Breakfast at Grandma G's

I have had many breakfasts at my Grandpa and Grandma Goehring's house but this morning was the first one in a long time and because I don't get to do it very often, it was poignant. Being there overnight reminded me of all the memories of being a kid... talking underneath the pillow with Julie so our parents couldn't hear, Grandma being conscientious about the temperature of our room and what window to open to get the breeze, watching the news before bedtime, the night light on in the bathroom. Actually, hardly any of these things happened last night. But I remembered them and could feel the cool Lodi evening breeze and see the Sacramento 11 o'clock news even though all the windows were shut tight and everyone went straight to bed after fireworks.

My kids were the first ones up this morning and I was shushing them just like my parents shushed me. As usual, Grandpa wasn't around... but instead of the smell of coffee lingering from his early morning pot before he went out to check on the school that he watched over, he was in bed–the last to get up and not the one to make the coffee.

Breakfast was almost the same... eggs cooked in bacon grease, white Wonder bread toast with butter and strawberry freezer jam (the best taste in the world), and a selection of Svenhard's pastries. Grandma with her International Coffee. Afterwards, the storebought cookies came out. This is food I would scorn on any other day in my Bay Area snobbish foodie world but today it was heaven. I watched my girls down their runny eggs soaked in bacon grease and I couldn't have been happier if they were eating spring greens with a light balsamic vinaigrette and goat cheese on toast.

I love change, travel, big cities, new experiences and culture. I shop at farmers markets, buy organic produce almost exclusively and prefer grass-fed beef over corn-fed. I hardly ever eat off paper plates, recycle every slip of paper and feel guilty about not composting (or at least not yet). I drive a tiny car with two kids in the suburbs. I am enthusiastically voting for Obama. I have done most of my theological studies at one of the most progressive seminaries in the country.

But this morning I was reminded that I am not all that.
I am struggling to describe the conflict in me b/t what I carry as an American raised in the American immigrant's dream in the late 20th century and what I hold as an ecologically conscious progressive type person in the early 21st century. I believe that the future requires we let go of a lot of that dream or at least its baggage but some of that baggage is precious to me. It is not the problem of just the clueless people in middle America. It is mine and my family's. I absolutely adore my Great Aunt who thinks Obama is the anti-Christ. How do I reconcile that?

For today, I am reminded that there are things that we cannot let go of in our future journey. The open heart and warm hospitality of our past must come with us. The connection to the earth should be deepened by our environmental politics not cheapened. We still need to know our neighbors and invite them over for dinner. Extended families need to sit out on the porch and watch the youngest members grow. My kids probably won't be eating Wonder bread and strawberry freezer jam in 30 years but I hope I haven't lost the heart of the ones who put it on the table.