The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl

I’m throwing caution to the compost—and perhaps tossing humiliation into the cinnamon buns—but I’m doing it. I’m reviewing a cookbook.

Now, in my opinion, this particular book is no ordinary cookbook. You know there are books out there masquerading as cookbooks but really are not. They’re often a forum for a writer to go beyond the cooking experience; to experiment and surmise about wider issues. Authors like Michael Pollan, Jen Lin-Liu and Julie Powell are ones that come to mind, who have looked at the social implications of food, social history and the psychology of cooking.

Alright, this book doesn’t fit into those categories, either.  What I like about this book is that it makes me laugh. And it makes me want to eat. And bake and cook. All of those things I often like to do, but this one also makes me want to invite author Ree Drummond over to hang out at the same time.

Drummond is a very funny albeit humble writer. Her book catches you charmingly off-guard right from the get-go, with her descriptions of favourite ingredients and cooking apparatuses: 

“Butter. I’m not afraid to use it. It’s flavourful, versatile and a necessary component in most of my recipes.”

“Iron Skillet. If properly seasoned an iron skillet will become not only your best friend in the kitchen but also your uncle, cousin, grandmother and brother. Iron skillets get nice and hot, perfect for searing a juicy rib-eye steak.”

“Commercial baking sheets. My family considered an intervention this year because I collect these 18 X 12-inch babies the way some women collect Marie Osmond dolls. They’re the perfect size for my Chocolate Sheet Cake and hold more cookies than your average cookie sheet.”

You want to just keep reading, which is a wonderful twist on a “collection of recipes, instructions and information about the preparation and serving of foods.” (Definition from www.dictionary.reference.com ) Most cookbooks are an essential reference book, used only when you need it and only for particular items of interest: I need to find how many cups of sugar to put into strawberry freezer jam; how do I know when the cream sauce is beyond hope; how do I tell when the brownie is done? How many cookbooks have you read that you just want to keep reading for pure enjoyment?

It isn’t just the entertaining writing style that makes you want to turn the pages. Drummond photographs each step of the cooking process, so it is visually wonderful, too. Many of these step-by-steps are punctuated by groupings of witticisms that could only have been inspired by an accompanying glass of wine:

“2. Place the hot potatoes on a cutting board and dice them into 1-inch-ish pieces. Inch-ish. Say that five times fast. Just for kicks. My goal in life is to tack ‘ish’ onto as many words as possible. Possible-ish.

3. Heat a skillet over medium low to medium heat. Next put a little vegetable oil in the pan. A tablespoon is good.

4. Scrape the pan you used this morning to make bacon. You made all the bacon this morning… right?

5. Then, because I usually straddle the fence between ridiculousness and utter foolishness, I add a tablespoon of bacon fat to the skillet. ‘Cause it tastes good, that’s why.

6. Go ahead and make peace with yourself then add the onion.”

But it was her preamble on the cinnamon buns—sorry; rolls--that killed me:

“If you begin making these for your friends and family for the holidays, I promise you this: you’ll become famous. And, on a less positive note, people will forget everything else you’ve ever accomplished in your life. From that moment on, you’ll be known—and loved—only for your cinnamon rolls. But don’t worry! You’ll get used to it.”

With the pressure of doom upon you, how could you not want to try making them, let alone eating them? Better yet, find some unwitting baker-friend to make them, so you escape the fate but you enjoy the food! 

Originally published on the Nonfiction Book Club Blog

Efficiency is an illusion

Efficiency.

I fight it.

Must be my latent teenage self, but I rebel against the inclination like a parent hollering at me to put away my shoes.

Except now I'm the one doing the hollering.

If I were efficient, I would find the time to do all the things my adult ADD (sorry; that's 'multi-tasking') brain is telling me I should be doing instead of the thing I am doing.

If I were efficient, I could more effectively slack when it's time to slack. But instead I'm in a constant state of semi-rebellion. I'm set against the legion of ideas, tasks, day-dreams, wish-fulfillment and downright requirements that press on me, most of which I would like to accomplish but because none of these time-leeching entities will co-operate and line up into an order of operations, I'm at a loss.

Why won't they line up? Because I treat them all like bee-ootiful butterflies, flitting by, catching my foolish eye.

Perhaps this is the true reason I can't grow up.

Windfall

I thought swashbuckling days were over. Guess I was wrong.

 In Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming, author McKenzie Funk shows us how economic opportunities can be found in all negative aspects of climate change. He states “the climate is changing faster than we are [but]… Life will go on. Before it does, we should all make sure we understand the reality.” These are true statements. But when Funk states “…these pages reveal something important: In an unfair world, rational self-interest is not always what we wish it would be,” he’s not being clear which side of the dike he stands upon. He admits seeing the environmental movement as being misguided, employing “magical thinking” that will not produce results in the developed world. That also may be so. But does it mean that we give in, wholesale, to the altering of the world’s ecosystems just because the current approach is “naïve?”

Here’s a representative take on the issue, from the introduction:

 “'What are we going to do? We have to change the way we live!’ Instead of working for Greenpeace, which he’d considered after graduation, he [Mark Fulton, Deutsche Bank’s chief climate strategist] became a stockbroker, then an analyst, and he’d eventually helped Deutsche Bank identify global warming as a ‘megatrend’ that could generate profit for decades. ‘It’s always helped me, climate change, in my career,’ he joked.”

I’m not laughing, and to be honest, I know McKenzie Funk, for all his objectivity, is careful not to, as well.

A pirate is a plunderer, a strong-arm who takes from the defenseless for his own gain. A pirate is a man like American investor Phil Heilberg, who negotiates with General Paulino Matip of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for farmland in war-torn Sudan. Matip is happy to lease the land, even though he does not have ownership of it, officially. And it’s all okay, politically; Heilberg tried negotiating with the Dinka leadership but when they tried to get him to bribe them, he switched to the Nuer faction.  Heilberg’s idol is Ayn Rand, who he says “believed pursuing profit was itself a moral act, a kind of enlightened selfishness: Place yourself above all else; get in no one’s way, and let no one get in yours; give no charity, and expect none.” 

