Kitchen Meditation

The potatoes are cold in my hands, imbued with the chill of the refigerator. My husband will only peel potatoes after they’ve been sitting in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes, but I prefer to do it quickly and go on to other things. Dusty brown peelings curl off into the trash can, the little pile growing fast as the white flesh of the tuber is revealed. When the potatoes are chopped and placed in boiling water, I raid the crisper for other vegetables: Carrots, onions, fresh garlic (a staple in my kitchen), celery, corn. I have a method for chopping each different vegetable—the carrots are sliced in half long-wise and then diced into half-moons; the onions are gently scored in both directions across the top, so that when I cut off an inch from the onion’s face, I’m rewarded with a shower of evenly-chopped pieces falling to my cutting board.

I vividly remember a conversation I had shortly after getting married, when I was still part-time in college and struggling to get the degree I knew was out of my reach for the time being. “I want to like cooking,” I had said into the phone. “I feel like it’s the kind of thing that I should enjoy, that I could enjoy. I feel like it’s something that could bring me a huge amount of satisfaction. But I’m always just too tired.”

And I was. Even with a light class load, by the time I got home from my one or two classes in a day and finished my homework, I’d exhausted my slim supply of energy for that day. I made dinner each nigth with my husband because I believed in good, home-cooked food, and I loved eating the fruits of our labors—but I rarely enjoyed the experience. Always, I felt that frustrating sense that the true joy of cooking was just out of my reach, the kind of thing I ought to feel, but didn’t.

I baked bread, and ended up so tired I could hardly enjoy the finished product. I made muffins, and thought that cleaning the muffin tin might be the death of me. I cooked soups and puddings and even, on occasion, things like pasta from scratch, reveling in the knowledge that I could identify every ingredient that went into our meals—but ultimately, feeling utterly spent by the task.

Two years later, when I began the true transition from part-time studenthood to full-time homemaking, I was surprised to discover that suddenly, I was beginning to love cooking. All at once, as I began to spend less time in the classroom and have more time for the kitchen, I was feeling all those things I had thought I should feel before. Baking became a celebration. Chopping vegetables became a game. Doing the dishes afterward became a meditation.

Now, as I sweep a neat pile of onions and carrots from my cutting board into a pan for sautéeing, I think about that time of transition. Cooking still tires me, of course; it’s a physical task, one that requires time spent standing up, and often one that demands strength in the kneading or rolling out of dough. But in my life as it stands now, that’s all right. I may be tired afterwards, but I have the liberty to spare a few minutes for rest and recovery.

It is, I think, a perfect example of the unexpected joy the last few years have brought me—my adult life in a microcosm. For such a long time, I was frightened of my plans being changed, terrified of being forced to find something new to define myself. And yet, when that change did come, it wasn’t meaninglessness that lay on the other side—it was just a different kind of purpose, a different shape to my days.

A different shape, but a good one.

I pour extra-virgin olive oil over my pan of vegetables, letting the rich, fruity scent of the oil assail my senses, hearing the crackle and pop as it hits the bottom of the hot skillet.

And in this quiet kitchen moment, I know what it is to feel peace.

What I Believe

Over the weekend I was talking with a friend of mine.  We had one of those twisty conversations that covers a million topics, to trace back how we got to talking about the movie Bull Durham would require flow charts and recording devices. But get there we did. I’ve never seen the movie, so my friend was telling me the major plot points and characters.  She said her favorite part was a speech Kevin Costner’s character gives, in answer to Susan Sarandon’s question ‘What do you believe in then?’  The speech covered Baseball, Love, Sex, Politics, Holiday Traditions, and more, and my friend had it memorized.  And at the end, Kevin Costner turns and walks out the door, having said his piece. Should the occasion ever arise, I’d like to be able to rattle off a list of my truest beliefs without consulting notes or stumbling over the words.  Here’s my first draft:

I believe in kindness, goodness, luck, and the importance of good juju. I believe in the Muppets, Gene Kelley, Fred Astaire, and Bing Crosby.  I believe in cozy sweaters and keeping the thermostat low to cuddle under the blankets. I believe in family, those gifted at birth and those chosen.  I believe in books, records, and hand-written letters whenever possible, but accept digital versions as well. I believe in love. I believe marriage isn’t right for everyone, but that everyone should have the option. I believe in laughing every day, trusting the universe, and marching to my own drummer.  I believe gummi bears are better with I vodka and the time vortex is a thing. I believe in back roads, sunsets, and stopping to take pictures.  I believe in coffee, glitter, red wine, and great shoes. I believe happiness is just as worthy of a goal as a corner office. I believe in saying I Love You. I believe that time spent together is never wasted. I believe everyone has their own truth, their own journey, and their own sources of joy.

What do you believe in?

Not open for business

I'm a 33 year old woman who has no interest in having children. If your first reaction to that statement was something along the lines of, "Oh, just wait, you'll change your mind," or "You never know until you try it, " I beg of you: please keep it to yourself. You're not alone in having that reaction, and I've heard it a thousand times. The thing is, I won't, and I do. And it can make dating awfully interesting.

See, I like children. Hell, there are some children I even love. A lot. Like, stand-in-front-of-an-oncoming-train a lot. And so men are occasionally confused by what they see as conflicting positions. I talk about my friends' kids with love, admiration and excitement (especially when it comes to buying them books), but I'm not at all interested in populating a nursery of my own.

Three years ago, this wasn't an issue. I'd never be asked about my desires for marriage or children on a first, second or even fifth date. But now? Hoo, boy. People want to know what's up with my reproductive system like it's going out of style. Which, I suppose, it is. I can't have more than a few thousand viable eggs left at this point.

Case in point? A couple of weeks ago, I went on a solidly good first date with a guy we'll call John. He talked a bit about having had lots of lackluster relationships in his 20s (he's now 34), and about wanting to change that pattern now. He also talked about how all his cousins are married with kids, and how he feels a bit behind. At first, I was taken aback by all this marriage/baby talk on a first date (a woman bringing this up would, no doubt, be labeled as crazy and desperate as opposed to adorably open and honest), but I found it kind of charming. (I didn't feel the need to bring up my own stance on the first date, but I appreciated the openness.) I talked a little about my friend Miya's daughter, whom I adore, and about how my pregnant cousin Abby was almost to her due date.

On the second date, though? The man was couldn't stop talking about how "far behind" he is and how his life to this point has been a waste---all because he's not married and doesn't have kids. He talked about it a little. And then some more. And, finally, he wrapped up by launching into a speech about how he sleeps so much better when he sleeps next to someone, and let's go to a comedy club (despite my having said, repeatedly and that very evening, that I do not enjoy comedy clubs).

Obviously, this guy is a textbook version of oblivious. I made up a 7:30 AM meeting to get away at the end of the date, then steadfastly stepped away when he tried to kiss me goodnight, and still he acted shocked and led on when I sent him a (very nice) thanks but no thanks email a couple of days later.

And yet, he is a great example of an important point: women are not the only ones with biological clocks. When it comes to feeling subject to the whims of nature and the rules of society, we women are not alone. After all, we can't possibly have been the only ones enforcing the norms all this time.

So, let's make a deal. The next time a woman tells you she doesn't want children, pay her the respect she deserves and take her at her word. And when a man tells you he wants kids, pay attention and assume it's not just a seduction tactic. After all, when you're 33, you don't have time to spend on people who want your babies.

(original photo by velkr0 on flickr)

What to Wear on Halloween

I remember when Halloween was just a trip to the thrift store and some face paint. You get dressed up, your mom approximates some whiskers on your cheeks. You go out with your little friends. And then, more importantly, you end up with a plastic pumpkin bucket full of fun, fun sizes of chocolate and candy. As girls become women, however, the candy takes a backseat to the costume—and costumes ain’t what they used to be. Sure, you can still dress as the cartoon characters, animals, and superheroes of your youth; you just have to precede said costume title with the word “sexy.”

It doesn’t really matter how ridiculous the result is, either, as demonstrated by this collection. Sexy cats sit on costume shelves alongside sexy Big Birds and sexy hamburgers. The main thing is, it needs to be short, tight, or low-cut—preferably all three. For many women, Halloween is an opportunity to show off your body without shame. It’s like a one-time-a-year free pass for even the normally reserved and modest: no one will call you a slut in the morning.

More power to every woman who wants to jump on the sexy costume trend, but I think there are many women who are more like me: uncomfortable with the objectification that the once inclusive, innocent holiday increasingly promotes. It’s okay to be annoyed that this pressure to be sexy exists exclusively for women. Men’s costumes tend to be funny, ironic, gory, scary—no sexy Freddy Kreugers for them. So why are we women inundated with the Sexy Costume trend?

For those who are asking themselves the same question, I’ve come up with a few ideas for costumes that are fun, topical, empowering, attractive, but not demeaning. (Disclaimer: I’m no Halloween costume-choosing expert, so feel free to add your own to this list.)

