on rejection

OK, I'm just gonna come right out and say it. I'm probably taking a risk here, dropping all that positivity we're supposed to exude in the cyber-world. But, here's the thing: I've been getting rejected a lot lately. I don't know what to make of it. It feels so bad. It feels like it could be a sign. It feels...like something I have to deal with, like something I have to figure out. It's like a rash, or a leaky faucet - there's got to be a reason this is happening, and I have to figure out why.

So, the other day, after receiving another "no" email, I posted something in a Facebook group I'm part of, and I asked people in the group what they do when it feels like the doors are closing. What do you take this as - a bump in the road, an obstacle I need to go around, or a sign I'm just on the wrong damn road?

Somewhere between eating a poorly thought-out lunch, ignoring a phone call, and texting with my husband about childcare logistics, it dawned on me. Here's what to do with the rejection. Put it out there. Write it out. Speak it. Just let it go. I mean, we've all seen those inspirational memes with portraits of Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan and Oprah and others, writing about how they got fired, rejected, thrown out. But how many times do you see the average, every day, "just like me" person say, "shit, I just got rejected again"? Well...never, I guess. Because somehow the experience of a regular Jane like myself isn't worth as much as Oprah's? Because little successes in the face of rejection aren't valued as much when from an average person as opposed to the richest woman in TV/guy in basketball/computer nerd? Because nobody has ever told the mortals among us that it's ok to be just that, mortals. Imperfect. Not always smiling and positive. And vulnerable, to the judgment of others, and to ourselves.

I have been trying desperately to find positivity in how things haven't been working out so well for me lately. For one, I have had more time with my kids and with Brian. The house is STILL a major mess, but not as bad. The garden still needs a ton of attention, but I've started this recycled brick edging project that's actually starting to look pretty cool. I've photographed some new and different things that I wouldn't have done otherwise if I'd had more of the jobs I've been seeking, and I've found I love it immensely. I've been there for friends who needed me. And, when my beloved Murphy was dying, I had space and time in my life to care for her, and my grieving daughter, and myself, which I would not have had if some of this rejection hadn't happened.

But I could only think about how rejection has it's positives for so long. The wonderful thing, and also the hard thing, about having little kids is that it forces you back to reality all the time. You can't sit around feeling sorry for yourself and wallow in the latest no. There are little hands to be held, meals to fix, boo-boos to kiss, homework to do. And usually being pulled back out of myself to tend to the needs of my children is, in fact, just what the doctor (or, in this case, the therapist) ordered. Because, though these tasks are great symbols of the mundaneity of life, they are also reminders of life's bottom line, love. To my children, I am perfect, no matter how many rejections, no matter how many dead ends, no matter how many no's. They love me, in their perfect, innocent, ideal, ferocious way. They see beyond my flaws, draw me with a big beaming smile surrounded by hearts, light up when I walk into the room. When there is a boo-boo to be kissed, or a meal to be made, I'm the right woman for the job. 

Part of what makes rejection so painful, at least for me, is that it feels so personal. This is particularly true, I think, when the part of you getting rejected is some creative outlet, some product that represents your vision of the world. It's that double whammy of both your work and your vision, YOU in the truest sense, being turned down. Beyond that, it only adds fuel to any fire of self-doubt already present within. When we're rejected by others, the negativity goes right from the words on the page, through your eyes, into your brain, and jumps into the pool with the other self-doubt party-goers, drinking martinis and doing cannonballs in the afternoon sun. It all gets mixed together, till we're swimming in our own uncertainty, surrounded with every negative sentiment ever directed our way. 

What if, though, instead of letting the pool party get totally out of control, we chose to set aside our own feelings of inadequacy for just a moment? What if instead we allowed ourselves to bask in the warm light of those who love us unconditionally, who see in us perfection (or, at least, lovable imperfection)? What if, when one door closed, the other door that opened let in the warmth and light of our partners, our pets, our friends, our families, our children? Instead of seeing ourselves through the eyes of those who tell us no, why not see ourselves through the eyes of those who would draw us with a big smile, surrounded by hearts?