Sounds a lot like what got us here in the first place.

Not all of Funk’s research lands us in such murky polluted waters. He also goes to the Netherlands, land of the medieval dikes, who are builders of the $7.5 billion Delta Works, “the world’s greatest coastal defense network”.  Potential clients include the Marshall Islands and Bangladesh as well as river delta cities like New Orleans, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and New York City.  Land reclamation innovation comes in all forms in the Netherlands; research into ‘smart soils’ with bacteria to create strong bonds to seal cracks in levees and dikes is one concept, another is floating cities.

This is a fascinating book, made more compelling by the thin line between economic innovation and moral indignation that Funk treads upon.  Being an environmentally-conscious consumer, I do mourn the damaged state of our world, wrought by our cumulative hands, just as many folks do. I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly support this shoulder-shrugging stance to embrace droughts, floods, and storm-damages as economic opportunities.  It’s giving in, offering credence to the sins; it’s a very pirate-like approach. But, to let Funk have the last word: “[t]he hardest truth about climate change is that it is not equally bad for everyone…For the most part, we are not our own victims.”  

The UnSummer

Does summer feel unreal to you? I think the long winter really played with my head. I feel more like I've moved away, to a warmer climate, than the seasons really did change and we actually are in summer. I keep waiting for the return of "normal" weather, as if this is an elaborate meteorological ruse.

Not that I could blame Mother Nature for wanting to slap us upside the collective head. If I woke up tomorrow and we were knee-deep in snow, I would nod, accepting it humbly. We certainly deserve it.

I've just spent the hot July 1st weekend sweltering, sun-burning, and bug-bitten and yet, unreality is still mentally pervasive. So, nice day, but when's the windchill going to kick in?

Be A Free Range Human: Escape the 9 to 5, Create a Life You Love and Still Pay the Bills

Here it is. The perfect Business Beach Read. It’s Marianne Cantwell’s Be a Free Range Human: Escape the 9 to 5, Create a Life You Love and Still Pay the Bills.

You know that annoying thing you do compulsively, that thing that makes the people around you say “enough already”?  No, not THAT thing, but perhaps it’s the fact that you can’t stop singing, or that you try to fix every problem that your friends have, or maybe that you always build on someone else’s idea until it’s been transformed into something new? Or are you too witty for your own good? It’s that predilection that you’ve always regarded as a personal weakness because you’ve never been doing it in the right place with the right tools.

Cantwell says “it turns from a weakness to a strength when a) you do it in the right environment (ie: not unasked among family or within an organisation that truly doesn’t give a damn) and b) you step into it and own it.” Cantwell’s book (there’s also her blog at http://www.free-range-humans.com) presents a series of exercises to determine your secret, untapped, irritatingly buried abilities.  Her first question is wonderfully whimsical: “When you were about 8 years old, [what were] the three things you could generally be found doing for play”?

If you think about it, that really is rather telling.  Were you building Lego? Now, was that to see how high you could build, or was it to create a scene you could play X-men in? If you were riding your bike, was it as a means to go visit friends, or to fly down the nearest hill? Why you did these activities is as important as what the activities were.

This is a quirky book, so be prepared for it. Enjoy the process! No more singing only in the shower. Get out there and let them hear you!

Originally posted on the Mississauga Library System's May 2014 edition of the Business Bridge and on the Nonfiction Book Club Blog

True Blue

Why is it that wildflowers are so charming? You go out and spend money on domesticated showy plants, carefully tend them, willingly replace them, forget to water them, hope for them after a hard winter, and they usually do exactly do as you planned. But here we have a lovely jumble of true-blue wee joys, picked in my own backyard (it's a bit weedy right now) by my son's hand and whimsically arranged by he and his sister in a water glass. And it gives me more pleasure than I could have ever expected.

My son (and my daughters when they were his age) would happily pick me a bushel of dandelion heads. He still sees their beauty and I'm awfully glad of that. But I know how rare blue flowers are and we currently have an unexpected bumper crop of them. If I'd grown them myself, I'd freak if he handed me a bouquet like this. But as it is, they are an easily accepted boon of love and of nature. And they make me smile every time I walk into the kitchen.

The Reason I Jump

It’s likely that you’ve never read anything by Naoki Higashida. His is a new voice, an entirely unique one, and I can say that without fear of reprisal. Higashida is a 13-year-old Japanese boy who suffers from autism.

This book has been translated by David Mitchell (remember Cloud Atlas?) and KA Yoshida, parents themselves of a child with autism.  Autism is a very personal and still very mysterious disorder that is growing in prevalence in our worldwide population. It does not present the same way in all its sufferers, in fact diagnosis and even the definition of this disorder is in constant flux. Wouldn’t it be more helpful to know what it is like from the inside? Especially for a child?

Higashida can tell us, from a literate child’s perspective. He lets us know that autism sufferers have a rich emotional life, but a tortuous physical existence. For him, this means that he constantly wrestles with his inability to comply with the social demands put on him. He confesses to despair over his situation: "It's as if my whole body, except for my soul, feels as if it belongs to somebody else and I have zero control over it. I don't think you could ever imagine what an agonizing sensation this is." And this is 100% of every waking moment for him.

The book is mostly set up into a series of questions and answers, posed by occasionally rude but unknown “normal” people, questions like “why don’t you do what you’re told right away” or “why do you speak in that peculiar way”. Higashida is patient and eloquent with each query, and often quite poetical in his responses.

