cut up some fruit and made some porridge oats. Helpers turned up to help and she kept asking them to find the potatoes, hoping fresh eyes could find what hers could not.

“What are we looking for?” they asked. She showed them what an empty hotel pan looks like.

“You are looking for this, only full of last night’s dinner’s roasted potatoes,” she said.

“Ok,” they said and began checking all the places she had already checked. They came back and likewise admitted defeat.

At this news, she had twin responses: on the one hand, she felt Validated. She was gratified to find that she was not alone in her ability to somehow overlook a full hotel pan of roasted potatoes. On the other hand, she began to panic. What if someone had thrown them away? What if the late-night jammers had accidentally eaten them as a midnight snack? Who would do that? Who could just mindlessly eat a tray of cold potatoes? (Her inner potato gobbler admitted she could. She scanned a mental dossier of potential criminals and realized that of all the people at that camp, she would be voted most likely to chow down on a pan of cooling potatoes, especially those salty, crispy ones…) But it hadn’t been her. So whom? Seriously… (angry inner teenager stamps her foot) How could they DO this to her? Didn’t they know she had deliberately cooked an extra thirty pounds of potatoes so that they could have hash-browns for breakfast?? Those rats! (She has never truly forgiven them for the time, years ago, when they ate 20 quarts of homemade chili, chili intended to feed 84 people lunch the next day, as a bedtime “snack” …)

She realized she was in the five stages of grief around these potatoes. She had moved swiftly from denial/disbelief, to hope/bargaining (that others could save her and find them for her), to anger/blame (lashing out at those greedy jammers!), and now, there was nothing left to do but be depressed until Acceptance set in.

She scrambled eggs, chopped fruit, and listlessly bossed her helpers around as nicely as she could manage in her depressed and distracted state. People she had not seen in years came to help or visit and told her about their lives and pets and Covid sagas and through it all, she nodded, smiled emptily, and wondered where the potatoes had gone. As masked folk chopped and chatted all around her, she went secretly completely mad. She returned again and again to the walk-in fridge, hoping to find the tray of missing potatoes. She checked the shelves on the other side of the fridge, shelves that were not allocated to their camp, just in case they had been put there by accident. No. She trotted circles between the pantry and the fridge, repeatedly checking the same places, hoping to have a new result. (Insanity!) She kept opening and slamming shut the oven doors. She wondered if there is a 12-step program available for people whose lives become unmanageable because they cannot find potatoes.

Breakfast came and went. They served the porridge, fruit, sausage and eggs. There were no home fries or hash-browns. No one cared. But she could not forget. Something had happened to the potatoes… As some of the younger late-nighters stumbled through the buffet line, she began interrogating them.

“Did you eat potatoes last night after I left the kitchen?”

“What? No.”

“What happened to the trays of potatoes I left on the counter?”

“Huh? I don’t know…”

They all had the same look of bleary-eyed innocence and confusion but she was determined to get to the bottom of this nightshade crime.

“Did you at any time witness anyone else eating potatoes without authorization last night???” Her voice became slightly shriller as one by one they backed away from her slowly and reached for the nearest fork or coffee cup.

Thirty pounds of potatoes don’t just vanish into thin air, do they?

It wasn’t until after lunch, when afternoon classes had started, that she thought to ask one of the extremely capable and sensible young women who had been helping her all the previous day, if she knew where the potatoes had gone.
“Yes, certainly!” she replied. She put down her fiddle and headed straight to the walk-in fridge.

“We put them all in here,” she said.

“That’s what I thought you would do,” admitted the crazy person. “But they are gone! Someone must have taken them… But who???”

“Are they not here?” asked the extremely capable and sensible young woman, opening the door and pointing to the stacks of tiny plastic boxes clearly marked in bold print: ‘POTATOES’. See? Here they are!”

It’s a damn good thing the crazy lady was wearing a mask, or her jaw might have hit the floor.

“But…. But… I was looking for a hotel pan…” she mumbled, as realization began to dawn on her. “We all were. I told everyone who looked to search for a hotel pan. I’m such a visually oriented person; I could not imagine looking for anything other than a big, greasy hotel pan.”

“Oh!” she said brightly. “That looked like it needed to be cleaned, so we stored all the potatoes in these containers and cleaned it and put it away.”