If for no other reason, do it for those who love you like that. For me, I need to do it for my kids, to show them that turning towards the light is a possibility, to show them that love of oneself, even when things aren't going so well, is ok, is possible. I want them to love themselves as they love me, with innocence, without judgment, with warmth and perfection. I want them to bask in the light of their own love, as well as mine. 

If I can teach them that, then I really am the right woman for this job.

chaos and light

4/1/2013

I wonder: do all parents of small children feel like their lives are out of control? Or is it just me? Or is it that we just had a really hard week, and today we had a hard day, and tonight I'm exhausted, the house is a mess, my worries are swirling around my head like bees, and I can't make bedtime happen fast enough? I mean - I have to work on my taxes, tonight, for God's sake, and that actually seems preferable to trying to bring this whirling dervish of a life under control. 

There are two things that make coexisting with young children so difficult. The first is that everything - and I seriously mean everything - is SO intense, dramatic, and extreme. It's not just that you experience a full range of emotions in one day (you do). It's that you experience the full range of human emotions in an hour (and sometimes less). Just this morning, I was telling a friend how good, how wonderful it is to have two kids. And it is, of course. And it is also basically impossible! By this evening I was trying to figure out how to get through the last hour of bedtime preparations without completely losing my mind.

Meanwhile, 90% (or maybe even more) of this extremely intense stuff happens in a vacuum. There are times when I guess this is a blessing - I mean, if you could've seen the simultaneous tantrums that went on today having to do with a (minor) injury from a broken piece of furniture followed by a cancelled trip to gymnastics due to car trouble, all while my husband was trying to get AAA to come out and deal with said car and I was making an attempt to write a business email....lets just say it wasn't pretty. But otherwise the fact that we often undergo the extremes of parenting completely on our own is pretty alienating, and only serves to intensify our feelings of self-doubt, anxiety, and insecurity.

What forums are there for these moments of great parenting intensity to go from the private to the public sphere? Well, there's social media. Yay! What better way to increase our collective self-disrespect than to endlessly compare ourselves to an unrepresentative and overly positive sample of the population? In all seriousness, I love many things about social media - the new and old connections, the ease of sharing creative expressions that are so meaningful to me like photography, writing, and cooking, and the hybrid public/private sphere it creates where it's (usually) acceptable to share even very intimate details. A week ago today, as I bid tearful goodbye to my beloved dog Murphy, I was able to reach out to a broad and loving community who surrounded my family with warmth and prayer, in a way that previously would have been cumbersome at best, and most likely impossible. But I also know that the propensity - at least within myself - to teeter on the edge of the abyss via ongoing social media comparisons is a dangerous one. True community - in it's most pure form - lifts up and supports, without simply being a space where one's impeccably decorated home/smiling children/baked cake can be compared.

Social media criticism aside, out in the real world, parenting is still often an oh-so-lonely adventure. When you see a mother with a young child melting down at the grocery store or elsewhere, you sympathize, you smile kindly, you might even offer a word of encouragement or more to help out. But, in the end, if its not your kid melting down, well...it's not your kid melting down. I realize this is counter to the whole "it takes a village" concept (which I wholeheartedly believe!) - but who's kidding who here? When it's someone else's kid, there just isn't the angst and anguish you feel when it's yours. It doesn't diminish your empathy, but deep inside you're just thankful it isn't your kid lying on the floor of Earthfare while you try to wrest the opened box of bunnies away from him (not that I know this from experience or anything). 

One good thing about parenting being intense and primal and occurring in, essentially, a dark cave full of sharp rocks, is that the tiniest pinprick of light can often illuminate even the most out-of-control day. At the end of this crazy day I have had, the tantrums were over, dinner was eaten, baths were given, and I put my kids to bed with love. I nursed Oscar to sleep, kissed his slightly damp, clean hair, and laid him down in his crib on his tummy. I snuggled on the couch with Dora to read a few books. After she was asleep, I looked through her school binder. Her report card shows her excelling in Art. She brought home a sweet drawing of "Princess Dora" with "I love mom" written at the bottom. Her teachers sent home 4 "good behavior" notes from the past semester, when she got "star student" stickers for good behavior. One of them says, "cleaned up whole classroom without being asked".  She might have had a wicked-bad temper tantrum earlier today, but guess what? We must be doing something right. She's navigating being 5-years-old, and most of the time she's doing wonderfully and being a sweet, empathetic, funny, and loving little girl. 