My favourite response is to the question: “why do you ask the same questions over and over.” Higashida's reply is beautiful: "...I do understand things, but my way of remembering them works differently than everyone else's. I imagine a normal person's memory is arranged continuously, like a line. My memory, however, is more like a pool of dots. I'm always 'picking up' these dots--by asking my questions--so I can arrive back at the memory that the dots represent."

Higashida confirms that training and practice are essential to his success and repeatedly asks for patience and forbearance from those who care for him; "[w]hen we sense you've given up on us, it makes us feel miserable. So please keep helping us, through to the end."

Learning to communicate (painstakingly, with the help of his mother) via keyboard has been a godsend for Higashida. In his own words: "[o]ften, while I was learning this method, I'd feel utterly beaten...[w]hat kept me hammering away at it was the thought that to live my life as a human being, nothing is more important than being able to express myself." I agree. 

At only 135 pages, this is a book worth your time to read. Be enlightened and don't ask the rude questions!

Originally published on the Nonfiction Book Club Blog

Fuzzy World of Sick

Being sick has its own strange rewards. It removes you from the structure of life. You have permission to "be excused" even if it is only your own nod of assent.

I feel peaceable. Not just peaceful, but as if I am an emissary of peace; I bring it with me like a big hat. I'd probably cry if someone challenged my peace, but it's big and very present nonetheless.

I have slowed down. I need to be slow--something that usually drives me crazy--in all things. Walking, thinking. Typing. What was I saying? Yeah, thinking.

I wish I could say that it makes me sharper in other unexpected things, but instead it makes me feel fuzzy; in the head, in my ears, in my preferred clothing choices, in my wit. I giggle at silly things. Which makes me cough.  Often uncontrollably.

I know I'll get better soon. But for now, I'll try to enjoy the fluffy, peace-spouting effects along with the aches and fatigue. I'm off for a nap.

Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City

For me, reading Anna Quindlen’s slender slip of a book was like meeting up with a like-minded friend in a pub on a foggy night. The farther I read, the more I kept thinking “I know! Me, too!”  I, too, grew up on a diet of English books (Edith Blyton’s Famous Five series and Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia come to mind) and often wished more people in my world exclaimed “I say!”  while drinking ginger beer.

Quindlen was an American anglophile long before she ventured to London in the flesh (like Henry James, like T. S. Eliot), waiting purposefully until she was in her forties. When I first traveled to England in my almost-thirties, I was also worried that the spell of all its fictions would be shattered once I walked the hallowed ground myself. Anyone who has been there can attest; England truly has the power of literary and historical magic still firmly in hand. I was not disappointed and neither was Quindlen.

Quindlen focuses on the grand city herself, and walks the streets and boroughs with her estimable ghost army of fictional tour guides: P. D. James’ Adam Dagliesh in Soho; A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin at Buckingham Palace; and John Galworthy’s  Forsythe family’s sooty assessments of  Green Street, Montpelier Square and Knightsbridge; to name but a few.

Charles Dickens also wandered with Quindlen and bemoaned many a street in London, but Quindlen quickly learned to take his wailings with a grain of salt: “[a] visitor can take the Tube to London’s most notorious neighborhoods, and not see anything that approaches the dingy squalor of Dickens’ London. This is either a tribute to urban renewal or literary overstatement.” She tends to believe the latter is the stronger case.

London also withholds some charm for what it can no longer reveal. On the south side of the Thames, across from the Tower, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, there is the South Bank and Southwark. Historically, this area was “a kind of London frontier”, where the smelly tanneries and soap factories were placed. This was where Chaucer's Canterburian-bound travelers begun their pilgrimage. Here were the original locations of Shakespeare's Globe Theatres, not too far from its rebuilt modern successor.  Now, “Southwark is new London with a vengeance” and you’d be hard pressed to imagine the stink and decline that once defined this part of town. But it is likely that most tourists, however interested they may be in finding the literary made manifest, appreciate breathing the improved air!

Quindlen admitted there were those occasions when London let her down. 221b Baker Street, home of detective Sherlock Holmes, was commemorated downwind of the address, between 237 and 241. Holmes himself, “who loathed sentiment, much less pretence,” would be beside himself if he saw the Sherlock Holmes food and beverage shop,  Sherlock memorabilia and souvenir shops, and the fake bobby at his wrongly addressed door! Even London can fall victim to kitsch, as much as any other beloved place.

  Originally posted on the Nonfiction Book Club Blog

Science of Kissing: What our Lips are Telling Us

Sheril Kirshenbaum, science journalist, asks a simple question: why do we kiss?  She finds lots of answers, and even more questions.

Did you know that the scientific word for smooching is osculation? It's derived from the Latin word osculum, defined as a "social or friendship kiss, or kiss out of respect."

Did you know that “kissing [i]s practiced by over 90 percent of cultures around the world”?

Did you realize that the chemical exchange of saliva and pheromones can help kissers subconsciously determine if this match is The One?

But why do we engage in this behaviour? There is no easy answer. Kissing is serious business. Okay, not too serious—Kirshenbaum’s truly scientific book is written with an abundantly affectionate humour.

To try to discern our reasons for kissing, Kirshenbaum looks at a variety of academic approaches; evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, classical history, and psychology. These approaches each have their turn, and some seem more plausible than others. Calling our lips a “genital echo” of the brightly coloured buttocks of the female bonobos, or defending Freud’s theory that kissing is a symptom of breast deprivation, both admittedly trip me up. But they are part of the fun to try to figure out our deep-lipped reasons for wanting to kiss each other.

It was Charles Darwin that brought it to our attention that not all cultures indulge in kissing. The “Malay-kiss” he described as follows:

“The women squatted with their faces upturned; my attendants stood leaning over them, laid the bridge of their noses at right angles over theirs and commenced rubbing. It lasted somewhat longer than a hearty handshake with us.”

