Out of Practice
reading, writing, baking, and who knows what's next
One random Tuesday evening - after spending 2.5 hours in a poetry class reviewing de la Paz’s Diaspora Sonnets which was after a full day in my regular 9-5 as an academic librarian, I came home to my rather strikingly large family of kiddos, and for the first time in probably forever and a couple of days, I baked a cake.
I baked a Victoria Sandwich (see Paul Hollywood for sentiments about calling it a sponge).
My husband often leaves butter out on the counter for the kiddos to throw some cookies together when the mood strikes them which is pretty often. They are quite the small army of bakers, but their clean up process often leaves me pulling out my slowly greying hair. Lo and behold, on this particular Tuesday there were two sticks, sitting there on the counter, just waiting to be churned, whipped fluffy and pale with granulated sugar, soundly beaten with eggs, baked into sponge, slathered with raspberry jam, and dolloped with heavy cream (also whipped to fluffy).
On top of all that baking, I made pasta (not homemade mind you, one can only do so much on a random Tuesday after work) and meat sauce for dinner. It’s like a new person entered by body.
Now you might be thinking to yourself wait a hot minute there miss rosy rambles are you the same rosy rambles who used to post recipes and cooked/baked like all the freaking time? Yes, friend. Yes, same person. But you see, I had three babies in roughly three years.
I lovingly refer to my last three babies as “my second batch of cookies” (my teenagers hate this but since they’re part of the OG5 they don’t really get a say in the naming conventions I adopt to distinguish batches of kiddos). There’s quite a large age gap between babies numbers 5 and 6 and really only pregnancy time between babies 6, 7, & 8. My body and brain were pretty wrecked as a result.
Hobbies, like baking, sort of flew out the window and survival mode as been the prescription for the last three and half years. Sure I’ve cooked. Those kiddos like to eat. I’ve even tried new recipes and liked them but the sustaining piece was (is?) missing or at least a little work-in-progress. I’m still mostly in survival mode over here but there are moments, several of them in fact lately, where I find that I want to bake a cake; I want to sew a quilt; I want to draw a sketch; I want to write a post. These are no small feats even though at one time or another in my relatively short, small (in stature) life, I’ve done each of those things regularly and dare I say habitually. Right now the want matters because for what felt like an incredibly long time I didn’t want to do anything besides make it through the day without crying or raging. Goals were something a different woman from a different time had time to think about and execute, but now there’s a glimmer. A glimmer of what has yet to be determined. As you likely know or infer, there’s a lot going on and a lot I like to try to pursue creatively. I’m a creative voyager which means I like documenting the journey in a variety of ways (see Carolyn Yoo’s fun archetype quiz for more info). I tend to bounce from project to project to project and for whatever reason get bored (argh we don’t say that word in my house or we have to clean the toilet), quit, then start another project, circling round and round and round again.
I’m not sure this is a beginning. But it’s certainly not the end. I am out of practice here and elsewhere. But being out of practice allows for innovation, creativity, flexibility, and as a working mama of eight I need all three of those in spades.