A politician with a sense of humor

Hillary Clinton, Texts from Hillary-style.

To apply: Sweep your hair behind your ears (or invest in a short blond wig), put on shades, wear a black pantsuit with a large brooch pin, hold your phone in front of you at all times.

An Olympic gold medalist

Missy Franklin or Gabby Douglas

To apply: Slick your hair back tight in a ponytail or bun. (If you’re Missy, might be good to apply enough gel that your hair looks wet all night.) Wear a black bathing suit or red, white and blue leotard. Put fake gold medals around your neck (choose the appropriate number per athlete). Feel free to add tights or a towel to cover up. (If you’re going as McKayla Maroney, add perpetual scowl and folded arms.)

A kickass superheroine

Catwoman or Black Widow. Yes, they’re both super-sexy, but they’re also powerful and take-charge. And what do you want to bet that somewhere out there are “sexy” versions of their film costumes (read: shorter)?

To apply: Tight leather-ish black bodysuit, boots, gun belt, attitude. For Catwoman, add black eye mask and ears. For Black Widow, add a red wig.

A female fantasy protagonist

Katniss Everdeen or Hermione Granger

To apply: For Katniss, find gray, earth-toned winter clothes—a parka, sweater, khakis, and boots. Sling a quiver of arrows over your back and carry a bow around. Put your hair in a long side braid. For Hermione, just pick up a long, dark Hogwarts-emblazoned robe at your local costume store, replete with starched collar shirt and red and gold tie. Carry a wand. And if you’re doing old-school Hermione, make sure your hair is big and frizzy.

A Strong Female Character

There’s plenty of others to choose from, some of which I’ve discussed on this blog: Olivia Benson from “Law & Order: SVU,” Zooey Deschanel, Brave, Buffy (who I dressed up as in tenth grade using only a leather jacket, a hair claw, and a wooden stake). Don’t ever feel limited by what’s on the costume store shelves—the possibilities are truly endless. In fact, don't even be limited by your gender! Dress as a male character you like. You get bonus points for defying gender expectations and upsetting the patriarchy.

As for what NOT to wear: My only advice is, don’t do the ethnic costume thing. Besides exposing a lot of leg, Halloween also has the tendency to expose a lot of racism, poignantly argued by this Ohio University campaign. If you’re going as a historical or notable figure of a different ethnicity or nationality, that’s fine—just be aware of the overall impact of your costume (is it respectful or caricature?) and NEVER, NEVER paint your skin a different color.

If all else fails, follow Oscar from “The Office”’s example: dress as yourself and tell everyone you’re a "rational consumer." Given the cost of some Halloween costumes, that might end up being the best choice.

Freedom from Food

This morning’s bowl of stale corn flakes made me very happy. Lunch was perfect, too: a limp lasagna noodle covered with a thick layer of oily cheese and a lone, soggy artichoke heart. I loved it all because I didn’t have to make it. I didn’t even have to wash the dishes. I haven’t had to think about preparing food for the last 24 hours, and it has been a pleasure unforeseen. My thoughts are usually so congested by obsessing over what to eat, how to eat it, where to buy ingredients, how much money to save or to spend. But waking up this morning and knowing I had no say in what to eat today? It was a gift. This week I find myself at an artists residency program. I say “find myself” because I was invited off the waitlist, whisked away from my normal life and into the resplendent Blue Ridge mountains. Here in the company of poets, painters, and musicians, there is no room for cooking. Literally. We are not allowed into the kitchen. But what lacks in culinary counter space is made up for in the form of a private writing studio with a big desk and view of a rocky, cow-dotted field. There is lots of time, space, and freedom from household chores. But the freedom I am enjoying most? The freedom from food.

It’s not that thinking about what to eat is a problem, not at all. It’s actually one of my favorite topics in conversation, especially with the many adventurous eaters I have for friends.  I love looking at beautiful food photography, too, and I enjoy reading cookbooks front to back for their stories as well as their recipes. The problem is that food and writing about food is the weak link in my chain of focus and concentration when I’m at task on a different creative project. I think it’s because cooking is such a outlet for expression that it does battle with my writing on a regular basis. A weekend afternoon, for example, will be laid out before me, ripe with potential for new words and ideas. Instead of writing, though, I find myself poking around in the grocery store pondering butternut squash soup with garlicky croutons. We have to eat: It’s the most justifiable and enjoyable distraction.

During this writing retreat, however, I’ve come to scrutinize my obsession with thinking about food. My first day here has felt like a week. During this long day so much has happened (when actually so much has not, but that’s a form of “happening” when it comes to the imagination, right?)  This food void and the sense of freedom that came with it reminds me of Barbra Ueland’s book If You Want to Write. I flip to the chapter titled “Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect it for Their Writing” and wonder how many more hours I could spend writing at home instead of planning meals and hunting down recipes?

This is not to say I don’t want to make dinner most weeknights, can tomatoes for a few days at the height of tomato season, or throw an all out dinner party on the occasional weekend. It’s more of a realization that my dinnertime daydreams need to be budgeted. The mental energy saved will be at the expense of fantasies about blueberry coffee cake, pumpkin bread pudding, and homemade pasta. But maybe those dishes might just benefit from this new thought-diet of mine: less time thinking, more time doing.

Same, too, for the writing.

Lessons from Gone with the Wind...

Dear Clara, I just returned from a few days in Atlanta last week.  I don’t think there is ever any possibility of going to that city without thinking of green velvet drapes and feisty tempers.  Margaret Mitchell’s penned classic and Vivien Leigh’s spirited interpretation of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind will remain always one and the same with that city for me.  It might be an old story by the time you’re my age, but it will still be a true classic.  Here is what I’ll always remember from it:

• You can lose everything: At almost any moment.  Scarlett definitely knows a thing or two about loss, but in any story that spans a generation, I’m always taken by how privilege at the start doesn’t necessarily mean so at the end, and vice versa. We’re born what we’re born with, and some of us got it a little luckier, but that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed.  Anyone’s fortunes could change either by circumstance or by their own foolishness---be prepared to mitigate against both.
• Sometimes you have to create from what you have, not from what you want: Scarlett’s dress that she fashioned from her drapes is probably the best example in this story, but you’ll find that she does this over and over again.  Sometimes, if not most times, we won’t have as much as we want . . . as new as we want . . . as different as we want . . . at the time that we want it.  But people who are most resilient and most successful look at what they have, and make it fit what they need, not what they want.
• Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect: When I read Gone with the Wind, I think I must have dog eared at least twenty pages of quotes and words to remember, if not more.  I was a great collector of quotes back in the day, and I think this particular one captures how much we have to be careful about expectations since then we are often disappointed. The one I remember most though, were Rhett’s words about mending what’s broken:  “I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken---and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live.”  That quote did, and still does, make me nearly cry because I happen believe the opposite.  I think there is room for mending, and room for forgiveness, and I don’t believe that there are things such as permanently broken---but I think Rhett is just expressing the way that many people truly feel.  And you’ll come across people who believe in that strongly sometimes, and you’ll have to know when to keep fixing, and when to let it go because they will never see past the mend.  It's always best not to break in the first place, but we make mistakes, and not everyone will forgive us.
• People always come back: There is something uncanny about the way characters unfold in Gone with the Wind, and it mirrors life very much this way.  Even though the protagonists go through all sorts of changes and life takes them on many paths, they always seem to run together at different points in life.  Always appreciate people as though you’ll never see them again, because chances are, you will.  When you do, you will be glad that you left on good terms to pick up from; when you don’t, you’ll be reassured that you left with your best foot forward.

All my love,

Mom

Raziyya al-Din: Sultan of Delhi. Leader of Armies.

I’m never more inspired than when I’m spending my Saturday afternoons researching the most illustrious, the most extraordinary, the most awe-inducing women of world history, and of course I haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of subjects to write about. If I could, I would plaster my walls with pictures of these women: Eleanor of Aquitaine atop her horse en route to the Second Crusade. Emma Goldman slamming her fist on a pulpit as she addresses a hall full of factory workers. Sojourner Truth standing up in front of a crowd of hostile white men and skeptical white feminists to speak about her struggles as a slave and demand: “Ain’t I a woman?” It’d be like one giant wall of daily affirmations.

Raziyya al-Din (c.1200-1240) is another historical woman who was both excoriated (because she was a woman) and exulted (because she did stuff anyway). Born into Mughal nobility, Raziyya would go on to become the only female sultan in medieval India. Histories alternately refer to her as either Sultana or Sultan—let’s be clear that she preferred the latter, because a “sultana” technically referred to the wife of the sultan, and she wasn’t no sultan’s wife.

Raziyya’s father was Iltumish, a ruler in the Delhi Sultanate. The Delhi Sultans were a series of Muslim Turkish rulers based in Delhi who, through the medieval period, controlled much of north India. Iltumish and Raziyya, specifically, came from the first Delhi dynasty: the Mameluks, or slaves.

Iltumish recognized early on that his daughter was particularly well-suited for sultan-ing. She had accompanied him on many military campaigns and was ambitious, smart, and full of leadership skills. Thus he formally nominated Raziyya as his successor in preference to his many sons. (This makes me very well-disposed towards ol’ Iltumish. What a progressive guy!)

The problem: Despite the ostensible power of the Sultan’s throne, the elite Turkish nobles (always, always those unruly nobles!) wielded a disproportionate say in court matters, and they were not happy with Iltumish’s choice. When he died in 1236, they overrode his nomination and put one of his sons on the throne instead.

Fortunately for Raziyya, they soon saw the error of their ways. Her brother was incompetent and his conniving, ambitious mother made his rule even more unappealing. They removed him from the throne and gave Raziyya her due as the new Sultana Sultan that same year.

Raziyya, for her short term, proved to be a terrific Sultan. She was wise, benevolent, tolerant to Hindus, and adept at crushing rebellions when they arose. Like past YHWOTD Hatshepsut, she adapted men’s clothing, discarding the veil and dressing as a Sultan, I suppose, ought. Contemporary historians sang her praises, and eminent Indian historian Farishta remarked, “The men of discernment could find no defect in her except that she was created in the form of a woman.”

Her reign went well for the first couple years, but her appointment of an Abyssinian slave named Yaqut to a high office and her close relationship with him (speculation abounds that they may have been lovers, but sometimes I wonder, would the same speculation abound if she had been a man?) caused disgruntlement amongst those same unruly Turkish nobles. They eventually killed Yaqut and imprisoned Raziyya in a fort in Bhatinda, outside Delhi.

Raziyya was able to escape her imprisonment by marrying one of her captors (!) and the two of them marched on Delhi to recapture the throne. They were defeated by a dude named Balban, who would later become Sultan, and were unfortunately killed fleeing from battle in 1240.

Thus ended the short life and even shorter reign of Raziyya al-Din. But she was remembered fondly. Contemporary historian Minaj-us-Siraj called Raziyya “a great monarch, wise, just, generous, benefactor to her realm, a dispenser of equity, the protector of her people, and leader of her armies.”

What I’m reminded of when I read the singing of Raziyya’s praises, the apparent faultlessness of her Sultancy, is that—as Ta-nehisi Coates noted in an excellent, excellent essay on Barack Obama—minorities, including women, who rise to positions of power often have to be “twice as good and half as [insert minority identity here].” I’m not deeply cognizant of the social context of medieval India, but it’s noteworthy that the one of the only woman to emerge, victorious, from the margins of history in this period was, if the historians' language is to be believed, a perfect ruler and practically a man.

Obviously, that’s how they rolled back then---male sultans and all---and I get that. But even today, I think it’s a good reminder to not get complacent about the advances of women. There will be exceptions to every patriarchy, as Raziyya proves—but even with her boundary-breaking, the system remained intact, as it often does, even when briefly and occasionally challenged by extraordinary women. But at the very least exceptions like Raziyya can serve as inspiration and/or fodder for daily wall poster affirmation.

The F Words: Ally Kirkpatrick

We have an exciting treat today in F Words land, folks. One of The Equals Project's newest contributors, the ridiculously overtalented and supercool Ally Kirkpatrick, is here to talk about being a lady and an eater (and an emerging cook). Her blog, The Green Cabin Year, is a chronicle of her life in a teeny little house in rural Virginia. She didn't always live the bucolic life, though---she just recently moved from Brooklyn, where she worked as a barista while writing the nights away. I have to say that I am seriously psyched about her joining our family here at Equals, and I think you will be, too. Tell us a bit about your day job. For the last ten years I’ve pretty much been a professional dishwasher. You could also say I was a barista, too, since I made cappuccinos and espressos part of the time. Dishwashing was half the work, so I got pretty good at that, too. It’s a useful skill, I think, to be able to bang out a huge bus tub of dirty dishes really quickly and effectively. Every coffee shop or cafe I ever worked at (eight different places between Boston, DC and New York), washing dishes was an important part of the job. City cafes get really slammed. Coworkers will like you if you can wash the hell out of some pint glasses, and the customers like seeing you hustle because you get them their iced latte faster.

Sometimes it was good. Sometimes I really hated it. Like when I worked at this one place in the East Village that had terribly steep stairs that would get wet and slippery with each load brought up and down to the sanitizer. I totally busted my ass one time, falling down the steps one at a time like “duh dunk, duh dunk, duh dunk.” I just sat at the bottom for a minute absorbing the reality of what had just happened, thinking “So, this is my life, I guess. This was the most exciting part of me week . . .” then I got up and washed a bunch of lipstick-stained demitasses.

But I’m making it sound worse than it was . . . It was mostly, like 98% of the time, an absolutely wonderful job. Every cafe I worked at had fantastic staff members and regular customers. People I’ve met through washing dishes and pulling shots have become my closest friends. Some of my regulars from the coffee shop came to my wedding a few years ago. Some of my best friends I met over sudsy dishwater.

That said, I’m glad I don’t work full time in a coffee shop anymore. I’m still washing dishes, but now it’s as a kitchen assistant for food writer Cathy Barrow. It’s the best job ever. During the cooking classes Cathy teaches I wash dishes and listen in as she gives instruction. It’s a much more interesting situation than when I was working in coffee shops. Now as I’m washing dishes I get to learn all about cooking, canning, pasta making, etc. I’m learning a lot. Before I would just binge on muffins in the mop closet waiting for the dishes to come out of the sanitizer. I kinda used food to cope with not loving my job. Or maybe it’s that I loved my job, but just wanted more out of life. I wanted to be a writer, and no shameful mop closet muffing inhaling can address that void. I’m still cleaning the hell out some dishes. But I get to learn new things and I have much more time to write. I also get to take home lots of delicious food.

How did you learn to cook? I really don’t know how to cook. I know how to follow a recipe. I know some basic techniques. But as far as actual cooking, as far as being a real home cook, I’m not there yet. I’m trying to learn how to make one big meal instead of all these disconnected spazzy little meals. Does that make sense? “One big meal?" For example, I made scones yesterday. It took me two hours. Then all I ate all day was scones. I felt like crap, obviously, and I never want to make scones again. Maybe what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to learn how to eat. Cooking is the easy part. I know how to season and taste and adjust. What I’m figuring out now is how to do that in my mind, working towards following my wants and hungers and then interpreting those feelings, translating them into plans for a meal.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends or family? I love cooking with my husband Jake. He cooks like he’s dancing, except he doesn’t dance. If he were a dancer his cooking would be like ballet. He’s very graceful in the kitchen, but has a lot of energy and expression. I like working with him because of this. I stay out of the way a bit and just watch, follow his lead, help with one specific thing (chop this, stir that.) It’s always best when one person is in directing the meal, I think, that way you know who’s calling the shots, who’s choreography you’re minding.

With my mom, I love being in the kitchen with her, too. My husband makes things up as he goes, depending on what he has in the fridge that day. My mom, on the other hand, is a big fan of cookbooks and follows recipes more closely. This means that it’s better for us to work on separate tasks if we’re in the kitchen together. She’s knows where she is in her process, I know where I am... with her it’s more like a line dance. We’re in step with each other but on different planes.

Then there’s Cathy. Working in Cathy’s kitchen is just amazing. It’s different than cooking with anyone else I’ve ever cooked with because there’s this childlike wonder that washes over me every time she brings up a favorite dish she makes, or every time she sends me to the pantry for some special jar of something.

I should also really enjoy cooking by myself. I put on Beyoncé or Robin and gyrate around the kitchen like a moron and my dog just looks at me like he’s concerned for my life.

What's your favorite thing to make? Coffee. My favorite thing to make is, and will forever be, coffee. Espressos, cappuccinos, macchiatos, cortados, pour-overs. All of it. I love coffee the way people love wine. I love the story of each coffee: where it came from, how it was processed and roasted, how it tastes in different preparations. Maybe I’ll grow to love making food one day, but for now I suck at it too badly to find peace and enjoyment out of the process. I think because I’ve been making coffee for so long and competing in barista competitions and such that I get a lot of pleasure out of the ritual and the process of brewing coffee.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? What cuisine would you say belongs to Deborah Madison? I want to eat Deborah Madison Cuisine.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? Anything involving shellfish, because I’m very allergic. Also, recipes that call for hot peppers. Not because I don’t like eating them, but because I always worry I’m going to rub my eyes by accident while prepping them and end up with stinging, watery eyes for the rest of the afternoon.

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? Most recently my relationship with my family has made me more interested in foraging. Pawpaws, morel mushrooms, black walnuts, fiddle heads. These are all things my husband and I have been finding on my parents property in Virginia. We just moved here in this past spring and I found myself obsessed with foraged foods. It’s trendy right now, I guess, but I got into it because of my dad, who is possibly the least trendy person in the universe (don’t worry, he won’t read this.) He spends a lot of time in the woods as a hunter and told me about all these hot spots for morel mushrooms up in the hills. I also learned to butcher my first deer this year because of him. That was a relationship to my food I hadn’t experienced before. My husband and I were in the driveway of my parent’s suburban home with this deer my dad had shot that morning laid out on a card table. We had this beautiful deer before us, and we didn’t know what to do with it. So we used my dad’s ipad and learned how to process it step by step from YouTube. It was an exhausting experience, both physically and emotionally, but it was an interesting connection to food – seeing the whole deer-to-venison process – and it made me more mindful about my meat consumption. I still eat meat, but I’m edging further and further away from animal products. You can’t butcher a deer and not feel awe and respect for the animal. I felt a lot of sadness, too, so I think I need to figure out how that needs to impact my eating and cooking habits.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women's traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? There was an article on Propeller that I read recently by Mary Rechner that addressed this issue in a way that was really meaningful to me. I want to write fiction. If I worry about food all the time then there may not be space for writing fiction in my life. On a personal level I reconcile my love of the kitchen by having a fiercer love for private writing time in my studio. Let me mention that I don’t actually have a writing studio… but you get the idea. My kitchen and my (imaginary) studio are two places I make sure I spend a certain amount of time each day. I want to think about writing and ideas two thirds of the time. One third of the time I want to be canning some jam or stuffing my face with scones.

But on a larger level I’m completely perplexed and can’t reconcile it at all and I feel very worried about it. I’m totally confused on this issue and don’t know what to think. In the meantime I’m reading Propeller polemics and Emily Matchar’s blog New Domesticity [Meg: Me, too!] and thinking “Right on! Fuck canning and baking pretty tarts! It’s pointless domestic posturing!” but then at the same time as I say that I’m canning and baking pretty tarts and not working at all on a short story.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you're sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? The recipe I’m sharing is for fresh Sriracha from Food52. I made it for the first time this summer and I love it because it tastes good on everything. Wear gloves and don’t rub your eyes!

Fresh Sriracha By edamame2003, republished with permission from Food52 1/2 pound red Fresno chiles, coarsely chopped 4 garlic cloves 1 tsp. kosher salt 1 cup distilled white vinegar 2 tbs. palm sugar

Visit Food52 for the full (delicious and surprisingly simple) recipe.

Time is on my side

While my daughter is still an infant, I am trying to adhere to a schedule of spending at least two solid weekdays alone with her, despite the fact that I own and run a business.  “Alone,” in our household, means that my husband (who also works for himself) might tag along and spend some portion of the day with us, as well.  This is quite obviously living the dream and I mean that in all sincerity.  Like so many people, all I ever wanted in life was to create a family and to have one in which the adults prefer palling around together to any other activity.  The addition of the portly, charming baby (who, I might add, has been impressing even total strangers of late with her glittering, two tooth-bud smile, full-body laugh and enthusiastic hand-clapping) is just the definitive bonus.  We have these epic moments, often only the two of us, where we find ourselves sitting on a blanket in the park in the middle of the day, staring up at the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.  We are saturated in, practically oozing happiness.  But lest you think we are busy having it all (wait for it, Schadenfreudes) you should know that organizationally, domestically, we exist in a state of utter chaos---a ceaseless game of whack-a-mole. There are, as they say, absolutely not enough hours in the day and it is my perpetual struggle to prioritize appropriately.  On the days when I am solely focused on the baby, I make an effort to really and truly be present during her waking hours.  I have the great privilege of a somewhat flexible schedule and the even greater privilege of being her mother.  It is in this spirit that I strive to keep work emails and tasks tucked away in my pocket or purse.  I look at the mounting pile of laundry or the creeping clutter in the apartment and decide that it can wait.  I shrug off the light sense of despair over the two primed walls that we were supposed to paint last winter.  I tell myself that she will never be exactly this age again and that I will look back on this first year and know I didn’t miss a thing.

I am acutely aware that most women (or men, for that matter) do not even have the option to do this and I feel almost a sense of responsibility to parents everywhere to take full advantage.  Of course, this means I have to work harder and smarter when I am on the clock.  It also means that I am on the clock longer and at odd hours.  Ultimately, it means that we sort of live in a college dorm and have to run to the bodega at 7:30 PM to buy an $8 roll of toilet paper because we ran out and nobody had the chance to get more.

Meanwhile, as is my wont, I am plagued by the notion that everyone else must be doing it better---they have to be, right?  During a recent trip to the playground this was confirmed, as I zeroed in on a few other mothers and observed their whole set-up.  Each one seemed to have the diaper bag completely dialed in, down to the perfectly portioned organic snack foods in an eco-friendly/non-petroleum/possibly Swedish baggie.  Their strollers were tidy and their children even had on accessories.  They had brought galvanized tins of French sidewalk chalk and appeared to have organized play-dates.  When I arrived on the scene, my daughter was assiduously chewing on the rubber case from my iPhone (almost certainly made in China).  My stroller was pandemonium---it included incongruous items like dog poop bags, my diluted vitamin water bottle and a calcified, half-gummed whole wheat dinner roll from a restaurant adventure the day before.  I plunked my daughter on the padded playground surface and watched as she crunched fall leaves between her fingers and attempted to stuff them in her mouth.  She was not wearing shoes or a bow in her hair but she seemed pretty thrilled.  We did not have an adorable German tube of bubbles (why is everything good European?) and I hadn’t even remembered my nursing cover.  We embarrassed the family with an awkward lean-to situation using a cotton drape, which she repeatedly tore away with a whipping motion, exposing my breasts to the most populous borough in the city.

So, I am coming around to the idea that I actually only have so much bandwidth.  The letting go of certain practical elements of daily life in favor of more time for human relating seems a fairly obvious choice to me.  While I aspire to be a person who deftly balances her infant on one hip while folding fitted sheets or doing the taxes, it turns out that I only can/am willing to (?) do one thing at a time.  Most tasks, therefore, are sort of shined on or phoned in until they have the good fortune to be in the pole position.  I keep the goals small, so then when we have a fully stocked fridge or I send out a birthday gift, I feel like I have summitted Everest or passed the California bar.

Although I mostly feel good about the way I am partitioning my time for now, like every working mother I grapple with needing and/or wanting to be in two places at once.  Who knows how this will all change as she gets older and as my business evolves?  It is a little disheartening to realize that I did seem to need the “excuse” of a baby to finally feel justified in prioritizing enjoyment.  Why didn’t I do this before?  And why do I still feel like I’m “admitting to something” when I tell you I spend entire days, in the middle of the week, not just being with my baby, but actively trying to do little else?

Needless to say, I want my daughter to be proud of her mother as a role model and an entrepreneur.  But I am hoping she doesn’t have to feel this from a remote place.  I want her to experience that I am as available to her as I am to my work.  She will doubtless have a wide array of things to discuss with her therapist about her home and family.  I figure I won’t just hand her the line that her mother always had too many things on her plate.  I want her to work a little harder for her gripes.

This Mother's Work

I'm more than happy to introduce a special guest contributor this week: my cousin Michelle. As children, we spent summers, holidays, and many a weekend together. Now, as  adults, we unfortunately see each other much more sporadically, as Michelle currently lives in Baku, Azerbaijan, as the Program Director of the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative in Azerbaijan. Impressive, huh? Michelle writes about her mom here. My aunt, or "Annie T" as we call her, holds a special place in my heart, too.  She and my mom were night and day, but as sisters-in-law, they shared a deep respect and love that bypassed any and all differences. Personally, I'll be forever indebted to my aunt, for the love and support she has shown my sisters and I since my mom died. Clearly, commitment to family was one thing my mom and aunt shared in common. And with that, I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.

By Michelle A. Brady

There’s a picture, stashed away somewhere in a drawer or closet at my parents’ house in Rochester, of my mom and I relaxing in our bathing suits and inner tubes at my grandparents’ old cottage in the Finger Lakes.  It’s the summer of 1982 and I’m five years old.  I haven’t seen the photo in awhile but I remember that we are smiling and laughing.  A couple months later, that September, I carried the picture with me to my first day of kindergarten.  I cried the entire morning, missing my mom, and feeling perhaps, that our five years of intensive mother-daughter bonding were about to end.  Years later we would recall that day and joke, because as an adult it seemed I was always eager to get away.

Over the years my mother and I have laughed and cried together, shopped, danced, and traveled together, and yes, at times yelled and said hurtful things to each other.  Despite our ups and downs and growing pains, I am forever indebted to her for one thing in particular, because without it I would not be the woman I am today.  This one thing she gave me above all else was the example she set as a working mom, laboring tirelessly along with my dad, to provide a better life for me and my brother.  That example, and the values it instilled in me, has made all the difference in my life.

I never thought it weird that I had a mom who worked full time.  From kindergarten onward, my mom went back to work, remaining at Eastman Kodak Company---along with my dad---until retirement many years later.  I stayed with baby-sitters and at after-school latch key programs and, quite honestly, never thought twice about it.  In fact, I have positive memories of using these morning hours at the baby-sitter to watch cartoons: G.I. Joe, Jem, and Transformers, in particular.  I ate snacks in the afternoon at latch key and finished my homework while waiting for my mom to pick me up.  And when I was older, I’d arrive home to an empty house and immediately call my mom to inform her I’d arrived safely and that yes, of course, I would get started on that homework right away!

Having a working mom, though, often proved to be a major lesson in organization and planning ahead.  When I was in junior high, my dance lessons really took off.  This required cross-town transportation to dance class right after school, in order to be dressed in my leotard and tights with hair pulled back by 4 p.m.  More school days than not, my paternal grandmother was tasked with this responsibility.  Like any doting grandparent, Grandma Kay arrived on time everyday in her Cutlass sedan, smoking a cigarette and carrying a Wendy’s large chocolate frosty, because every budding ballerina needs some carbs before a workout. Hours later, my mom would arrive at the dance studio with dinner and a ride home.  I would often collapse into the seat, sweaty, exhausted, and not too happy with her efforts to catch up on the day.  Yet she paid for the classes and costumes, supported me at competitions and recitals, and even joined a mother-daughter tap class to spend more time with me.

While my mom was busy with my dance lessons, my dad was similarly busy with my brother and his hockey and lacrosse activities.  During the winter season---which is excruciatingly long in Rochester---my mom would often cook chili on Fridays, a low-maintenance meal that could simmer all day and be ready when we arrived home late after my brother’s hockey game.  In typical pre-teen fashion, I didn’t appreciate this practical dinner choice in the least; in fact, I hated that chili. So one Friday, knowing my fate for dinner, I “came down” with the stomach flu at school.  This, of course, required my mom to leave work early and pick me up at a school.  She was calm and quiet as we drove home, seemingly concerned about my well-being.  But within just a few minutes of questioning, my mom had me confessing that no, I was not actually sick; I just didn’t want chili for dinner that night.  In hindsight, I’m sure my mom didn’t appreciate having her work day interrupted like that, but she never said a word to me. And I never did eat the chili again.

So many of my childhood memories are connected in some way to my mom, and especially, to her role as a working mother. When I look back on it all now, as a 35 year-old single woman, living out my dreams halfway around the world, I realize the extent to which it has affected me. My mom gave me the example of a working mother who handled stress at work and paid the bills at home; a mother who cleaned the house and organized everyone’s schedules; a mother who was tough and forceful when necessary, and equally conciliatory and compromising; a mother who did all of this while remembering every detail and splitting responsibilities with my father in a gender-equal way.  Above all else, I witnessed first-hand the benefits of organization, multi-tasking, and motivation, and along the way, saw the rewards of goal-setting, hard work, and investing in education.

I haven’t told my mom nearly enough how much I appreciate the example she set for me.  So I will tell her now, and then again the next time I see her in person.

Thank you, Mom, for showing me what is possible, and for selflessly paving the way for me to realize my dreams.

Hildegard von Bingen: Composer. Mystic. Nun.

The other day, Google ran a Doodle in honor of 19th-century composer/pianist Clara Schumann’s birthday, and it took me back to my days as an undergraduate music major. Yes, it’s true—before I was Miss History ‘n’ Pop Culture, I was studying to be a composer. I switched gears, but I still harbor a deep passion for music, and I still play piano. Mostly show tunes.

Anyway, I was reminded how, in my music history studies, of the dozens and dozens of important names we learned, there were maybe three female composers that came up. There was Clara Schumann---wife of Robert Schumann. There was Fanny Mendelssohn---sister of Felix Mendelssohn. But the one who always stood out for me—maybe because she stood entirely on her own—was Hildegard von Bingen, a Benedictine nun from the twelfth century who wrote, of all things, monophonic morality plays. Fun!

Saint Hildegard (she was “equivalently canonized” earlier this year) was another one of those historical women who seemed to do it all, with the added benefit of living an uncommon 82 years in medieval times. She was born in 1098 in Germany, and as a teenager, she was instructed in psalm-reading by the head of a local Benedictine community. When the woman died, Hildegard was elected the new head.

I should mention---Hildegard had been having these visions ever since she was a child, which she often described as in terms of bright lights. Modern-day physicians would attribute these “visions” (and the visions of many other medieval mystics) to migraines, hence the light sensitivity, which, all in all, is a perfectly satisfactory explanation. But I’d caution against getting too wrapped up in modern scientific understandings of things; for Hildegard, these visions were real, as they also were for many of those who surrounded her. And their very “realness” was the impetus for many of the great things she accomplished.

It was at age 42 when Hildegard had THE vision, the first one that would serve as the divine inspiration for her work. “A burning light of tremendous brightness coming from heaven poured into my entire mind,” she recorded. “God told me, ‘Write what you see and hear.’” And, in the Middle Ages, when God talked, you listened.

From then on, Hildegard was a writing fiend. She would produce a book on theology, two books on science and medicine, over seventy musical pieces, and go on four speaking tours of Europe. She did this all while recording her visions and managing her convents. Notably, she also held regular correspondence with kings and popes and important dudes like Abbot Suger, not easy guys to impress.

This story, I think, illustrates what she was able to achieve very well: In 1148, Hildegard claimed she had been commanded by God to move her nuns to a new location near the town of Rupertsberg. The monks over her head refused, wary of the expense and the loss of personnel. Hildegard then took to her bed, struck sick, too weak to move. Her sickness was, of course, attributed to her failure to follow God’s divine orders. Eventually, the abbot agreed with this interpretation and granted her permission to move to the new site, overruling the monks, and Hildegard got what she wanted. And within a few years, the Rupertsberg convent became so popular they needed to build a second convent just across the Rhine River to accommodate demand. Hildegard managed both.

It’s been noted that, despite her gender, Hildegard didn’t quite jibe with modern feminist ideas—that she sometimes spoke ill of women, associating them with weakness in accordance with dominant ideas of the time. Unlike her male contemporaries, she didn’t toot her own horn when it came to her musical talents, considering herself a mere vessel for the voice of God. (Note: This wasn’t an idea particular to Hildegard or women, however; Jorge Luis Borges notes that writers of antiquity such as Plato considered the poet nothing more than a “fleeting instrument of divinity.”)

But Hildegard’s attitude needs to be placed in its appropriate context, as do her migraine-visions. In fact, they’re kind of related. Much of Hildegard’s power was derived from her claims to legitimate communion with God; this was an incredibly effective means to personal agency in the Christian-dominated paradigm of medieval Europe. Her visions, her orders from heaven, her illnesses were tools from which she could carve out an autonomous space, provoke action from male higher-ups, and, ultimately, leave her mark on music history, religious history, and medieval history, something so few other women were able to achieve.

This is not in any way to say that Hildegard’s successful maneuverings within the system were planned or intentional. But it’s worth noting that, of the privileged few medieval women from the lower (read: not queen) classes who show up on the historical record, a large number were saints and mystics. There was no feminism in 1150. You did what you could.

In honor of St. Hildegard, who according to Wikipedia celebrated a birthday on Sunday (happy 914^th!), I recommend listening to one of her lovely compositions, like Spiritus Sanctus or O vis aeternitatis. Though solemn and ordered by today’s standards, for her time she was very original, breaking many of the hallowed rules of music theory to write soaring vocal lines and even (gasp!) switching modes in mid-song. For perspective, mode-switching didn’t become a la mode until five hundred years later.

Kinda makes you want to go join a medieval convent, doesn’t it? Or at least write a pretty song with a hurdy gurdy in it. I might just go do the latter.

My Story: Epilogue

My mother came to visit me in early spring, nearly two years after I was married, just a few months before I finished my last college classes. In the previous four years, I had only scraped by three years’ worth of credits. I knew that the end of my classes would not bring a walk across the stage or a diploma to hang on the wall for me. But I also knew, deep in my heart, that it was the right time. It was time for me to be done with school for the present; to focus my energy on taking care of myself and keeping things running smoothly at home. I had learned that it was possible for me to go to school part-time—but when I did, I found I couldn’t do anything else. Keeping one or two classes each semester was a grueling effort for me, demanding all of my time, attention, and energy, and leaving absolutely nothing left of me when I was finished.

It had been a difficult decision to make, but the raw grief that I had felt two years before, when I first realized that graduation might not be in the cards for me, had mostly dissipated. I was tired now, worn down by the endless barrage of health problems and the pressure to keep up with what should have been a light load. I was ready to be done, ready to have the energy to explore other parts of myself again.

That week, as my mother and I sat together at my kitchen table, she asked me if I felt like I had had a “good college experience.”

The question took me by surprise. I had certainly not had a typical college experience; after my first few semesters, I’d had to pull more and more away from the rigor of the academic environment I loved. By necessity, I’d had to learn to find my own identity in something other than the world of scholarship. I’d spent the past two years discovering how much there was to love in my newfound role as a homemaker; I’d learned to take satisfaction in keeping a house of order, and to approach a new recipe with the same zeal I’d previously felt for literary criticism.