Essentially, this exchange is in smelling instead of kissing. It’s very like the kunik, practiced by the Canadian Inuit and similar again to a custom practiced by the Maori, making an interesting Pacific triangle of sniffy influence.

For her neuroscience research, Kirshenbaum attempted to use magnetoencephalography (yes, really) or a MEG machine to scan the “brain on kissing”, but getting two people into said machine and having them kiss without moving proved to be an insurmountable challenge. Kirshenbaum then modified her approach but only to open new directions of questions that shift from the central “why?”

Kirshenbaum concedes that there’s more research to be done, and that for her, the fun in learning more has not diminished. Neither has it for the reader!  There’s a lot more to discover if you read the book, but I won't kiss ’n’ tell any more than I already have. Fewer vacillations and more osculation, I say!

Originally posted on the Nonfiction Book Club Blog

Quote a Book!

I did! 

I get a free book for it! 

Tag--you're it! Try it!

http://www.whitehots.com/quote-of-the-week-winners

Look hard...

I saw them.

Five or six of them, together, hiding in plain sight in the sunlit underbrush. I thought I'd heard them earlier, farther away, back on a quieter street, but here they were. Hanging out in a gang, furtively watching me as I walked past on a loud busy corner. They were back.

Turdus migratorus. Harbingers of the second season. Eaters of still-sleeping invertebrates (although only 40% of their diet, I have since learned). Squatters on eavestroughs, poopers on lawn furniture (get that baby a diaper) and a true sign that even though it is -11 C this morning, the White Witch is retreating.

Robins. Red-breasted, the lot of them. I swear it's true. I saw them. All in a posse.

I heard a woodpecker, too. Brownie's honour.

Turn Left

Do you ever wonder where you'd have ended up if you hadn't taken the route you're on? There are so many "turn left" moments in life (hats off to Doctor Who) that it's hard to know what the big missed opportunities are. In retrospect, we often do. Hindsight allows us to see the missed chances that either caused us to despair or made us work twice as hard to compensate for the gap. We can also see those choices that made us different; ones that were risky or frightening but pushed us in the direction we're now going. And here we are. For better or for worse, it's where we've landed.

But what about those little things? The smile you didn't give someone who really could have used it? Not holding the door open for that exhausted mother with the stroller because you, too, were tired? The time you gave someone you didn't like the ice treatment but that "one time" has become a habit, a knee-jerk, so that now you are always aloof, a snob, a cold wall? If you'd never started on that path, you wouldn't have to work so hard to right it. But right it you should.

Try to identify the number of times in your day that you could choose the kinder word, the extra effort, the risky push, the unselfish choice, but are tempted to not. Which will it be?

Push yourself.

A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness

I know it looks like a creepy book—the Frankenstein’s monster effect of combining three portraits of Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy doesn’t help. Even Nassir Ghaemi’s premise at first read seems chilling: some of the best leaders in the western world suffered from mental illness, and at times were completely incapacitated by their maladies.  However, Ghaemi’s compelling and well-argued thesis is that “the best crisis leaders are either mentally ill or mentally abnormal…[and] the worst crisis leaders are mentally healthy.”

This is a scientific yet highly readable book, adeptly written by Dr. Ghaemi, an expert in the field of mood disorders.  When I say expert, I mean, he is the Director of the Mood Disorder Program and the Psychopharmacology Consultation Clinic at Tufts Medical Center and a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Just to set up Ghaemi’s approach, he uses the term “madness” very loosely, almost with a note of sarcasm for the term. Most of the men (as they all are) suffered from forms of depression; either straight-up classic depression, bipolar disorder or what Ghaemi calls “hyperthymia” or a personality type that errs on the side of manic. In most cases, the subject is deceased and Ghaemi is gathering evidence from his four-part assessment: symptoms, genetics, course of illness and treatment. Using his subject's personal correspondence to family and friends and finding evidence that relatives also suffered similar sounding maladies, helps to contribute to his post-mortem diagnosis.

Ghaemi starts with depression. In this category he includes General William T. Sherman (American Civil War), Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. All three men came to power in times of great crisis, specifically war. All three men had episodes of depression during their lifetimes that completely debilitated them, but who had gained other qualities like empathy, resilience and “depressive realism”. They could press through the difficult times without knowing the outcome, and subsequently lead others to do the same.  People spoke of Lincoln’s “gravitas”, Sherman’s empathetic savagery, and Churchill’s unwavering spirit in the face of adversity. Ghaemi makes a good argument that their depression forged this way for them.

As evidenced by the cover, he includes FDR and JFK in his mentally unhealthy categories because of two reasons: both men suffered from lifelong chronic illnesses, both had hyperthymic personalities--all energy and drive (including sex drive) and little downtime. JKF also was misdiagnosed for much of his life and as a result had peculiar treatments for his Addison’s Disease. In this illness, the adrenal glands do not produce steroids, which compromises the immune system. So JFK was on multiple steroids and was frequently fighting massive infections. He apparently took amphetamines and barbiturates as well. Somehow, his doctors managed to get Kennedy to an acceptable balance much of the time.

Not the case with Adolf Hitler. Hitler suffered from bipolar disorder and was on increasingly bizarre combinations of drugs to keep him on the manic side of his disorder. By the end of the war, Hitler was on steroids, amphetamines, barbiturates, narcotics and while experiencing mood swings that seemed to range only between depressive and manic, with no relief between.

Ghaemi makes a strong case for mentally stability for Richard Nixon, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, which proved how their normality was their downfall in times of crisis.

The epilogue is one of the most satisfying chapters. Ghaemi writes it like an academic essay, allowing detractors of psychological history to give their case and he to refute. I can’t say I’m on board with every one of his historical assessments but he really does build a strong case. Dr. Ghaemi does not feel that mental illnesses should be hidden, maligned or seen as shameful and this book is proof. He cites Aristotle in the author’s note and it is very apt:

“Why is it that all those who have become above average either in philosophy, politics, poetry or the arts seem to be melancholy?”

