A future baked from scratch

I shared two pieces of honey cake with my 14 month old son last weekend on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Seemed simple enough, I found a recipe that appealed to me, baked it with the usual mishaps (hand mixer started smoking, couldn’t find 3 ingredients I was sure I had), and then the cake was consumed on a lovely fall-like afternoon.

But this was different. Yes, the cake was especially delicious and Duncan could not get it into his mouth quickly enough, but this moment made me cry. I had accidentally started a positive family tradition where I had none prior to this moment. I had started a positive family tradition with food to top it all off.

Starting out being a parent I felt so inadequate because of my upbringing. But as I move and live through parenting, feeling my way around it, I am finding that I don’t need a schedule or a how-to book for creating traditions or even spur-of-the-moment-fun. This seems to occur naturally when fairly happy functional people who love each other are together.

Earlier I was convinced I was lacking the mommy-gene, but I seem to be finding my way around the honey cake crumbs and sticky-little-fingers just fine.

Wardrobe Division

A designer posed a question about color asking “why designers stick to wearing black and designing in color?” The answer on wearing black came quickly to me.

I didn’t feel I was given a choice to wear color. In my mother’s mind color (especially on the bottom) was reserved for the very smallest of frames. The same thinking went for print (especially on the bottom).

Bright color and look-at-me-prints were for the starving-blond-elite who have lived in old homes for as long as their families have been in this country (which is a long time), who have hair that won’t curl no matter how stormy the day, whose bottom won’t stand out in the brightest Lily Pulitzer fuchsia and green-frog-printed-capri-pant right after a Memorial Day picnic at their cottage up north or in the Hampton’s or the shore or wherever the thin and hairless go for the summer.

Wherever on the map, these clothes I was told plainly were not for me, not for us. And I have abided with a closet full of black pants, black capris, black yoga pants, dark denim jeans, one daring pair of guilt-ridden navy.

I went with a friend to a local Jewish temple picnic when I was looking for a place to join shortly after we moved here. She told me they were very open to couples of mixed religions. I guess I hadn’t prepared my self for what this could mean visually. I walk in to find a perfect-looking blond mother in her electric-Lily Pulitzer-shift dress with her two matching daughters at her side. “I have to leave” I told my friend. “This is clearly no place for me.” I walked away in my matching black top, capris, and black sandals catching no attention. Able to slip in and out like a burglar in the night.

Practicality of Religion

My grandmother died just shy of ninety-one. She was cremated the same as we did for my grandfather several years earlier. We had no funeral or memorial service for her. No gathering of family or loved ones in her honor. No traditional or untraditional function which could have served as a valid reason to take off work, to cry, to space out, to linger over old pictures and mementos, to receive hugs, and casseroles.

My family is out of town. Our traditions are sort of out of this universe. So I was left in the middle of my life to grieve the loss of someone who meant a lot to me. Of whom the memories are rich with texture and life. The recollections came quickly to my mind provoking warm salty tears running down my cheeks like a broken faucet. I considered wandering a random cemetery or hospital hoping not to look so odd.

I found that without an organized religion or tradition I simply didn’t have a place to be at this very vulnerable and lonely time. I realized weather or not I am comfortable with each and every aspect of a particular religion and its traditions, they serve a purpose. They give you something to do and someplace to be during a difficult time.

It is easy to disagree with the tiny details of a religion when you are not in a place of need. Comfort isn’t really in the tiny details, but the overall feeling of safety and togetherness.

Embrace the rounDD’s

Over the weekend I bought my first bras that were not minimizing. Just regular bras. No restrictions no holding back. No censorship. Of course this is not a braless 60’s type situation, just letting what is to be be.

I had been told I would look thinner if my boobs were not so big and therefore to wear these minimizer bras. I fooled no one…the world knows I have big tits and I ain’t skinny.

So for the past few days I have been living with my double D’s front and center. They have moved proudly to the front of the bus like they had been hiding in an attic all this time.

Restriction is tiresome and unatural. It rains and my hair flairs out in loud-mouthed curls. My laugh can and has filled a movie theatre.

I am a full and round person in every sense of the word and it is how I best experience the world. Holding myself in in one place, makes something else pop out extra loudly somewhere else. And who wants to get it in the eye with a crazy double D that just got out of hiding?