baking makes me happy

The second week of my new job I was given a personality profile to complete online and then met with a small group of coworkers (who had also completed the profile) to discuss the results. Before we each shared which quadrant the profile placed us in and whether we tended to be results driven or likely to back down in a disagreement, we each took turns sharing a couple of seemingly random things about ourselves. In addition to the first thing we like to do when we get to work (check e-mail) and our life's motto (All shall be well), we were asked to name two things we like to do when we have free time. I could have named 20 things, but I narrowed down the list to spending time with people I love and baking, which I see now pretty accurately depicts my "iS" personality (the happy maker).

Over the last two weekends as the high of quality time spent with the people I love quickly dissolved into the funk of anticipating another week missing my kids, being stuck inside sitting at a desk and not having a stretch of day to clean out the closets or organize the garage (not that I would, but at least knowing I could!), I found myself measuring flour into a bowl, cracking eggs and shredding zucchini. Especially when I'm down, baking makes me happy.

Mixing together the ingredients, pouring the batter into a pan or plopping spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet, setting the timer and gradually noticing the smells in the house improve makes me happy. Pulling out fresh bread from the oven makes me happy. Giving a neighbor or a struggling friend something I've baked makes me happy. But most of all, being intimately involved in the creation of something special and delicious, without a single thought that I wish I were doing something else or being somewhere else or, simply, someone else makes me happy. Baking, like reading to my kids in bed, practicing yoga, walking through the forest and writing something beautiful reinforces my motto, All shall be well. And lately I've needed a lot of reinforcement, which is why before 6 a.m. yesterday, I was baking breakfast cookies.

If you want to join me in being happy, try this zucchini bread. It's one of my favorite things to bake when I'm in a hurry to get something in the oven. I combined a couple of recipes and made it just a little healthier but still really yummy.

Zucchini Bread

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 t. salt
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1 1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice (or 1/2 t. cinnamon, 1/2 t. nutmeg, 1/4 t. clove, 1/4 t. ginger)
2 large zucchini, grated
3/4 cup sugar (or 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup agave)
4 eggs
1/2 cup oil

Stir together dry ingredients. Combine zucchini, sugar, eggs and oil. Stir dry ingredients into zucchini mixture until just combined. Transfer batter to two loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.

from the style files

Recently I was listening to a conversation between two female colleagues who were discussing the difference between their styles and the taste of their significant others. Both childless, they agreed on the merits of a good throw pillow and bemoaned the fact that they had to slipcover good furniture because of pets. But both clearly had pretty stylish-sounding condos.

One of them turned to me and smiled.

"So, who decorates your house?" she asked.

"Well," I said, thinking hard. "No one."

A mishmash of handed-down antiques and garage sale furniture, sun-faded curtains and framed kid art, our home reminds me of a cross between Trainspotting and the Golden Girls. Okay, so it's not that bad, but it's so completely not my style and, yet, I fear it has become my style.

This weekend as I looked around, however, it occurred to me that the real answer to the question, "Who decorates your house?" is, "My children."

Maybe someday I will have the time, energy and money to care again. To find my style and take back my home. In the meantime, I'm going to try to celebrate the fact that my home is odd, eclectic and creative, and that thankfully blankets are plentiful and transparent tape is cheap.

Liam's "dog's" sleeping quarters, in the corner of our dining room.

The Iron Man obsession plastered across the wall leading up the stairs.

Where every stuffed animal in the house finds shelter, and mom finds the pillows from her bed.

safe people

Over the three days I was in Grand Rapids last week for the Festival of Faith and Writing, I stayed with cousins of my mom. For most of the time I was there, they weren’t. But they graciously gave me the code to their garage, the best guest room in the house, an invitation to help myself in the kitchen and the keys to their car. I saw them late Friday night, and on Saturday was treated to breakfast before I ran off to attend the last sessions of the conference. I had arranged to use their car until early afternoon on Saturday and was planning to fill it up with gas before I returned. When I got into the car that morning, however, the tank was full. My cousin had gone out early to fill up the car so I wouldn’t feel obliged to.

Over the past few months, I have been keenly aware of small, unexpected gifts—of people doing unreasonably kind things for me with no gain for themselves.

:: A new friend gave me a beautiful long sweater—easily the nicest, most attractive piece of clothing I own—the day before I started my job. She had bought it for herself but had never worn it and thought it would look great on me.

:: Another friend left a small arsenal of goodies outside my door the day I started work and a sweet, encouraging note, as she, also a mom of small children, knew how difficult the transition might be.

:: Another friend, who I rarely see anymore, contacted me to see if I would be going to the Bruce Cockburn concert at the festival last week. Although Bruce is one of my favorite performers, and my friend knows it, I didn’t think it would be wise to hand over the $25 for the ticket when we couldn’t even pay our taxes. When I responded no, my friend sent me a message that a ticket was waiting for me at the box office.

:: Yet another friend stopped me after church on Sunday to say that she and a fellow gardener had loads of perennials to split and she wondered not only if I’d like to have them but if I’d allow her to plant them for me. Just the day before I had told someone that one of my dreams would be to have someone help me figure out what to do with my completely unlandscaped front yard and plant it, which explains, I suspect, why I busted out crying on the spot.

I imagine I’m not alone when I say that I find it incredibly easy to identify the injustices in my life, the negative and the challenging. But lately I have been so overwhelmed by the good, the irrationally generous, that the things that plague me are slowly fading into the background.