Maybe the whole point is that it's supposed to be messy and out-of-control. Maybe the point is that we all need to have the moments of complete chaos and mess against which to compare the moments of light and beauty. It's like needing Lent to prepare for Easter - we need time for contemplation, chaos, winter, darkness, caves full of sharp rocks. Otherwise we'd run right past those Bradford Pears and Weeping Cherries breaking into blossom without even noticing. Food never tasted so good as the first time you're really feeling hungry after an illness. The sun never felt so warm on your face as it does on the first real day of spring. 

And the next time it's cloudy and cold, and I'm feeling all alone in that dark cave full of sharp rocks, I just have to remember that everyone feels that out-of-control now and then. There are other parents (and people) there in the cave, too. It's just SO dark in there, you can't tell there's anyone else there, until that little pinprick of light sneaks in and illuminates the whole place, all of us squinting our eyes and feeling the new warmth of sun on our faces.

my little dog

My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet. --Edith Wharton

I keep looking for her, thinking I see her out of the corner of my eye. I keep listening for the sound of her nails clicking on the hardwood floor, of her sighs as she settles down into her bed to rest. I keep waiting for her to walk over and curl up at my feet as I sit at the computer and type or edit photos, as she has done night after night for (nearly) as long as I can remember. I baked buttermilk biscuits yesterday, and one fell off the pan when I pulled them out of the oven. I waited for her to swoop in, eat it up, wolfing it down with steam curling up around her whiskers. 

But she isn't here. And she never will be again. 

What is left? A little bag of fur I've been collecting all week, hoping to craft it into some memory of her that's more fitting than a hairball. Memories. Lots of them. And photos. Many, many photos. I am so thankful right now for my love of photography, so thankful that I have spent years documenting every little thing we did. I am so very thankful that a friend suggested I take some photos of her before she died - and that I asked my husband to take some photos of us together. I didn't want to - the house was a mess, my hair was a mess, I'm out of contacts and was wearing my glasses. The kids were barely dressed - Dora was wearing hand-me-down SpiderMan underwear (for boys) and Oscar was wearing a t-shirt and a diaper. The blanket Murphy was lying on had stains on it. But I am now so in love with these photos of our goodbye, so thankful to have them. I will cherish them forever, cherish the memory of how much we loved her, and how much love we showed her and each other even at the very end. 

 

Murphy came to me so long ago, 16 years ago (give or take). I was single, just returned from studying photography abroad in Scotland. I was about to leave for a photojournalism internship in Michigan. I didn't have any children. In fact, though I knew I wanted to be a parent someday, children were less than a twinkle in my eye. She was one of my first three pets that were mine exclusively (though that would eventually change), and my first dog that I adopted myself, that I chose and took home and made my very own. I had loved and lost countless dogs (and cats, donkeys, hamsters, and bunnies) as a child. But this was my first dog aquired and loved as an "adult". 

 

She lived with me in a tiny one-room studio in downtown Athens, in a two-bedroom college apartment on the campus of WMU when I worked nights at the Kalamazoo Gazette as a photography intern. She lived with me in a farm house on Vore Ridge Road, where my housemate would get up in the middle of the night and paint the toilet pink, or smoke from a bong made from a teapot. She lived with me at my parent's house, when lack of money or failed relationships sent me home once again. She lived with me in my little house on Lorene Avenue, first with two wonderful roommates, and then with a guy who turned out to love animals as much as I do. She came to the party we had after I married that same guy, snuggling with us on the couch in our formal clothes. 

She actually played a part in picking said husband. Early in our relationship, we went for a hike at Strouds Run. I brought Murphy along, having long ago decided that pets are excellent at helping make decisions about which people to keep in our lives. Not only did they hit it off instantly, when we sat by the edge of the trail about halfway through the hike, my future husband stroked the ears of my little dog and said, "she has the softest ears I've ever petted." He said later he knew then that he wanted to marry me, in part because he just loved my dog so much. 