Firefighter-- Short Story

I can see her sitting by her twilight cooking fire, listless and alone. Her tarp, half-heartedly strung between two incongruent trees, would have her backpack carelessly stowed under it. I would walk into the clearing with my own pack and stand before her, illuminated by her fire. She'd look up at me, surprised, and then she would smile. Not her world-shattering, dizziness-inducing smile, but a greeting. I would be welcome. 

"Did you forget something?" she'd ask, guardedly. She would be afraid to have to say goodbye again. There had been too many endings too recently for her. 

I would walk around the fire, set my pack down beside hers and sit beside her before I spoke. "I came back for something, yes. But there was no forgetting." I would look at her steadily, I think, wanting her to sense my resolve. 

I would figure that she'd be a bit dulled by her grieving and stare unseeingly back at the fire, accepting my presence instead of questioning it. After a while, she would sigh, long and painful. I would inch closer and pull her into my arms. She wouldn't resist me. Her head would rest against my shoulder and I would hold her, breathing deeply to slow my racing heart.  

"Have you eaten anything?" I would ask her, eventually.  

She would murmur, "No." 

"I can make--" I would offer. 

She would shake her head and put her arm around my waist to keep me with her. "No, Paul." At this point she'd tilt her head back to look at me and I'd smile down at her. "Are you...staying?" she would ask, starting to comprehend. 

I see myself smoothing her hair, brightened to a fiery orange by the firelight, or stroking her cheek with my thumb. "Yes," I would reply.  

She'd sit upright, still in my embrace, still with her arm around me, but now her hand would be on my hip and I'd have to do more measured breathing to keep myself together. Her green-eyed stare would be hard to return, but I'd try, so she'd know I meant what I was about to say.  

"As long as you want me." I would swallow before clarifying. "To stay." I know I would start staring at her lips but it would be too soon to kiss her.  

Here's where it's all less clear. She could curl in closer and fall asleep in the safety of my arms. Or she might begin to cry, grateful for my friendship. There's the chance she might stand and pace, and begin to curse me, insisting I shouldn't be here, but knowing full well she needed me. And I know she did. But she had to love me, not just need me. For that, I figure I would have to wait. 

But I'd killed this dream. This beautiful scenario that I replayed far too often in my head was never going to happen, as close as it had been. I could have had it, but I gave it up for higher principles. I gave her up to a better man than I was. 

Now it was a forbidden game I'd been playing, for my own private torture. But every night when I closed my eyes, I was there, sitting by her fire.

Enough of this torment. I needed to find her.  

I needed her to prove to me that I was the only who tended the fire.

Originally posted on Wattpad

Parenthood is fleeting

Like Clark Kent and Superman, my husband and I are almost never in the same place at the same time. Our lives are in a state of perpetual agitation. We have three children; two in school and one chomping at the bit for JK.  We also have far too many extracurricular activities for all five of us. Like grocery shopping. A snapshot of our lives this morning would capture potty training seats, mile-high stacks of laundry and a front hall containing a minefield of rubber boots, running shoes and gym bags.  Everything feels unfinished, untidy and chaotic; even breakfast this morning had all those elements! 

It’s hard to pull back and see the whole picture when I’m only looking at the messy bits all over the floor. What will the image look like a couple of years from now? Will my sunny eldest have become adolescent and gloomy, or dyed her beautiful red hair? Will my level-headed, centered six-year-old have become less confident and more impulsive?  Will my son have finally relinquished his profound love of dirt or will that be a lifelong affair? How do I slow it down, to enjoy more fully these brilliant streaks of light and energy that are my children?

This particular morning, in our usual haste to get out the door to school, my almost four-year-old son whacked his face and came to me for comfort.  He crawled into my lap, looked at me with his big teary eyes and said: “can you hold me like a baby?” I lifted his legs, cradled his neck and shoulders and pulled him up close. I kissed his forehead. “Now rock me like a baby,” he instructed. His older sisters broke into a teasing version of Rockabye baby, but he and I had a private, eyes-locked moment while he sucked his thumb (still a constant companion) that sent me straight back to babydom.

Three years is not very long, but it felt like a lifetime ago when I held my son as a baby in my arms, and he perused my face with those serious baby eyes, drinking me in as I did him. Eternity unfolds in those moments and you let it wrap around you like a cloak.  You savour it, probably because it is 4 o’clock in the morning and you’re too dazed to do much else, but because you savoured it, you can remember it years later when you need it.

The nature of babyhood so enthralls parents that we have no choice but to spend a lot of quality time with our child, time that might otherwise be used for inconsequential things like sleeping, eating or taking a shower. These other activities become downgraded temporarily, just so the baby can stop crying and get a clean diaper, or feed for two minutes and take a five minute break and demand to be fed again. We don’t realize it, but it is training for later in that child’s life, when we assume he is more independent of us, but he still needs to know that we do hang on his every word, and that we are deeply satisfied with every one of his successes. And that we still do feel every one of his boo-boos.

How do I cause the slowdown of time? I need to make sure I see who my child is in her own life and what the world looks like from her perspective.  I need to remember each set of serious baby eyes as they were at 4 a.m., but I also need to see the sparkles that each bit of maturity brings. I need to regularly, daily, make time for each of my kids, individually.

Did I take the time this morning to soothe my child’s hurt and clear space for him to be comforted “like a baby”? Yes, I did. Did I worry that we’d be late, or that the kitchen was a wreck or even that he was being a tad manipulative?  Well, perhaps a little, but I still did it and we were not late. Maybe I do have the power to stop time, just long enough, when it’s needed. Superman did!

2011

One Summer, America 1927

In 1927 America, Prohibition is in full swing, as is Babe Ruth’s big fifty-four ounce baseball bat.  Charles Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic and inadvertently launches a celebrity cult that would rival any in the 21^st century.  It was a time, as Bill Bryson says, that “[p]eacefully, by accident, and almost unnoticed, America had just taken over the world.” One Summer, America 1927 is Bryson’s meticulously-researched ode to giddy post-war, pre-Depression America.

Already having proven himself adept at social history with At Home and A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bryson works hard to set the reader right down into the world of 1927. He outlines the summer in question month by month, May to September, feeding details to the reader as if we are living in the midst of it.

Time, not theme, governs Bryson’s approach to this book.  In the section on the month of May, Bryson tells us about the murder of Albert Snyder and the subsequent arrest of his wife Ruth and her lover. We hear about them again intermittently throughout the book as they rise and fall in the public interest, usually competing with Lindbergh for press coverage, but then do not learn about their ultimate fates until the epilogue.

This time-dictated method is usually very successful, but there are places where Bryson tries to fit in too much.  He wants to lay the groundwork as well as give us the 1927 particulars.  Parts with pilots competing for successful Atlantic flights, or baseball players with differing fates, or bombs blowing up anarchists and politicians, are often needed to be read more than once. You know; to clarify which politicians use spit-ball pitches to protest which air flights…no, wait; that’s not it. You get the idea.

How does one end a great summer? With a dose of regret, I guess. With this great big ball of momentum, the end is a bit of a fizzle.  Bryson does do a good job of tying up all his loose ends--in this case, all his loose ball players, pilots and politicians--but his enthusiasm has weakened.

I must confess; I do thoroughly enjoy Bill Bryson’s  upbeat and droll writing style. At last count I’ve read nine of his books, which, for a working mother of three, that’s a miraculous number of books by any one author!  My favourite is At Home: A History of Private Life, the premise of which may sound deadly boring (except to a social historian like me), but in the hands of Bryson, any topic is transformed into high entertainment. One Summer, America 1927 is no exception.

Originally posted on the Nonfiction Book Club Blog

O Inconstant Spring

As I find myself looking longingly for spring, when there is none to be found, I can only look back to find it. A few years ago, we were guilty of fleeing the drab and chill of a Canadian March and heading south to the near-tropics of Florida. We fled for a week to a land of white sand not grey snow, of warm breezes not cold rains, and a place with birds whose calls we did not recognize, and with flowers of fantastical shapes and hot colours.  We enjoyed it thoroughly, with bare feet, sunburned noses, and that crunchy salted flavour that all picnic food gets at the beach. Then we had to come home.

My three-year-old made a valiant attempt to convince the rest of us that we could stay in Florida. He was certain that Grandpa and Grandma’s tiny condo could hold all of us indefinitely.  I did long for my own bed, but I admit that there seemed to be little else drawing me back to the North. We returned home at night, stole out of the car in our spring jackets and hurried into our cold and darkened house, quickly crawling into our fleecy pyjamas and under our heavy blankets. Canada could wait until morning.  

When morning arrived, it did so arrayed in dazzling sunlight. We realized that spring had almost arrived in our absence.  Nearly all of the ice patches had disappeared. Clusters of tulip leaves were breaking through the soil. Brave crocus buds, filmily hinting at brilliant colour to come, stood in the garden. And we heard a new yet familiar sound—then we saw them;  the returned robins, hopping along our back fence, calling to each other as they waxed nostalgic about their summer home.

No trip to the south, to an unreal summer, can replace the stirrings of hope and the thrill of discovery that a spring in Canada bestows. It carries the same excitement that the first snowfall brings in November and, in their turn, the first truly hot day in May, and the first fully-turned maple tree in September.  Having just returned from warmer climes did not make us immune to the charms that lay half-hidden in the mud in our own backyard. These were harbingers of beauty and warmth yet to come and they were hard-won.

The weather did not hold. A couple of days after returning, we were again boot-deep in snow, topped by freezing rain. Springtime in Canada never progresses predictably! Undaunted, the kids pulled out the sleds and enjoyed the icy speed of the newest white covering while it lasted. This was not long-- it all melted in less than a week.  Melting--I can only imagine!

It's got to be done soon, doesn't it?

It's -12 C. With the wind-chill, it's -22 C. We are in the midst of a snow squall. March begins on Saturday. And yet, I find it hilarious that just because the sun will set at 6 pm, I believe the grip of winter is weakening. 

I'm not alone. The birds believe it, too. There's no extra food for them but they're singing to beat the band when the sun shines. And suddenly there's an abundance of squirrels in my neighbourhood, gathering dead leaves. Are they re-insulating their drafty nests or are they hoping to make little squirrel babies?

The snow has thawed and refrozen enough times that my front lawn looks and feels like the inside of my freezer. It just has more twigs. I hope. My freezer probably has more drifting pepperoni, though, so we’re even.

Winter has to leave. It’s just not fun anymore. My kids can’t dig snow tunnels or make snowmen out of this stuff. Sledding is an exercise in pain. It’s just tough, granular, immovable junk stuck on everything. In awfully big ugly piles. 

Only the sun can help us now!

The Right Tree

July 2011

We want to pick a tree to plant in the front yard of our new house. The lawn, which is currently baking to a nicely-browned crisp in the heat and dearth of rain, could so happily benefit from the shade of trees. However, we do not live there yet. We are still trying to sell our old house. We cannot rescue the abiding lawn; we cannot water, weed nor plant. The new house is empty and has been for six months; tall spiny weeds are the only squatters living there now. So I must wait to plant this unchosen tree and this gives me time to ruminate.

Right now, a palm tree would seem to fit in the desert-like conditions of our persistent heat wave, but eventually the temperature will drop below -10 C (or 14F) so this kind of tree will not do. How any creature can live in a climate that spans over 60 degrees of temperature (or 90 degrees, depending on your thermometer), especially one that cannot flee the elements, say, under a tree, is beyond me. So this new resident on our property-to-be will have to be hardy.  But also hospitable.