The crazy lady with tufts of red hair squirming out from under her black hat stood rooted to the spot. She had just been struck by a bolt of lightning. Actually, she had just been stunned by an enormous, life-changing epiphany. You all know the word epiphany—it comes from an ancient Greek word that means ‘here are the potatoes.’ (Actually, it means reveal.) For the student who claims everything and everyone is her teacher, this was a huge lesson.

What else am I also NOT seeing around me? She wondered. She had spent most of the weekend misplacing things, trying to “get organized,” trying to create and maintain a system while running herself ragged. Was she even listening to the music? Hearing the stories people were trying to tell her? She realized she was looking without seeing, listening without hearing, tasting without savoring, rushing without actually getting anywhere. She had misplaced so many things, she wasn’t even sure she could find her own bum with both hands.

What is the point of living like this? She raged. She remembered her own private “agreements” and reminded herself to switch from “why me?” to “what if?” and decided to spend the rest of her weekend trying to see the things that were right in front of her, without expecting them to look like something else. When we cannot see what it is we seek to see, a part of us shuts down. We become blind. Welcoming Truth to ourselves involves a daring amount of imagination in order to accept what it is we cannot recognize. So it is with love, with partnerships, with miracles and, it seems, Potatoes.

She remembered the moment her friend Margie, who was dying at the time, woke from a drugged sleep and pointed excitedly towards the Kitchen and announced “The Kingdom of Heaven! Nancy, I’ve seen it. It’s right there!” Yes, yes it is. The Kingdom of Heaven is surely in a kitchen, could we but see it. It’s in a fiddle tune, could we but hear it. It’s in a deep vat of “clean-out-the-fridge curry” could we but taste it. Life is so filled with meaning, joy, and purpose beneath our humble toiling. We are all but pilgrims, distracted by our search for potatoes. Yet, no Peace lies in the future, which is not already here, present yet hidden.

The crazy lady knew she needed to add more love (and garlic) to the food she was co-cooking with her team. She went outside, looked up into a cloudless azure sky aflutter with leaves and birdsong, and whispered to any passing angels who might hear, “please…let me see what needs to be seen; let me feel what needs to be felt; let me hear what needs to be heard; let me love who needs to be loved (especially that troll who barked at me because there wasn’t a non-dairy option available at the tea station!)” A light breeze dried the sweat on her brow. She looked around her and realized that she wasn’t tired any more. The angst that the mystery had caused was no longer weighing on her like an anchor. The burden of feeding ninety-five people nine meals in four days suddenly lifted, was gone.

She realized we don’t need to do anything sensational in order to love people. They can be nourished on more than potatoes. We can be totally refueled by Sympathy, Understanding, and Compassion (although some, apparently, will cease functioning without non-dairy creamer…)

She went back inside and observed the bustling kitchen. Suddenly, she saw a young man who was quietly scouring all the pots so that his friends who were on dish duty later wouldn’t get so bombed out with work that they might miss the ceilidh.

Suddenly, she saw a young woman’s joy at learning to crack eggs one-handed.

She saw the glow in the eyes of a newcomer who felt more comfortable making friends and “doing things” in the kitchen than attending a cocktail party full of strangers in her dorm.

She saw an older man being taught a new tune by a very forgiving, patient younger person.

She saw that cooking together forges unique and primal bonds of fellowship—that the risks, trials, and triumphs are the foundations of meals and memories for years to come.

She saw her teammates entering the kitchen as strangers and leaving as buddies.

And then “She” laughed.

She laughed and laughed, melting and gradually turning into the Me I’d rather be. I’ve changed a lot, thanks to those tatties! I may have lost my mind for a moment, but it helped me find my heart.

Potatoes nourish our bodies, but at the end of the day, what really nourishes our souls is knowing we Belong. We can be trusted. We are loving, loveable, loved and trying to assist each other in ways that may cause confusion but we try anyway. Many of us have struggled over huge mountains of isolation and fear in the past twenty months. There was a bleak veneer of mute suffering over many dear faces I just saw for the first time in two years. We’ve been through a lot. The jam sessions were sobering, intense, and poignant—reminders of how we need to celebrate survival and to heal more.

Healing sometimes means taking an honest look at the role we play in our own suffering. Healing our blindness to What Is is an important step in finding our joy—it’s might not be the One big hotel pan we think it is, but many tiny boxes piled up right under our very (masked) noses.

I know you know this already, Dear Menders. I’m just catching up to you now. Thanks for your Good Work!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy