The Still Point

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
                                                    Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

-- "Burnt Norton" - T.S. Eliot

 

I've come back to this poem (part of The Four Quartets) for many years now, but recently this passage has been resonating and resonating and resonating with me.  My project for this spring and summer, as we are hurtling towards another move and a huge life change (probably the most significant in years), and as I have been emerging from the first year's fog that precedes the birth of a child, has been to attempt to obtain a sense of stillness in myself.  "Stillness" is a small word for a monumental effort: it encapsulates the attempt to learn mindfulness, remaining in the present, cultivating a relaxed and flexible mind, relinquishing judgment of myself and others.  While I have played with these ideals in the past, never before did it seemed essential, or possible, for me to achieve them for myself.  Yet, following my crisis of self during the winter and my desperate grasping for new strategies to achieve balance in my mind and emotions, these ideals have become paramount.

 

They have involved many techniques: yoga, therapy, meditation.  As I've journeyed deeper into my own self, I've often felt uneasy and uncomfortable in my surroundings.  And I can't say that I'm necessarily any nearer to achieving that still point than I was a few months ago. 

 

But what I can say is this.  I have sense of intense optimism about the future.  For the past year, I've lived with an indiscernible dread at the prospect of undertaking this big move and starting this big job.  I've been worried that, taking all these steps that seem intellectually right for my career and my family, I would inevitably be unhappy.  I've been anxious about the long hours my new job will entail and how that will impact my time with my family and my general contentment and well-being.  I've feared the lingering guilt over choosing a demanding career "over" time with my daughter. 

 

Recently, though, this dread has begun to subside.  I have begun to realize that, no matter how hectic my life may get (between work and family and personal maintenance), I can still have stillness within myself.  And from this place of stillness, I can enjoy my life in the day-to-day moments.  Quality time with my daughter.  Nights out with my husband.  Yoga classes.  Trips to farmer's markets and coffee shops on the weekends.  Reading good, long books.  Intellectually stimulating work.  Time with family both near and far.  Vacations to interesting, beautiful places.

 

From here on out, I will not:

• Feel guilt over how I choose to spend my time
• Feel regret for missing events or experiences
• Feel anxiety over situations and people I cannot control
• Judge myself for my emotions
• Judge my family for the way they express love
• Forget about the still points in every day

From here on out, I will:

• Be kind to myself
• Be kind to my family
• Be kind to the world
• Be mindful of today

More spring meals

Although I've been planning meals for a long time now, we have (over the last six months) come to realize that, with Elsie eating full meals now, our three-meal per week plan was no longer working.  At the end of every week, we'd come up short.  In addition, we've been receiving weekly produce boxes and (sometimes) a Blue Apron delivery of ingredients for pre-planned meals.  Finally, although she's always been a good eater, even as a little baby, Elsie has started morphing into a picky eater before our eyes.  With that in mind, we've instituted some new food rules in our house, with the most important being that we eat a starter vegetable course with every meal.  We figure that if she's hungry enough, she'll eat (or at least try) her veggies.

With all these different infusions of food and food rules, I've had to take the planning up a notch.
  And so, for the last few weeks, I've been scribbling out a menu and posting it on the fridge.  It's been fun but has certainly involved a lot more time in the kitchen. 

I need a place to record not only some of the new recipes I've gathered but also some of the alterations and tips I've used when cooking the recipes.  For next time.  So here they are.

Meal 1

Green salad with carrots, green onion, and feta
Tempeh reubens (Veganomicon)

Meal 2

Cold cucumber soup
Grilled tomato bruschetta (Bittman)
Strawberry tart (Bittman)

• Tip: use more fruit than you think you'll need, and don't pour the sauce over the tart when it's finished.  Leave it on the side for drizzling.

Meal 3 (Picnic!)

Deviled eggs (Bittman)
Lentil Cornish pasties

• No real recipe here.  For the filling, I just sautéed carrots, onion, and celery with thyme, cumin, and paprika until they were super soft.  I cooked French lentils separately until almost done.  I mixed everything together and cooked for a few minutes with about a half cup/one cup of turkey stock and a little flour for thickening.
• I used pre-made pie crust for the pastry, rolling it out and cutting it into rounds using a saucer.  I had to keep putting the dough back in the fridge, because colder dough is easier to shape into pasties.
• I filled the dough rounds and sealed them into half-moon shapes.  I brushed them with an egg wash.  I baked them at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes.
• They were pretty delicious, although next time I think I might add some cheese in the filling and season with a bit more salt and pepper.

Blueberry custard (Bittman)

• The real thing to remember here is that a full-sized custard needs to bake at least TWICE AS LONG as the recipe in the Bittman cookbook.  (At least an hour, I would say, and probably at 350 degrees, rather than 300 degrees.)

Meal 4

Creamy broccoli soup

• I am not sure I'd make this one again.  It tasted predominantly of turkey stock, and was a bit grainy and thin.  I like the idea of a pureed soup, though, and Elsie really like this one, but I wasn't wild about it.

Baked potatoes

Meal 5

Carrots cooked in coconut milk and rosemary

• This recipe was quite lovely.  It took a bit longer to cook than the instructions (40 minutes instead of 20), and I made the parcel out of tin foil instead of parchment paper, but the carrots came out delicate, just barely soft, and lightly sweet.  Elsie loved them.

Tofu and cabbage stir fry

• This also was a real winner, as we all love a good stir fry.  Per the usual, the tofu is messy and takes longer than the recipe, but everything else came together quite quickly.  (FYI, I did most of the veggie chopping the night before, so I could just throw everything in.)  I added some sweet onion (because I had it), and omitted the ginger and veggie stock (because I didn't have it).  It was still delicious.  We ate it with rice.

Meal 6

Bok choy with crispy shallots and sesame seeds (an old standby from Veganomicon)
Baked sweet potatoes

Spring meals, the french way

Here's what we've been cooking this week:

Meal 1

Cherry tomatoes with rosemary

• No vanilla bean, but it was pretty good nonetheless

White pizza with ricotta, arugula pesto, and pea tips (Blue Apron)

Meal 2

Zucchini carpaccio
Spring minestrone with fava beans and asparagus (Blue Apron)

Meal 3

Green salad
Macaroni and cheese with broccoli

• Chop broccoli into fairly small florets
• No need to cook broccoli ahead of time (if cooked, it ends up disintegrating in the mac and cheese)

Meal 4

Skillet sweet potatoes

• The coconut oil will cook off after about 10 minutes of cooking, so add some water a couple times in the last 5-10 minutes (this will help caramelize the sugars anyway)

Kale and leek pie

• Generally use the filling recipe, but omit the chicken and add gruyere/white cheddar to the top of the filling once placed in the pie
• Use frozen pie crusts from Trader Joe's to make one large pie
• Bake at 375 for about an hour
• Can be assembled the night before and reserved in the fridge

Meal 5

Shaved carrot salad
Tofu stir fry (Blue Apron)

Other cookings

• NY Times No Knead Bread
• Zucchini & apple savory muffins (Bittman)

Mother's Day

I need to stop reading the Huff Post Parenting section.  It's overrun by mommy bloggers... and, I suppose, for good reason (because who else is going to blog?).  But I just read yet another article, this one entitled "What Real Moms Want for Mother's Day," which included a litany of quotes from the mommy bloggers regarding their Mother's Day wishes.

It seems like the same wishes were represented over and over: (1) time to myself to read a book, (2) a day in the house, by myself, without the kids, (3) having someone else clean my house, (4) getting to use the bathroom by myself, (5) sleep in past 7:00 a.m., and (6) a vacation alone, without my family.

I just . . . can't relate.  While I recognize that these are valid desires, they all seem to come from the mommy blogger/stay-at-home mom contingent.  Would it hurt anyone to poll the working moms out there, perhaps to see what we want?

And maybe there are tons of working moms out there who want the same things.  I can't deny it would be nice to have someone clean my house, to take a nice vacation, to sleep in once in a while.  And I am sure there are other working moms who would like a good night's sleep, or more time to themselves.

But here's what I really want for Mother's Day: a full day with my baby girl, who is growing up so fast it makes my heart stop.  Who wakes in the morning with a head of curly hair and a sweet smile, smelling like sleep and soap, and who I have to kiss goodbye just minutes after kissing her good morning.  I want to get her out of her crib, change her morning diaper, and eat breakfast with her.  I want to fix her hair and pick out her outfit for the day.  I want to take her for a morning walk, or to the library, or to the park.  I want to read to her before her naps.  I want to play hide and seek with her and sit out in our back yard watching her dig through the dirt and move rocks from pot to pot.  I want to pick strawberries with her.  I want to bake zucchini bread while she sits on the counter and watches.  I want to give her a bath and snuggle her warm, wet-haired self as we read books before bed, her bare feet curling inside my arms.  I want time with this girl. 

I just want time.

Six months

Six months without writing.  Am I surprised?  Not entirely.  Despite writing all day, every day for my career, the time I am able to devote to my own writing is difficult to snatch.  Strangely enough, however, it's a symptom (or a cause?) of something I've been meditating on a great deal recently: the isolation of the working mama.

I hadn't realized until recently that, in my current situation, I have very little contact with other working mothers.  None of my direct colleagues have children (or even spouses).  Outside of work, the other mamas I spend any time with are all those who stay home with their babies.  Although I hope that when we make the move to a new city and a new (and larger) work organization, I'll be able to make more connections with working mamas, I'm alone right now.  And, in retrospect, starting my first "new career" job as a first-time mom without the support system of other working moms has been incredibly difficult.

When taking a break at work, I often find myself browsing the "mommy blogs."  And while often this provides a panacea for the ache I feel at being separated from my baby during the day, I often harbor a nagging irritation that these blogs portray one type of perspective: those of the mama who stays home with her babies.  I can't deny that it makes sense.  Working as a blogger allows one the flexibility to stay home.  And working outside the home doesn't always allow the time to also blog.  You see how well this blog has worked out.

So no matter where I turn, I've had so little modeling of working motherhood.  I wish I had realized this sooner.  I wish I had thought, before starting work, to line up some kind of support system of working mamas, to seek out my people.  I wish I hadn't spent the last seven months feeling All the Feels every single working mama feels but simultaneously feeling like I'm the only one. 

I feel like I have to say it: the experience of working outside the home is seismically different from staying at home to care with your babies.  I suppose this isn't a ground-breaking realization.  I suppose others have said it before me.  But what is so surprising to me is that, after a certain point, when I need advice or commiseration, I no longer want to talk just to "other moms" be they working or stay-at-home.  I want--need--to hear from other working mamas.  I need to hear how they do it.  But more than that, I need to know how they feel and how they manage the daily emotional battle of leaving their babies every. single. morning.  I need to talk to working mamas whose babies are grown and find out if it gets easier.  I need to know what they did to make it work.  I need to know that their babies still grew up beautiful, and that they still loved their mamas, at the end of the day.

I can't get this from mamas who stay home with their babies.  I just can't.