Well, there are evergreens, the other extreme applicant for our climate. We have grown them in the past but they are often the opposite of hospitable. Spiders and birds love them, but humans cannot climb them or even trim them without pain--and suffering, if you’re like my husband and develop hives from their acidic scratches. Anything green living underneath a coniferous tree doesn’t have many years left; evergreens are experts at out-shading any chance at photosynthesis. So our candidate must be hardy, hospitable and shady, but not to the point of a gangster.

Our current house has an uneasy peace with a very tall backyard weed called a locust tree.  It grows several feet every year in all directions, sends up treelets all over the place—I’ve even found them in the front yard—and is host to a huge number of tiny leaves that don’t rake up without a fight. Its cousin, the mountain ash, is in the front yard, with similar leaves and with springtime flowers that exude a strong “stinky fish” aroma, as identified by my unappreciative family. These types of trees, that seem to feature “rude” as their particular identifier, will not enter onto our list.

What about birches and aspens?  They are strong contenders for gracing the front yard. Aspens sound blissfully like a waterfall when stirred by the wind, and birches, with their beautiful white bark, look good year-round. But these trees can be fragile and often do not live long.  I have had enough smaller plants die in my care that it would break my heart to have to uproot an adolescent beauty of a birch that has not made it.

I think I will be satisfied with a good old maple tree. They have great shape when mature, they shade terrifically in summer and in autumn they are unmatched in colourful display. And being Canadian, these trees hold a special place in my heart! But it’s not just up to me; I will have to win over the rest of my family to the maple family. Speaking of which, there are over six different varieties of maples: sugar, red, silver, norway, sycamore maple, Japanese maple…  

 2011

How Do You Tuck in a Superhero? And Other Delightful Mysteries of Raising Boys

Written by Rachel Balducci, this book is a slightly bewildered look at the hilariously unpredictable antics of Balducci’s five young sons.  How Do You Tuck in a Superhero?  And Other Delightful Mysteries of Raising Boys is terribly funny, sometimes poignant, and thoroughly enjoyable. It reads like a blog, with each chapter a new discovery of adventurous and outrageous behaviour, documented with love. It’s a light read, only a slim 203 pages, and grouped into sections (she calls them chapters) with each “bloggish” entry given its own title. The sections’ theme categories range from Proper care and Feeding, (lots on hygiene) to The Other Heroes in Our House (like Chuck Norris) to The Sweet Side (which is just that—how her kids melt her heart, often unsuspectingly).

Here’s an example of her wit:

“Stuff I say that no longer sounds crazy (to me):

-I am not a wrestling mat.

-No, you may not, and if I find a knife stuck in my kitchen cutting board, you will be in big trouble.

-Stay off the roof.

-Why are there blocks of wood cooking in my oven?”

With my own three children, (two girls, one boy) I have also found that I have spewed such things, usually with a note of disbelief and barely-contained laughter.  Ms Balducci sounds like a great mom—someone who will get into gargling contests with her kids (so that mouthwash is fun) and who understands that brotherly love between her kids can be an exercise in pain. Physical pain. Limb-twisting, karate-kicking, shriek-inducing pain. But it’s still love.

She’s attempting to find that balance we all want our kids to have; the freedom to experiment and be creative but always within acceptable limits. As in: “[y]ou can try to invent a jet pack, but I will not buy the fuel for it.” I’ll bet she usually comes close to getting it right. And somehow, she also finds time to write books, too!

I think she brings it all together nicely when she expresses her understanding of her kids’ worldview:

“When they grow up, boys want to be all those things you would guess—a construction worker or a fireman or possibly a superhero. Depending on what powers that would involve.

They want those things for you, too.

One of the boys once told me that he thought it would be cool if I could add a few more titles to my job description.

‘What if you were a mother slash assassin slash double agent?’ he asked, gazing into my eyes as if it were already so.”

As a mother, I have experienced such moments myself—and the sentiment intended in those gazing eyes is pure love and even respect. In that moment, you know you’ve been given an honourary distinction:  Mom, who understands me! In reality, Mom is trying hard to do just that.

Originally posted on Nonfiction Book Club Blog

Seguin Solace

Every autumn we leave it, shuttered up dark and quiet. Every winter, we dream of its summery light, dappled by leaves and reflecting water, and its quiet warm evenings.  Every spring we reopen it, assaulted by ravenous blackflies, and retreat into its dusty interior, serenaded by spring peepers. And then, come those summer days, we journey the three hours as often as we can to soak up our little northern property on the lake: our family cottage.

Now just to say—it’s not my cottage. It’s my father’s cottage. It’s just a few kilometers south of Parry Sound, Ontario, on an inland lake, a little bit of a distance from true “Muskoka” territory.  It’s only been in the family for 13 years, so it’s not like I had my childhood summers there. But it was one of the first places my own children visited on earth, and they each have a powerful love of this lakeside cabin.

My youngest child found it too hard to believe that the warm shallow water at the little beach would freeze solid in the winter. As a two-year-old, he would argue that this lovely summer paradise was being denied him in January and February. Last year, we finally brought him and his sisters to see the cottage in the winter (my husband pulling him in on a toboggan for a half kilometer) and I think that finally convinced him that we weren’t just depriving him of one of his favourite tropical places.

At the cottage, my children have mastered many valuable life skills. All three babies learned to navigate stairs there, using the rise of the three carpeted steps from the living room to the “upper hall”. Here my eldest first tackled climbing into a bunk bed, barbequing for a Brownie badge and paddling a kayak.  This is where she and her sister tried archery, snowshoeing, stargazing, fire-building, marshmellow-toasting and weiner-roasting. And the cottage is where all of us are still learning how to tolerate or terminate the flying and swimming beasties that are blood-loving.   