On Saturday morning before leaving the festival, I sat in on interview with poet Li-Young Lee. After trying to explain some of the struggles he encountered when writing poetry—specifically how he found too much of himself in his poems when what he really wanted was to find God’s voice speaking through him—he got to talking about a community gardening project he had been part of and how, although it should have been otherwise, it wasn’t the uplifting experience he imagined it would be.

“We were trying to build community,” he said. “But the people who were part of it were not safe people to be around.”

He went on to explain that ego problems messed up something that should have been inherently good. It not only happens in writing that ego can get in the way of something that could be beautiful, it happens all the time in life.

And yet my recent experiences show that there are also things that happen in life that are so completely opposite, so purely lovely and life giving and selfless. Most often they are small and because we are so bogged down by the unsafe people and voices, we don’t even recognize them. But just like we know good writing when we read it—a narrator who can be trusted, an author who speaks truth—we should know good living when we encounter it. I have my eyes open now, even if they’re occasionally filled with tears, because I don’t want to miss the safe people, the people who show me that life, for all its troubles, is really something beautiful.

::

If you haven't seen it, I wrote about something else I encountered at the Festival in Friday's TribLocal.

10 happy things

:: First visit to our favorite local farm since late fall. The donkey hasn’t changed one bit. Neither has the world’s biggest fan of donkeys.

:: A poignant letter about first love, applicable to all love, written by a famous author to his teenage son. Truth wrapped in tenderness.

:: A boy who knows no decorum. When he passes gas and I ask him, “What do you say?’ He answers with gusto, “I toot!” When he’s outside and needs to pee, he just pulls down his pants and goes, even on the sideline at a girls' soccer game.


:: Pulling out the long-forgotten dress-up bin, and spending an entire Saturday morning trying out every possible combination.

:: How a profound disability is transformed into breathtaking genius, and greatness gets turned on its head. Set aside 10 minutes to watch. You won’t be sorry.

:: A sandwich that’s fancy-restaurant worthy. It's good. Really good. (My friend – who I convinced to make it – recommends chutney in place of the Dijon. I love the Dijon and honey-baked ham.)


:: Recipe from a young chef whose strange concoctions have finally made their way onto paper.

:: Two days off work for the Festival of Faith and Writing, and the anticipation of inspiration and seeing a bunch of people I love.

:: A piano in the house. Beautiful music from a budding a pianist and the one tune his mother plays, over and over, with hopes to one day to branch out to this.

:: 40 ideas for keeping a holy lent that would be really good to just practice all the time.

on the heels of a difficult day

I should be grateful. Every day, no matter what. I have a beautiful family. I know almost nothing of suffering and death. I live in a house. I have food on my table. For these facts alone, I am the 1%.

But some days, I am beleaguered by comparison. I am weighed down by worry. I long to be rescued. I struggle not to cry.

No matter who you are, how much money you have, how much you are loved, how much faith you have, life is difficult.

Today, for no great reason, other than a ridiculous tax bill and a deep longing to be home with my boys, I lived on the edge of tears all day.

But I remembered the words I took from the sermon yesterday: Fear nothing and go forth. And what a friend reminded me: Think of your gifts. I repeated these words to myself until life as something difficult transformed into life as something beautiful.

I chose to redeem the day by being thankful. In no particular order, these are just a few of the beautiful things I am grateful for:

:: Trees and bushes ripening in neon green and white and pink.
:: A warm coat and comfortable shoes for a long, chilly walk to the office.


:: An almost five year old who is passionate about exploring the world and bringing us with him, sometimes leading the charge with his hands in his pockets like he doesn’t have a care in the world. (And he doesn’t.)
:: Dear friends who e-mail, text and buy me Starbucks to remind me I’m not alone.
:: Two full back-to-back days of sunshine.


:: The magical world of ponds and creeks and forests.
:: A husband who does laundry, cleans up a lot of poop and finds me sexy and beautiful even when I feel old and tired.
:: Reading aloud to little ears.
:: An almost eight year old whose earnest imagination and longing to believe melts the heart of a mother who told him the Easter bunny wasn’t real.

until I get my groove back

Aside from sitting in the same chair eight hours a day, the most difficult adjustment to having a full-time job is feeling weary and unmotivated and needing more sleep. My midnight to 5 a.m. routine doesn't cut it anymore. I can hardly bear to look at my to-do list. I feel pretty uninspired.

I am waiting to get my groove back. To do the things I wish I had the motivation to do. To purge the closets and make the yard pretty. To write a book and build a platform. To sew skirts and make curtains. To organize a million little things.

In the meantime, when I'm home, I'm soaking in the little people who are full of energy and wonder and joy. I'm not getting much done, but that's okay. I'm discovering that sometimes when we accomplish the least, we do the most. It's the stuff no one else can see. It doesn't improve my house, my wardrobe, my bank account or my mind. But, in the end, it matters. Maybe more than anything else. At least, when I'm laying on the couch watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood with my favorite four year old or heading to the park for the third time on a Sunday, that's what I'm telling myself.

seen in a day

I saw a gazillion things today
Words, dirty dishes, concrete steps,
the ladies room, my bare legs mid-March
reflected in the windows
Train tracks, baristas, bananas, text bubbles,
computer keys, 5:30 a.m. shampoo in my hand

A fleeting catalogue seen and released
Except
what I hold onto

A nuzzled head of wispy blond
Tattered blankie clasped by a sucking thumb
Two crew boats skimming down the Chicago River
paddles pulling in unison like the wings of geese
drawing the air south
Giggling boys hanging out the car window
waiting to take me home
A backlit cloud leaking the day's last sunlight
like it was holding back heaven

::

Spring break begins this weekend. Here's my TribLocal column on how we're spending it.