I sat at the table, the silver afternoon light of late March diffusing through the windows, and thought about it.

“Yes,” I said finally. “I have.”

Then I added that focus of the last two years had certainly not been a quintessential college experience, but that they had still been good. Very good, in fact.

“I feel… fulfilled,” I said, realizing as I said it that it was true.

Somehow, in the slow passing of days and weeks and years, fulfillment had crept into my heart. I realized, sitting there at the kitchen table, that I was content—that even though the path my life had taken was so different than the one I had expected, I was still happy. My days felt full of beauty; I had learned that even something as simple as loading the dishwasher could feel meditative, fulfilling, if I only opened my eyes.

So yes, I thought. Typical or not, my college experience has been a good one.

.   .   .   .   .

It’s been more than two years since that conversation with my mom. Like everyone, my life is filled with ups and downs, and I still have far too many moments of doubt and insecurity. And yet, the contentment remains. The fulfillment remains. I have come to love this life I’m living, even if it’s not the one I had planned for myself. It’s a continual process, a journey of discovery and delight.

And when I look back on it, even with all the bumps, I can’t deny:

I’m glad to have had the ride.

A Back-to-School Tribute

Before each school year begins, I try to center myself. I organize supplies, I write lesson plans, I memorize my schedule. These sort of tasks, however, aren’t enough and I always find myself reflecting on teaching itself, in the broadest possible sense. I came to teaching late. My first foray into a classroom in a role other than student was when I began my graduate program the summer I turned twenty-five. I felt old, and compared to many of my fellow students, I was old. One of the first things we were asked as we began our studies was to think about the teachers who had impacted us and why that was.

It’s a simple question, nearing cliché. For me, it was easy to answer. My high school Latin teacher, Miss Ede Ashworth, made me crave her praise. I was not the sort of student who yearned for a close relationship with a teacher, or to be pushed to my limits, or to be made to cry by a profound lesson a la Dead Poets Society. I was jaded in high school, arrogant about my self-perceived intelligence, and wary of adults, particularly teachers. Miss Ashworth’s skill and style penetrated my overconfidence and my (probably highly-irritating) cynicism. Her brilliance came from being able to do this without my ever feeling as though she was trying to do exactly that.

I should point out here that Miss Ashworth is a highly-lauded teacher, winning awards that have acknowledged and rewarded her preternatural skill in the classroom.  She managed to bring out the best in so many students, and she did it without seeming to modify her approach or system for any individual learners in the room.  This is nearly unheard of in conversations about good teaching where the norm is to consider the diversity of learners in a classroom and differentiate instruction as needed to reach as many students of possible. This was not necessary for Miss Ashworth---like an elite athlete, she was unfazed by changes in routine, student behavior, or fire drills, and managed to execute well every single class period.

She was teaching Latin, a language so regimented that it can turn off even the most academically-minded student. She required us to make flashcards for every single vocabulary word we learned – a requirement I hated because I didn’t feel as though I needed them.  However, other students made great use of flashcards, and I learned later that while I may not have needed to use the flashcards myself, she had cagily instilled in me the discipline of careful review and preparation. This discipline was key to my perseverance while studying Latin in college.

She told us little about herself, leaving an aura of mystery around her that my classmates and I attempted to shatter through the sort of speculation (“do you think Miss Ashworth ever watches television?) usually reserved for elementary school students. She was always impeccably prepared for class, never seemed to be absent, and could be found before and after school for extra help or to answer questions.

When I did my student teaching, my cooperating teacher told me that he believed there were two core qualities that every teacher must have: she should love the subject matter and appreciate the joys and challenges of working with young people. Miss Ashworth’s love for Latin was palpable---she drove us all over the state to participate in the Junior Classical League, and she ran a yearly Foreign Language Week at school that was driven primarily by her sheer enthusiasm. She had us do art projects about the Romans, she had us travel all over the tri-state area to museums to see relevant exhibits, and she made sure that her students took opportunities to share their knowledge of the language with others. And, even more importantly, while she had very high standards for both academic work on behavior, I remember not one moment when she seemed disdainful when we were rowdy, unfocused, or both.

When I was a senior, I was the only student that year to enroll in Advanced Placement Latin. Before the year began, I wondered what it would be like to be in a one-on-one setting. Would it be odd? I was nervous, because part of what Miss Ashworth did so well was treat all of us remarkably warmly, without ever creating too much familiarity. It ended up (unsurprisingly) being the best learning experience of my high school years. Her gentle guidance as I tried to decide which college attend (never saying what I should or should not do) helped steady me. The intensity of the AP curriculum and how desperately I wanted to please her led me to work incredibly hard and reap the rewards.

Thus, as I begin each new school year, I think back to what it was like to be in Miss Ashworth’s classes. I am not yet a fraction of the teacher that she is, and likely never will be, but her example often inspires me to think more critically about how I am approaching both my students and the subject matter. I ask myself what she might do in a particular situation, and I realize now how much work, dedication, and attention to detail went into all of those seemingly effortless lessons. Each time I sneak in explaining a Latin root into one of my classes, I feel the same old excitement that I used to feel in the windowless classroom that she made crackle with language. Although I had no idea at the time that I would ever be a high school teacher, I am forever grateful that I was able to spend forty-eight minutes every day for four years watching her work.

Lessons from a conference...

Dearest Clara,

We’ve been on the go a lot, both with and without you, these last few weeks.  Most recently, I was in New York again, but this time for a conference.  I seem to have a lot of those---some for my day job, and a lucky few just for my own interests.  Conferences can be a little intimidating, a bit like the first day of school.  And when those presenting and attending are people whom you’ve long admired and want to learn from, you always wonder what your place is.  You wonder if you will be brave enough to talk to people.  And you’ll always wonder what you’ll say as you work up your nerve.   These are the things that have helped me in these kinds of events:

• Bring lots of business cards: It’s a great way to break the ice and it’s a great way to have something to talk about.  And bring more than you think you’ll need---you’ll give them about because you meet people, because you have to leave one with your luggage, because you’ll want to leave behind your contact information, or enter to win something.  Just have lots---I promise you’ll use them.
• Know something about those speaking: They took the time to prepare a presentation, so take the time to prepare and learn something about them.  That way, if you have the opportunity to meet them or sit next to them at part of the event, you already have a few things you can go to when making conversation.
• Remember most people---even if they don’t show it---are just as nervous: Don’t be intimidated.  Everyone else is outside of their comfort zone too.  Introduce yourself, bring others in if you see they want to be part of the conversation, and don’t sweat it if a conversation doesn’t go the way you planned.  Try to be an even more friendly and approachable version of yourself, and be inclusive.
• It’s okay to take a break: Sometimes conferences and events can become overwhelming---they’re full of people we don’t know, and hopefully new ideas we haven’t seen.  It’s tough to be always “on,” and the days can become long.  It’s okay to duck out for a few minutes into a corner or quiet space, or even take an hour back at the hotel to decompress and reset.
• Go to more than one! Believe it or not, these things get easier over time, and when you’re a repeat visitor, you always know someone too, which makes for smoother sailing.  All of the sudden, you become the person that others come to see.  A few events a year where you’re exposed to new people and new ideas are good to stimulate your own ideas---choose wisely but make the investment!

Now back to the sessions!

All my love,

Mom

What August Means Now

By Carrie Allen Tipton For those invested in academic pursuits, August marks time like no other month. It speaks of newness and transition in a way that other folks more readily associate with January and its resolutions, or October and its changing leaves, or March and its budding limbs. August’s gift (or curse) of hyper-awareness of the passage of time blesses (or afflicts) tiny kindergartners no less than aged professors. Whether you are on the making or receiving end of a syllabus or book list in the upcoming educational year, the month delineates for all school-oriented persons the End of Something and the Beginning of Something Else.

As a student, this weird blurry month, neither fully summerish nor yet fully schoolish, meant shopping for clothes, finding color-coded folders, looking for the precise metric specifications of binders stated on the supply list, searching for a new and cooler (is there such a thing?) lunchbox. In the university years there were the added tasks of purchasing football tickets and meal plans. After many years of dutifully carrying out these sorts of instructions, I became a professor and began giving them to others. The road to this position was long and many times I have questioned whether it was, in that extremely charged yet vague term which indexes a host of existential presuppositions, “worth it.” Suffice it to say that it required many years of very long hours of single-minded focus and a willingness to live below the poverty line for the better part of a decade. Fine. It was over now, and I was professoring. In this new capacity, my old friend August meant screening books for readings lists, determining test schedules, building online class modules, anxiously checking electronic enrollment in the hopes that a course wouldn’t be canceled, dodging onerous committee work, applying for travel funding, and plotting out research goals.