She slept on my bed - usually under the covers, spooning with me, with her head on my pillow - for years. Countless nights I cried myself to sleep with my face buried in her yellowish-red fur, terrified or sad or just lost, with only the love of my dog (and my two cats) to carry me through. She went on every trip with me, and the one time she did not (our honeymoon), we spent all our time in the car repeatedly looking into the back-seat, forgetting she wasn't there with us. 

She was imperfect, too. She hated kids (except for mine - she tolerated them). She once barked fiercely at an old woman crossing the street with a walker. She terrorized patrons at our yard sales if they didn't suit her taste (meaning basically everyone but us). She and my female cat had an interesting relationship. She loved to clean out the cat box. She got car sick, and always found a way to throw up in the most inconvenient place possible (i.e. down into the gearshift, or into the little slots on either side of the parking brake). She adored rolling in something dead, preferably something old, dried out, and intensely stinky - like a flattened, caramelized frog carcass or a fragment of garbage. She loved to kill innocent little things, including baby birds, moles, and crabs at the beach (earning her the nickname "crab-killer"). In her younger years she rolled over onto her back and peed with excitement when someone new entered the room, or when we came home from work or school. Then she would wag her tail, splashing pee around. She even did this once when being examined by a well-to-do canine orthopedic surgeon, who had the audacity to examine dogs wearing an expensive shirt and tie. We showed him.

I loved her though, intensely, and she loved me back just the same. She was my perfect, loyal, short, blond, beagle-barking, table-scraps-eating, loving, ever-present companion. My life will never be the same without her, but it was (and is) better for having had her in it. 

I love you with my whole heart, Sergeant Murphy, and I shall see you again one day. I shall never forget your cuddles, your unending love for me, your excited frenzies in the backyard, your soft, sweet ears. My love for you goes on and on, and I'll be holding you in my heart forever. Thank you for giving me more than I ever could have given you. Rest in Peace, Murphy girl. 

Visit me in my dreams. 

home

When you travel home - or to a place that you lived long enough for it to be part of your mosaic of home - the memories are there waiting for you, almost as if you never left. They're like rowdy guests at a party, pushing and shoving each other, trying to get to the front of the room where the band is playing, or the keg is, or the food table awaits. Different ones arrive at the front of the crowd, with no pattern, rhyme, or reason. The long walk in knee deep snow when you thought you might freeze to death. The spooky man who jumped out of the woods and scared you and your boyfriend, sending you running down the other side of the street in the darkness. The night you drove home from a party the back way, on tiny two lane roads through the countryside, when you really shouldn't have. They don't appear in order, either. Shopping with your mother at Martings at age 7 appears right next to holding the infant son of your first friend to become a mother, completely awed at the thought of producing something like that straight out of your body.

I spent this past weekend in Ohio, traveling home for my aunt Erma's funeral. She was 83, the widow of my mother's brother (who's funeral conjured this blog post). Aside from attending the funeral, the entire trip was designed around visiting other family, seeing a friend here and there, and eating at a couple of my favorite places. I stayed in Athens Thursday night, at my dad's house, snuggling into the bed of my childhood with both kids. Friday morning, before leaving for Cleveland, I ran 3 miles on the Hock-Hocking Adena Bikeway, a place that holds so many memories for me it could fill an entire book: riding on the back of my dad's bike some 35 years ago, back when the trail was only 3 miles long. Rollerblading with my dog Murphy, a spry little thing in her youth at the time, now old and dying of kidney failure. Riding my first purchased-with-my-own-money bike all the way to Nelsonville and back on my first day of ownership, putting in about 30 miles in one day after having not ridden a bike AT ALL for about 10 years. I couldn't move the next day. Biking from my house to Clippinger to the hospital to visit my mom, when I was juggling graduate school, a new marriage, and the illness and impending death of my mother. And the walk through knee-deep snow? That happened there, too. 

On that path, I contemplated my life so many times. I pondered decisions. I ruminated on relationships. I wondered about boyfriends - all of them, even the last one, who ended up being my husband. I rode and walked and bladed in sun and rain and shade, trying to get away from the past or get to some unknowable future that surely, somehow, would be better than the life I was living now. I walked that path with Murphy every single day the years I lived on Lorene Avenue, cursing the Army Corps of Engineers for turning such a beautiful river into a drainage ditch, even though I walked the path every day, watching the birds, soaking in the sun.