Even thinking of it now, on a cold Mississauga night, it is the memory of the light that evokes the cottage best for me. I can recall standing on the deck next to the front door, spellbound by the moonlight on the winter snow that overextended the lavender shadows of the barren trees like a Lawren Harris painting.  At Thanksgiving we enjoyed the autumnal view of the surrounding forest; the trees seemed to glow with their own light source, such was the brilliant colour of their leaves.  And in the glorious summer, the sunlight bounces off the lake, through the myriad leaves, all the way up the hill to our cottage ceiling, right above where we eat dinner.  It can be mesmerizing: just ask my lake-tired children as they resist eating their suppers, lulled into peaceful contemplation by the dancing light. How dreamy, even 228 km and many months away.

2012

The Never Again Potato Salad

For years, my mom would not tell us how to make her absolutely delicious potato salad. It wasn’t a secret family recipe--she had those, too--she’d just made it so many times that she didn’t look at the recipe anymore and wasn’t sure if the original would come close to her improv version. Then came one year and she made a big batch and it did not taste the way it was “supposed” to taste. We all thought it was good, but I did agree that there was something that was not quite the same as the classic. Later in the summer, (when else do you make potato salad in Canada?) she tried again, but that salad came out different yet again. After a long and deliberated search –is this the one? maybe I got it from this cookbook?--out came the recipe. 

When she made the salad once again with this technical support, the result was closer than the other two editions had been, but still there was a subtle difference. After that, she did not dare to make the salad without the recipe, so never again did we experience the unique combination of flavours that she had so confidently thrown together in the past. I have this version of the recipe, the Slightly Less Than Perfect Original Potato Salad, and every time I make it I try to imagine what the illusive missing ingredients are that made up the long remembered dish from my childhood. So many of my recipes are my mother’s and since she passed away a year ago, I am constantly cooking with her beside me. Sometimes it is lovely to have her there; sometimes it is still too fresh and painful.  I can’t help but think how brief and elusive a loved one’s life can be; full of flavours often so subtle you cannot taste them all at the time and yet you can savour so much as time passes.

Slightly Less Than Perfect Original Potato Salad

6 potatoes, peeled and boiled

2 eggs, hard boiled and chopped, reserving a few “coins” for the top

1 stalk of celery, chopped

½ cup chopped cucumber

½ white onion, or 3 green onions, chopped

Dressing:

½ cup light mayo

1/3 cup yogurt

2 tbsp cider vinegar

2 tbsp Dijon

2 tbsp honey

Celery seed (to taste)

While potatoes are still warm from boiling, sprinkle cider vinegar on them to keep from turning brown. Make dressing while potatoes are boiling and let sit in fridge. Add all ingredients; best eaten the next day.

2010

Scatter, Adapt and Remember by Annalee Newitz

So do you want to live in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world? All the latest cool fiction is doing it, so why not embrace it as a life choice? With the weight of scientific (biological, medical, atmospheric, psychological) evidence leading us to this unfortunate hand-basket theory, it is tempting to jump on. However, let me introduce you to Annalee Newitz, an author whose book Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans will Survive a Mass Extinction can provide you with post-post-apocalyptic inspiration on a scientific level.

I first became aware of Newitz from the superlative science website i09.com, where she is editor and contributor, and where articles about physics or comparative global population distribution are interspersed with ones on the year’s best fantasy movies.  Like the website, the content of her book ranges from the solemn to the humourous, but with solid scientific backing and a very engaging writing style.  

For me, one of the best parts of the book is the “Preface to the Canadian edition: Moosejaw on Venus”, written for the Penguin Canada imprint of the book. Newitz has a special place in her heart for Canada, and a deep respect for the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She believes that Saskatoon epitomizes the city of the future, calling Saskatoon “a model for human survival” because of its success in dealing with a difficult climate. “[P]eople there have found ways to incorporate the latest scientific advances into agriculture and urban design without overspending,” Newitz states, which she feels can inspire other urban centres to adopt similar methods. 

As for outlining the theory of her book’s title, Newitz doesn’t just look at human models, like the Jewish diaspora, to illustrate the virtues of “scatter”. She posits “adapt” using cyanobacteria that, united, can become, as she says, "Mighty Morphin Power Ranger-like". In other words, super powerful, but expressed in a way much more fun. She advocates humans emulating the capacity for deep “remembering” that the majestic gray whale has, as a species, for international migration, with constant variation in their routes taken.  

Coming back to the human world, Newitz looks at a variety of approaches to survival. Along with mining science fiction for evidence of "pragmatic optimism" (not her strongest chapter), she also strongly advises rethinking civic planning with profound creativity. From ancient Catalhoyuk (where residents "dropped in" on their friends literally, entering the house from the roof), to underground cities, to a Waterworld-inspired tsunami-proofed model city built at Oregon State U; adaptability and resilience are key concepts that cannot be left out of planning. To round it all up, Newitz looks at the million-year plan, which involves terraforming a la Star Trek 2 but on our own planet, asteriod-crushing situations a la Deep Impact and beyond, and replacing our wimpy body parts a la RoboCop. All the cheesy movie references are my own, don't worry.  

This book has its fair share of cutting-edge scientific theories and cuttingly witty ways to express them. Here’s an example of Newitz's charm:

“If there had been a paleogeologist among the last of the dinosaurs, she could hardly have pinned the blame on her peers’ demise on any single factor. The entire ambiguous history of the planet would have to stand trial for murdering brachiosaurus and letting a bunch of little monkeys take over.” 

I don’t know about you, but I can certainly picture that denizen of the Cretaceous scolding me with one of her three front toes shaken in my direction--how fun is that?

Originally posted on Nonfiction Book Club Blog