For twenty-eight years, then, some version or other of me was essentially still Going To School every fall, and August meant what it always had: a physical and cognitive return to the educational premises. And then all of a sudden this year August stopped meaning anything like it once did. In late spring, I became pregnant with our first child. Let me, as I used to say to my students during lectures when an idea required further explanation, hit the pause button here. If this were an academic article, you would now be treated to a lengthy footnote about how I’d always hoped that if I ever had a child, I could stay home with it until it was school-aged. This was a simple and uncomplicated desire that could afford to remain simple and uncomplicated as long as it was theoretical. While there was no viable life-partner in the picture, such a decision was lodged (like so many of my academic ruminations) in the realm of abstract thought, and so it stayed for all of my adult life until I met my future husband two years ago, a mere year into my professorial career. And based on my longstanding desire, prior to our marriage, we agreed that I would stay home with the wee ones if wee ones ever materialized, at least in their early years. I would try freelance writing, editing, and perhaps some online teaching.

It would make a lot of sense, we figured, since I was quite unhappy as a professor and earned proportionately little money for my trouble. Pace Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose insightful article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of The Atlantic, but the thought of trying to have it all has always seemed to me quite exhausting. I just wanted some of it, and the part of it that I wanted changed as I walked through different seasons of life. So the decision was in place long before the baby ever was. It was still abstract and simple and uncomplicated, until the day in early April when two drugstore tests set the pre-arranged plan into motion. As I began the process of disentangling myself from a tenure-track job at my university, I felt liberated from unfulfilling employment, eager to spend the fall months prior to the baby’s arrival immersed in my beloved writing, and proud for being willing to run screaming from the ivory tower after three years of soul-searching that showed it to be an ill fit for me. I still do feel those things, and harbor no golden nostalgia for the frustrations of the career path I left. But what I do harbor is a giant question mark about who I am now, especially while my daughter is still an “inside baby,” and who I will be in the remaining months of her gestation, and who I will become as she emerges, and how we will become something together. Abstraction, simplicity, and lack of complication are rapidly eroding as I find myself in the midst of a new kind of August, and I have had to learn all over again what it means this year.

So far it has meant knowing, for the first time in my life, the months spanned by peach season, and that early August represented the final window of opportunity for capitalizing on the soft round spheres. I made a peach ricotta tart and did not make a syllabus. It has meant starting yoga classes, in the middle of the day, to help with my achy joints and to communicate with my girlie, my changing positions a sort of Morse code telegraphing her to be strong and peaceful and that I will try to be strong and peaceful for her. I sat in a roomful of people with legs crossed on rubber mats and did not sit in a roomful of people in pre-semester meetings. I measured for and ordered drapes and marched through Ikea looking for mounting hardware. I put up sheer taupe curtains in our living room and did not put books on an office bookshelf. I wrote and wrote and wrote and did not aim to produce a single article intended for a peer-reviewed journal. I am not sad, but August is feeling weird.

An entire book has been written about the difficulties and joys of either combining motherhood and academia or leaving the latter for the former, so I should have known that August wouldn’t sit right this time around. Reading Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life assured me that I wasn’t crazy for feeling dazed disorientation as I walked out of the halls of academia into the blazing sunlight of other paths. Of course it made sense that I was losing my emotional footing in the bright light of August, which every other year meant that I should be walking into the university instead of away from it. I still can’t see quite where I am headed and am only accepting, day by day, what this August means. To borrow the phrase of an incomparably greater wordsmith, T.S. Eliot, “in my end is my beginning.” August has always at its heart represented new beginnings for me, and although something large and weighty has come to an end, many other things have now begun. And when I think of this, I think that perhaps, after all, this August is not so very unlike the ones that have come before.

Looking Forward: Rethinking the Ladder

Growing up, my vision of “going to work” was extremely narrow. I pictured myself click-clacking down office hallways in high-heeled shoes. I imagined sitting at a desk lined with silver picture frames, shuffling endless stacks of papers, a telephone receiver balanced on my shoulder. The job itself was never entirely clear but it was obvious that the woman I would become was successful, powerful, and very, very important. Cut to the present. Most days, you’ll find me perched at my dining table, typing away at my computer next to a window that overlooks my building’s disarrayed jungle of a backyard. There’s not a silver frame or leather briefcase in sight, and I don’t own a single business suit. My uniform of choice usually involves a vintage dress and bare feet---no click-clacking heels for me.

As a relative newcomer to the freelance world, I realize that while I’m extremely lucky, my career is far from what the average New Yorker would consider “successful,” “powerful,” or “important.” It’s challenging, exciting, liberating, unconventional---but lucrative? Glamorous? Cosmopolitan? Not quite.

“If you really pushed yourself,” a friend very kindly said to me recently, “you could go so far. I see you running your own business. You could be a total power player at the top of your field.”

Of course, this was a nice thing to hear. Surprising, but nice. There’s a reason I’ve chosen to sacrifice certain things, however---a steady paycheck, employer-provided healthcare, the comfort of a routine---in order to follow the path I’m on. It’s because in the past year, I’ve thought seriously about what I want to prioritize. For some people, that might be the pursuit of a high-powered career---and I think that ambition is wonderful. For myself, though---and it feels a little funny to admit this---having a successful career is just not that high on my list. I have goals, of course, and I hope to always be involved in creative projects throughout my life, but as far as being a “power player”? Putting in long hours at an office? Moving up the corporate ladder? It’s just not me.

I like to think that my life doesn’t have to conform to a traditional image of success to be successful. I'm willing to sacrifice a higher-paying job and a certain amount of security to pursue what's meaningful to me.

When I look back on my life in forty years, what do I think will make me happiest?

Having traveled.

Having had adventures.

Having loved.

Having been a good mother.

Having been a student of music, food, art, and culture around the world.

Having taken risks.

Having helped others. 

Sounds successful, powerful, and very, very important to me.

YWRB: Truth

By Amanda Page I will always choose truth.

Even now, years past slumber party angst and antics, I prefer the subjective, nuanced, very dangerous truth.

In my youth, truth was confession. I'd offer up my flaws, my mistakes, my humiliations. My sin from simply being human---those were the only truths available. Certainly, I was full to the brim with that type of truth.  I had plenty of that type of truth to spare. I believed in offering it up, chasing it away, making it leave my body through my mouth and be judged by others. I didn't want it as my own.

As I've aged, I've witnessed maturity in my truth. My truth is no longer an open wound. It has healed, slowly, through years of claiming itself. My truth is owned. I do not borrow it. I simply believe it.

It differs in eyes that aren't mine. If I were to offer it up, then you might see a shade darker or lighter than what I insist is present. There is such a thing as a true red, but I might think it's crimson while another chooses firetruck or candy apple. If I decide my true red is the red of flames and fire, then that, my friend, is the truth I choose once again.

The truth doesn't expose us. It doesn't excuse us or even explain us.

We don't need a game to reveal it.

Although, the game might build a friendship. It might offer insight into someone unexpected. It might twist your truth until you see it take a different shape. It's still your truth.

Dare to own it.

The End is the Beginning

by Trina McNeilly Is the end really the end or is it just the beginning?  It’s arguable.  So much so, that I argue with myself on the subject on a regular basis.   The end of what, you ask?  I suppose that could make all of the difference, but, no not really.   The end of a relationship. The end of a job.  The end of a season.  The end of dream.  The end of your sanity.   Sometimes, I feel like I’m at the end of everything, although it probably appears to others that I am not at the end of anything.  You know, the end of my rope, all I can take, all out of options, no where to go from here, that kind of thing.  That kind of end.

It’s the frequent and regular kind of end that nags us all from time to time.  This kind of end tries to befriend some more than others.  And lately, I seem to be one of them.

I am at one of those ends.  And I’m standing at the edge of end squinting my eyes for the smallest bit of beginning.  I’ve always been able to see beginnings, pretty clearly even.  But this time, my tired eyes are straining---straining in the search for a speck.  If I get a glimpse, I’ll be good.  At least that is what I tell myself.

I’ll stare down that speck of a beginning, that small piece of hope and I won’t take my eyes off of it.  I’ll try my best to catch it and put it in my pocket.  But than a beginning can never be hidden for long.

All beginnings must start with an end. And I think the end that I am at is my childhood.  I know, strange words and an even stranger idea, coming from an almost 35-year-old mother of four.  But the truth is, I’ve only ever felt like me.  And the me I’ve always seen, when I walk past the mirror or hear myself in my head, is the 10 year old freckle-kissed kid, with a twinkle in her eye and plan up her sleeve.  A girl who spent her days taking on the neighborhood by way of her royal blue 10 speed and splashing away any small concerns in the backyard pool.  I had nothing to worry about except the plan I had for the next day or perhaps the rest of the summer.

I only ever wanted to grow up so I could be a school bus driver, try out for the Mickey Mouse Club, get my license, have a boyfriend, wear makeup, and grow boobs---all letdowns and disappointments concluded by age 16 . . . which led me back to the notion that being a kid is a way better deal.