Friday morning was frosty, and the first mile of my run was painful - I didn't think I'd make it. But I have a 5k on Saturday - my first - so I had to complete the run. By the time I got to the golf course I felt good, and by the Ping Center I probably could've kept going, but we had to get on the road, I had to get home.

As I ran, I thought about how time skews our perception of place and events and narrative. It even skews our perception of people, frozen either innocent or guilty in the tar pits of our minds. As I ran, I felt so in love with that place, felt so nostalgic for living there. I thought about moving back, about picking up an ANews and looking for a job, about buying a nice house on the East Side, having Saturday morning coffee at the bakery, running on the bike path three days a week. Dinner at Casa. Hikes at Strouds Run. Basketball games at the Convocation Center. It would be like...coming home.

The question of "where is home" is as complicated as the question of "who am I", except it doesn't show up in your face quite as often. It's more subtle, more rare, but just as profound. You know a place is in the mosaic of home when you're in it, no matter how long you've been away, no matter how short a time it actually was your home. It's familiarity is unexpected, physical, etched inside of you. You think you're over it and then, bam, you spend one night there and you feel the magnetic pull again. It's like running into an old lover on the street, one you haven't seen in years. You can remember right away what it was like to be in their arms, what it was like to lie in bed watching them dress, a few drops of water from the shower still clinging to the skin on the small of their back.

How do we reconcile the question of home, when so many considerations rest on these decisions? Logistics, friends, jobs, family, schools, housing, opportunity. The list goes on and on. I love Asheville and yet, the ghosts and memories of my other home pull at me, make me question my undying loyalty to our (current) home. 

On this trip I also took a tour through many favorite albums of my youth, using the search function in my husband's Rhapsody account like a digital tour-guide of my past. Cyndi Lauper. Edie Brickell. Sting. Elvis Costello. U2. Dave Matthews Band. The soundtrack to Pretty in Pink. Some of it sounded great, some of it sounded absolutely terrible. I hadn't heard a lot of the songs in years, and I still knew every single word. Just like being home, these songs turn out to be some deeply ingrained part of me, so deeply part of my memory that even after not hearing them in years and years, the words still spring right to the front. Like home, I've romanticized them, idealized them. I absolutely loved Elvis Costello's "Spike" in high school and it sounded contrived and tinny today. I'm not sure this trip down my musical memory lane really solves anything, but it certainly serves as warning. Flipping through memories like album covers is a cozy, if bitter-sweet, way to revisit the past. But if you really delve in - really get in there and listen to every single song - you see it maybe isn't so great. The question of home is just as complicated, and can't be answered with a quick perusal through the slideshow of memories conjured in a day. If I ever do go home, I'll have to go beyond the nostalgia to coming to terms with all of the memories, and the ghosts, - good and bad - and decide whether or not we can coexist.

For now, I'll take my runs along a different river - the French Broad - and let those memories go back to a less-rowdy party, where they don't have to fight to get to the front of the crowd. They can float in and out, perhaps visit me in my dreams, be familiar and nostalgic like flipping through album covers, but not tested like listening to every song. Home isn't going anywhere. Just like "who am I", it's a question that will contentedly wait for it's next opportunity to surprise me, to jump out of the woods in the darkness, to trudge through knee-deep snow, to run into me on the street like a lover I haven't seen in years. 

vegetable frittata

Well, I haven't posted here since LAST year, so, I guess it's time for me to put up something. Whew. Let's just say I've been busy, and leave it at that. I still love you, Nina, so much - and someday I shall have more time for you. I promise. 

This is super-easy, adapted from a Martha Stewart Food recipe. It's even feasible on a weeknight with two little kids, if you've got the broccoli left over. You can sub in any veggies - cook anything other than tomatoes ahead of time. Serve with a simple green salad or fresh fruit salad. Almost as delicious as quiche (though not quite - I love a good crust!) - and a lot easier.

Vegetable Frittata

Ingredients: 
olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream 
1 cup roasted broccoli florets (preferably left over from last night's dinner)
1/2 cup halved grape tomatoes
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese 

-Preheat oven to 425, with rack in top third. 
-In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs with sour cream until blended (doesn't have to be perfect). Season with salt and pepper.
-Heat 10-inch cast iron skillet over medium, add 1 tbs olive oil. When hot, toss in broccoli and grape tomatoes, saute briefly (1 minute or so). Add egg mixture and stir to combine. Sprinkle cheese on top, and cook undisturbed about 2 minutes, until edges are set. 
-Transfer skillet to oven and bake 8-10 minutes, until puffed and nearly set. Remove from oven and heat broiler. Broil until cheese is browned and bubbling, 1 minute (or less - mine only takes 30 seconds and has to be watched closely!).
-Now the fun part - loosen edges with a rubber spatula and transfer to a plate. If you have a disaster, no worries. Just watch Julia Child's potato episode (where she totally mangles a potato casserole, then picks pieces up off the stove top and puts them into the serving dish) and be reminded that food doesn't have to be perfect to taste good. 

Love...

the thinking woman's guide to motherhood

So, today I was in a public speaking training - a very good one, I might add - and a comment was made that caught me totally off-guard, and then got my hackles up - just like my old dog Murphy gets when a kid walks past the house. We were asked to give an impromptu, two-minute speech on a topic of our choice - didn't have to be work-related (although it could be). The primary requirement was that it be something we know a lot about, and it be something we are passionate about. I immediately started tossing around topics in my mind like photography, creativity, environmentalism, and, of course, motherhood. But then came the zinger - the instructor said, "don't talk about childbirth, or motherhood - something intellectual, not sappy". Um - okay. Hmmm.

I looked at my friends across the room - mothers, too - and thought, "I can't let that comment just slide by." After all, we work far too hard as it is to make motherhood and working coexist peacefully. It's no picnic, that's for sure. I asked, "can we talk about how motherhood is intellectual?"

This is not verbatim of course, and I definitely did not deliver this perfectly, without stumbling or misspeaking - but this was the general sentiment:

Even if you are not a parent, you know there are plenty of things about motherhood that are not intellectual. Changing diapers, doing laundry, feeding and bathing children, walking around in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation. These wouldn't necessarily be considered intellectual activities. In fact, it's not uncommon for me to try pretty hard to keep the activities of motherhood separate from my intellectual, professional life. After all, I still have to look and act and sound professional during the day, even when my 15-month-old was headbutting me at 2 AM the night before. 

But motherhood is definitely an intellectual activity. I'm shaping my children's morality, helping them understand the world, showing them the humor in life. And my daughter, who is five, is becoming more and more inquisitive. She is asking all sorts of questions: "How old are you?" "How long is 4 hours?" "How does the car work?" 

Lately, she has been talking about death - about my death, about what will happen to us when I die, about her fears about my death. These are hard questions to answer. What a huge responsibility this is - calming her fears, explaining these difficult facts of life, answering these hard questions. 

If that's not an intellectual activity, then I don't know what is.

Tonight, I reheated some dinner. I chased Oscar around the table, threatening tickles. I gave him a bath and nestled him into bed in his clean, slightly too-big Elmo PJs. Dora and I read three books from her Curious George readers, her doing most of the reading and astounding me with her ability. Then she and I talked about lying - she had tried to tell a little lie at dinner. I told her about the boy who cried wolf, about why it's important to always tell the truth. As I tucked her into bed, we kissed and hugged and said we love each other. And then we blew kisses to each other like we do every night, each of us catching the other's kiss and holding it close to our heart. "Mommy," she whispered, "I took your kiss and put it on my heart. My real heart." That is my girl - smart and beautiful and learning to be empathetic, loving with all of her being, venturing into the world and trying to make sense of it all - all of that done, at least a little bit, with my help and guidance.

Motherhood is many things - sad, funny, challenging, physically draining, emotionally taxing, and, yes, intellectual.

I won't let anyone tell me otherwise.

pretend, and then don't

In my new normal, with two kids and two jobs, it sometimes takes me a while to get things through the entire writing/editing/illustrating/posting process.  So, this happened about a week ago, but it's still all true.

I'm going to pretend that last night was more civilized than it was.

