Month: February 2018

let them eat pound cake

All week, my older son kept asking me to make the pound cake I made on New Year’s Eve.

“It’s so good mom. That’s my choice for our Super Bowl food.”

Setting aside that pound cake is NOT football food, I hesitated. I’m not a calorie counter or a dessert rejecter, but I couldn’t get past the pound of butter, half a dozen eggs and other fine ingredients in the recipe.

He persisted. “I’ll do all the work.”

“Fine,” I said, figuring a more fun activity would lure him away from the kitchen. But on Saturday, he set out the four sticks of butter to warm up to room temperature and started measuring ingredients. We didn’t have enough milk, so I begrudgingly drove to 7-11 to pick up a quart, only to return home and find we were also nearly out of sugar. Back to 7-11. Grumble, grumble.

He requested my presence in the kitchen a few times, mostly to ask “does this look right.” The batter looked perfect and tasted delicious. For an hour and fifty minutes that cake baked while I napped/read/napped on the couch. He pulled it out of the oven a little early (I didn’t adequately explain the toothpick trick to determining doneness) but an overly moist cake is better than a dry cake, right?

Once his masterpiece was cool, he immediately sliced right in. “Want a piece, mom?”

And more so than the Patriots’s loss, this is the moment of the weekend I’m flabbergasted by. I almost said no to my son’s homemade pound cake. Why? Because of the butter. The sugar. The eggs. The flour. All wonderful ingredients. And social pressure to say no to dessert because it’s fattening,

I quickly shook off the voices in my head and cut a piece.

Why do we do this to ourselves? I’d just spent Christmas watching my mom—programmed her entire life (probably by her mother) to say she wasn’t hungry or just wanted a little—forget these food shaming lessons to eat and indulge. It was the most I’d seen my mom put on her plate in my entire life; watching her take seconds, thirds and eat dessert filled me with joy. And it got me thinking…

Growing up, on the regular my super skinny mom would say at dinner, “I’m not eating. I’m so fat.” She never told me I was fat. Never pointed out the curves I cursed. Never gave my plate the evil eye as I helped myself to buttery vegetables and creamy pastas. But when you hear a message daily, reinforced by watching your 110-pound mom eat iceberg lettuce and cucumber salads, clearly unhealthy ideals and patterns take root.

I thought I’d rejected society’s obsession with body, size and weight. I love to tell the story about the scale registering 17 pounds less after I spent three months in the wheelchair than it had before my accident as an example of how weight doesn’t matter. I wasn’t healthier. I wasn’t stronger. My muscles grew weak with inactivity. I’m still regaining strength and flexibility, two years later. And maybe that’s the problem. I’m slowly but surely resuming a fitness regime that minutely resembles the one I used to have, so of course I can’t mess up progress by eating rich, dense pound cake, right?

Think again.

I’m glad I caught my hesitation before Jack noticed. I’m glad I ate not one but two pieces of his cake. (We barely had any left for the Super Bowl.) I don’t want to be that person who looks in the mirror and only sees the flaws. And I won’t let some crazy, latent hangups hamstring me now.

What to bake next?

two years later

On this day two years ago, in a flurry of both impatience and tears, I signed my own discharge papers as George Washington University Hospital deemed me ready to go home, where I would spend the next three months confined to a wheelchair and living solely on the first floor of my house.

I remember crying in the ambulance—not because my ankle or shoulder hurt (I was on meds for physical pain) but because I was scared. Scared to navigate my life with one functioning side of the body and from a bedded or seated position. Scared to ask for help. Scared I’d klutz into another debilitating injury.

But awaiting me at home were a group of friends armed with cheers, reassurance, ready-to-heat dinners (at least one person dropped off food everyday for two months), and a schedule of care that included who was sleeping over on what night for “Chelsea duty” until my sister arrived from Maine. Chelsea’s Warrior Women (as our google calendar was named) not only cooked meals and checked in daily but also picked up groceries and volunteered to drive me to myriad appointments to see the physical therapist and my two surgeons.

Being friends with me during this period required work. I never took for granted the loving effort that went in to offers to help.

I won’t say I was lucky to shatter my ankle five weeks after having rotator cuff surgery—I still suffer uncomfortable stiffness and random shooting pain and many yoga postures remain elusive—but during recovery (and beyond) bonds deepened. Friendships grew stronger. And eventually, I could laugh at my situation. While walking again was scary, I no longer overthink every step.

Though I did overthink what to say as my son’s theater group took the stage in Atlanta last month. The traditional “break a leg” got me all up in my head. I couldn’t tell my son to break a leg but in drama circles saying good luck is bad luck. Which sentiment would have worse consequences? In the end, I stuck with tradition but clarified to whatever higher power that I meant break a leg in the performance sense, not the physical sense and definitely NOT during the performance either because god that would be awful.

Some scars are visible. Others run deep.