But I grew up in the way that we all do.  That is, in the way that we are supposed to.  I got married, got a job, and had kids.  And yet, although the mirror, daily, shocks me into reality, somehow, on the inside I still feel like my 10 year old self.

I have been waiting and I suppose just expecting that one day, someday, I’d wake up and feel like the adult that I surely should be.  All of my Oprah watching days only led me to believe, and rightfully expect, that my 30’s would gift me with a new sense of self.  Every 30-something on the show from movie stars, regular plain people, to Oprah herself said over and again that once they hit their 30’s they suddenly felt comfortable in their own skin.  They knew who they were, what they wanted, who they were not, and what they did not want.  The self-assured weren’t afraid to speak up for themselves and almost couldn’t care less what other people thought about them anymore.  It was as if this confidence of ease magically took over their former unsure selves and no decision was a hard decision at this point because they just knew . . . knew themselves and knew what to do and certainly what not to do.

However contrived, that was my ideal of what it must really feel like to be grown up.   Yes, I am idealistic.  I am, in fact, a person with a lot of ideals.  Sometimes and maybe even often, mistaken for being naive   And wouldn’t you know, most of my ideals were configured, thought up, created and baked to perfection as a young one.

I told you I was at the end.   And here is how I’m kind of, for the most part, certain that I am likely, and almost surely, at the end of my childhood . . . because, I’ve found myself at the end of many of my ideals.  The grown up truth is that things are not always as they seem and certainly not always as you want them to be.  The end.

Today, it’s “how do you do?” to the grown up me.  It may still be a little ways off.  But it is a speck that I can at least see.  And no, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say goodbye to the hopeful freckle-faced me.  But now, I can at least guide her and help her to be the woman she is supposed to be.  The beginning.

Telling a new story

"Roxanne Krystalli is a gender-related development specialist in conflict and post-conflict areas."

What do you do when the first line in your biography no longer fits?

I am between stories at the moment, a process that involves consistently living off the top two layers of my still-packed suitcases, debating the merits of paint swatches, and confronting the reverse culture shock inherent in returning to what used to be a home with the task of sorting out the disorienting dance between the unfamiliar and the too familiar.

And the first line no longer fits. Having worked in conflict and post-conflict areas, I know not to confound conflict and war. Conflict, human pain and strife exist in Boston and Colombia and Guatemala and Jerusalem and I have called all these places home at some point along the journey. Yet, you would hardly call Boston a "conflict or post-conflict area."

You would hardly call me a specialist. I have grown wary of specialists and experts. The longer I have worked with women affected by conflict worldwide, the more I have uncovered the boundaries of my knowledge. The universe of concepts I do not understand and of life I cannot make sense of keeps expanding. It would be out of step for the titles and labels to keep narrowing. "Specialist" and "expert" do not fit. Do not even get me started on "guru."

As I fill out the paperwork for orientation at the graduate program that is anchoring my return to Boston, I notice everyone is grabbing for story. The prompts might as well read "Tell us who you are . . . in 250 words or less. In a paragraph. In 140 characters. In a text message without emoticons. With bells and whistles, without embellishment, with enough intrigue for us to want to be your friends, roommates, or mentors."

Life stories evolve, and so do their 140-character biographies. I am slowly realizing that a bio is not the story of "is", not exclusively the story of here and now. It is a journey between points, a question about the axis on which you are traveling. The story of "has lived and has worked", not of "lives and works." And, perhaps most thankfully, it is the story of beyond "lives and works." On Twitter, in her own blog, in the Admitted Students Handbook, Roxanne Krystalli is - still - a gender-related development specialist who works in conflict and post-conflict areas.

In life, Roxanne Krystalli is in transition, perpetual transition. Her heart is in gender advocacy and conflict management, in the Middle East and Latin America. This is the work that feeds her faith in humanity, a phrase she overuses, right up there with "the universe is winking." Her mind likes to wrap itself around the concepts of remembrance and forgetting, nostalgia and grief, of storytelling as a vehicle of empathy and, shyly, maybe even as a vehicle of peacebuilding. She sees the world, really sees, through the viewfinder of a camera. She loves panda bears, everything that smells like vanilla, and the art of loving in itself---as an art.

This is not the stuff of LinkedIn, of student handbooks, or maybe even not of Twitter. But it is the story of now, the biography of a journey from elsewhere and a past "then" to a future that has yet to be painted.

My Story: Purpose

For most people, mid-life crises strike in middle age, when paunches are appearing and more hairs are grey than not. For me, the period of searching I began to jokingly refer to as my “quarter-life crisis” came calling a few years ago in early spring, a few months before I turned 21. Eight months after I got married, it was becoming clear that a bachelor’s degree was not going to be in my immediate future. My class schedule had been pared down until hardly anything remained; I spent my days going to class and doing homework for a degree that was realistically impossible at that particular moment in my life.

I felt adrift, confused, unsure of what my purpose in life was or what my next step should be. If not a college graduate, then what? My health wasn’t stable enough for even a part-time job. I desperately wanted children, but my husband and I had agreed to wait until my health was a little more manageable. Coupled with the fact that I knew that my cystic fibrosis was nearly a guarantee of a future infertility struggle, it seemed clear that motherhood was not something that would come to me easily or soon.

As the trees began to unfurl their first delicate green buds, I wrestled over and over with the feeling of being lost, purposeless, meaningless. Could there be value in a life so small, I wondered? Could there be a value in a life that was, more often than not, lived from the couch? Could there be value in a life that lacked all of the markers our society uses to define success—a degree, a job, children?

A few weeks after my soul-searching began, I reflected in a rather macabre moment that really, my “quarter-life crisis” might be considered a true “mid-life crisis,” if you consider a mid-life crisis to be the anxiety that strikes when you’ve lived half the years you can be expected to live. Currently, the average life expectancy for a cystic fibrosis patient is in the late thirties. Years later, I learned that plenty of CF patients in their early twenties experience a similar mid-life crisis.

Weeks passed. The snow in my mountain-locked home melted, leaving the earth saturated with mud and the constant sound of dripping in my ears. And still I felt empty, longing for a purpose. I had always been driven; I’d gone after the things I’d wanted with energy and zeal, and I usually got them. I had always had a purpose. I had been a daughter, a writer, a big sister and surrogate mother, a violinist, a student. I had had all number of big dreams, from publishing a book to living in Hawaii to teaching at a dance studio.

I felt, now, as though everything was being peeled away from me. I was left with only the barest of essentials, the simplest of responsibilities. The scope of my life was narrowing. I thought about these things constantly, talking them over with my husband, writing about them in my journal and on my blog, praying desperately for a purpose for my life.

And slowly, over a period of weeks, I began to find what I was looking for.

As days passed and I continued my relentless questioning, a word came into my mind again and again. Homemaker. It was not a term I had spent much time thinking about before; in the brief moments that I had, I had considered it a rather outdated phrase, one that pigeonholed a woman into a narrow frame of reference and failed to recognize her vibrant, dynamic nature.

But the word stayed. Homemaker. And as I pondered it, I had a revelation.

All my life, I had thought of "homemaker" as synonymous with "mother." After all, "homemaker" is the official term for a stay-at-home mother. When applying to college, I’d spent a lot of time checking boxes to indicate that my mom was a "homemaker." "Homemaker" was, in my opinion, the label that the corporate world had come up with to make a life of diaper changes and laundry baskets something you can put on an official document.

But as I thought about it, I realized something sensational: "homemaker" was not, in fact, the same thing as "mother." Although many mothers are homemakers, a homemaker does not have to be a mother.

I thought about the phrase: a simple compound word, really. Home-maker. One who creates a home. A woman who devotes herself to making her home a haven, a place of safety, comfort, and peace—for herself, her husband, and anyone who enters.

In that seemingly innocuous word, I found the sense of purpose I had been so desperately seeking. There were many things that I couldn’t—and still can’t—do. A year after that mid-life crisis, I officially withdrew from college. Three years since that spring of searching, I still don’t have a degree, or a job, or a child.

But I have been a homemaker. In every place that we have lived, I have worked hard to create a place of joy and love for my husband and myself. I have welcomed friends into our home for comfort, and companionship, and lots of late nights of games and laughter. I’ve discovered a passion for creating good, healthy food for my family.

I have made a home.

That moment of realization—the light-bulb instant where I realized just how much purpose could be found in such a neglected phrase—did not solve all my problems. I still had moments of guilt, and despair, and long nights where I felt worthless and obsolete. I still do.

But what that chilly spring so many years ago did do was answer one question that had haunted me for a long time before. Can there be value in a life so small?

Because what I have learned is that the answer is yes. There is always value. Even in the days where I feel most helpless—even in the days where I can hardly get off the couch—there is value. I am the maker of our home, an integral part in this family of two that my husband and I have created.

I have purpose.

In this space, Cindy Baldwin will share her evolution---the ways she has come to accept the circumstances of her life with cystic fibrosis and find great contentment within them. You can read the beginning of her story here and here.