I'm going to pretend that I didn't let Oscar walk around the house gnawing on a stale loaf of french bread. I'm going to pretend he didn't put it on the floor, let the dog sniff it, then pick it up again.

 

I'm going to pretend that I didn't completely make a disaster of my kitchen while I made dinner because the kids were out of control and it was all I could do to just get through it.

 



I'm going to pretend my 5-year-old didn't ask me to turn the lights off so we could eat by "candelight" from a battery-powered, Halloween candelabra that my husband bought to put on the piano.





I won't pretend that my favorite version of "La Mer" came on my Pandora station right when I was putting dinner on the table, as if on cue, because that really happened. I don't have to pretend that my whole house smelled like Mela after dinner, because it did, and it was wonderful. I don't have to pretend that I can do a lot of things while holding a baby on my hip, including safely transferring an entire hot pot of rice into a serving bowl, because I can.





Last night I made adapted versions of South Indian Potato Curry and Greens with Cashews. I used up a lot of my delicious local vegetables and, for the most part, my kids ate their dinner (especially the rice). The whole scene was so entirely chaotic, I decided snapping a few pictures and turning this moderately successful night in the kitchen into a blog post wasn't too much more to ask.

When I first started writing this blog, I really thought it was mostly going to be about food. I had been inspired by blogs like Orangette and movies like Julie and Julia, so I jumped in with plans for something along those lines. I like to cook, I like to bake, I like to read recipes, I like to eat, and I like to take pictures of food. Seems like the perfect recipe for a food blog. Except - the further I get into parenthood, the less time I have for experimentation in the kitchen. And, really, what I love about cooking is following recipes, not making up my own. I'm all about making substitutions (a necessity with kids, I think) - but it didn't take me long to realize I would never have enough "original" material to focus just on food. So, I slowly migrated towards writing mostly about being a mom, even though "food" remains in the subtitle of the blog.

So here I am tonight, with a food blog, and I'm doing what I'm trying to do as a mother and photographer. I'm going to stop pretending. I'm trying hard to just be myself, not trying hard to be someone else. I follow recipes, and I pride myself on being really skilled at that. I pick out good combinations of things (usually). I can read a recipe and figure out if I want to make it, and whether or not it will taste good (most of the time). I know how to chop an onion efficiently. I love the way olive oil smells when it's heating up in my cast iron skillet. Recipe-writer, I am not. Recipe-follower, I am.





So, tonight, two recipes, from other people, that I made. I left out the ingredients that make these dishes really spicy. I added in a couple of comments about my experience making these recipes. I'm no expert - I just love good food, and sharing that love with all of you. Enjoy. Or at least commiserate with my chaos.

South Indian Potato Curry
adapted from At Home with Madhur Jaffrey by Madhur Jaffrey

3 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp whole brown mustard seeds
1/2 tsp yellow split peas
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
2 tsps ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1 lb red potatoes, peeled and diced 3/4 in
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 can coconut milk
chopped fresh cilantro

Heat oil in medium saucepan over medium heat. When hot, add mustard seeds and split peas. When mustard seeds begin to pop, add onions. Turn heat to medium, and stir fry onions for about 3 minutes, until soft but not brown. Add tomatoes, coriander, and garam masala. Stir for 1 minute. Add potatoes and stir one minute. Add 1 cup water and the salt. Bring to boil, cover, turn heat to low, and simmer 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Add coconut milk and stir. Top with a bit of cilantro.

Greens with Cashews
adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates

8 cups rinsed, stemmed, chopped greens (I like kale best, but chard or collards, or a mixture, also work)
2 Tbs olive oil
1 chopped onion
2 garlic cloves
 1/2 cup roasted cashews
2 Tbs fresh lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 can coconut milk
1 teaspoon curry powder

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium. Add onion and garlic, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10-12 minutes.

Make dressing: In a food processor or using an immersion blender, combine the cashews, lime juice, and salt until smooth. Add coconut milk and process until well combined.

Add greens to pan, stir to combine, cover, and simmer until wilted (time varies depending on greens - less time for chard, more for kale or collards). When wilted, remove from heat and stir in dressing until well combined. Serve hot or room temperature. SO delicious!