The Bauer Confidential

When people tell you parenting is “the toughest job you’ll ever love” they’re both right, and wrong when looked at on a day to day basis.  Being a parent is the most difficult and rewarding job I’ve ever had, but I don’t love every minute of it.  And it’s not the gross stuff that bothers me, changing diapers is no big deal.  Baby has stomach flu and won’t let you put her down while she wretches, all in a days work.  It’s the eating that’s making me crazy.

Babies are notoriously difficult eaters, and yet you have to be either feeding them, cleaning up after feeding them, or preparing to feed them what feels like the vast majority of the time.  Now that Jocelyn’s a toddler with a mouth full of teeth, including a lot of molars, more solid foods are on the menu at our house.  Deciding on that menu may be giving me ulcers.  From one day to the next, there are very few things I can count on her to actually eat.  She never seems to refuse a cheese stick, but something she seemed to love and ate tons of one evening, she may turn her nose up at and refuse to even taste the next day.  Timing is important, if she’s tired, feeding her becomes a battle of wills, with Jocelyn’s apple-sauce coated hands ripping at her own hair and rubbing her face.  I know I should trust that when she’s hungry she’ll eat, but then we’re also told it’s important to keep to schedules and that we should offer meals and snacks at consistent times.  She reaches for anything on the table, if it’s not what you’re already trying to feed her, and is so intent on those other things, she refuses to eat.  Thus bringing multiple items for a meal is problematic, but running back to the kitchen three or four times during lunch doesn’t really work either.  The same principal seems to be at work when she’s drinking her milk; she’ll drink twice as much in the quiet darkness of the bedroom compared to sitting in the living-room or at the table.

She doesn’t really seem to like meat or fish, even soft and chopped into tiny pieces or mixed in with rice or veggies.  Potatoes are inexplicably detested; how can you hate potatoes?  She won’t touch them.  Some days she’ll scarf down eggs, other days she won’t allow them to touch her lips.  And suddenly during a meal she’ll go from eating something happily, to using her tongue to push the offending food out of her mouth, making as big a mess as possible in the process.

Fundamentally, feeding our children is one of the most important jobs we have as parents.  When a child won’t eat not only is it frustrating, it’s worrying.  Last week Jocelyn was sick, and though she had other symptoms, it was the refusal of food for two days that drove me to call the pediatrician.  It turned out she had a viral infection which gave her sores in her throat, making her, understandably, reluctant to swallow.  But before I knew this I was at my wits’ end, enticing her with her favorites, begging her to try anything and everything I could think of, through any means necessary.  When it didn’t work, it was hard to stifle my irritation, I was even wondering how anyone could choose to have multiple children when the initial go round was so aggravating.  The sleep deprivation caused by a fever and the refusal of food caused by a sore throat is a recipe for a parental meltdown.

Despite her illness, I swear she got heavier and taller last week, my arms started to feel tired carrying her when they didn’t before.  It seems she’s doing fine, growing, healthy, but I can’t stop my worrying about her eating.  At its core, I think the problem is with me.  I’m afraid of raising a picky eater, of years of fights at meal-times.  I’m old enough to remember the constant negotiation between my youngest sibling and my parents at every meal.  I’m scarred by the fact that two of my brothers refused to eat at any restaurant but McDonald’s into their teen years.  Any battle about food is fraught with peril, so we must tread lightly, but it’s a war we have to wage every day, and it’s wearing me down.

I’ll start with a warning, this is not a light-hearted post.  There’s something I need to work through, think about, process, something that’s plaguing and distracting me, so I’m going to write about it, in the hope that putting it out there will help free some dark things from my mind.

As we grow older, we become increasingly more acquainted with death and dying; that’s an accepted part of life, the reality of nature.  In the past three years, in our family, we have witnessed the passing of three family leaders, some of the eldest generation of our relations, and we have mourned them and missed them, knowing life will go on, hating that it seems to do so effortlessly.  How ever expected, how ever aged, how ever loved, it seems that the loss of our oldest loved ones cuts deeply, but we are able to go on because we know that’s the way of the world, that they lived good lives, touched the lives of others, they left a mark through their many years that cannot be easily erased.

But when we loose the young, all sense and logic seem to fail us.  The world seems to turn upside down.  In high school, I lost two class-mates.  One to cystic fibrosis, the other to a car accident.  I’d known both, had classes with both, liked both.  I was sad then, but somehow that teenage mind of mine quickly filed them away, quarantined their memories just out of reach, perhaps to protect me from grief, but more likely to maintain the illusion of indestructibility most teenagers seem to seek.  A couple years after I graduated from college, I got a call, a mutual friend was taking lessons to become a pilot.  She was practicing “touch and goes” when a wing clipped the run-way, she and her instructor were killed instantly.  It felt as if the breath had been knocked out of me.  This was a girl in my photo albums, not a close friend, but someone I really enjoyed.  She was one of those rare people who seemed to posses an internal light that never faltered, whose smiled was infectious, whose humor was healing.  And like that she was gone, her light extinguished.  She died doing what she loved, they said, to some it was a solace.

This week, I received another such call.  A colleague and friend from graduate school had keeled over at work, out of the blue, and that was it.  28 years old and life was over like that, plans gone, promise unfulfilled.  This was a guy, who when he talked to you, you knew he was listening, he gave you his attention, made you feel like you were worth listening to.  It seems like a simple thing, but it’s a skill few possess.  And he was bright, and quick, and kind, a go-getter.  I’d always thought, someday I’d turn on the news and there he’d be, a Senator, hell, maybe President.  He seemed like a born politician, without the smarmy stuff, a leader, the sort of person you wanted to follow.  And we went to high school in the same town.  And his wife and I share the same first name.  And this is where I really get stuck, on her, his wife, under 30, recently moved half-way across the country, walking into their home, alone, lying down on their bed, alone.  I can’t stop turning it over and over in my mind.  Her grief, her loss, constantly running through my head.  And knowing, however bad I’m imagining it to be, it’s worse, because for her, it’s real.  He’s gone, and she’s changed, forever without him, always missing him.

Death makes me sad for three reasons: the first is that I will always miss the person who is gone, the second is that the world takes such little notice, and the last is that it reminds me of all I have to loose.   There are also the feelings of injustice, followed closely by the feelings of gratitude for all that we have, and an introspection that makes me uneasy.  The question nags at me: what am I doing with my life, am I spending my days in ways that make me happy, or will I regret?  I’ve been doing a lot of revising of plans, hopes, dreams, all in the abstract though.  These passings, these losses, keep bringing me back to a feeling that it’s time to act, to do something to ensure that I do more than bide my time, that I seek out what adds to my happiness and rid myself of things that bring me down.

I’m not sure any of this makes much sense to anyone but me.  I am mad at myself too, for turning the death of a friend into something that’s about me.  I want to remember, be grateful, to celebrate a life, short but brilliant, but I’m just not there yet, still lost and angry but powerless, and so I can’t keep from imagining…

I have a secret to confess: I love Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  It feels good to get it off my chest; I’ve been hiding our relationship, perhaps not well, for years.  Yet my love affair with P&P didn’t start out so well, P&P was assigned reading for AP English Lit class my senior year of high school.  Like many seniors in high school, I had a bit of trouble motivating myself to do my schoolwork, and Merciless Mercer, my teacher, didn’t inspire me to do much more than sit as far from her in the classroom as possible.  I didn’t finish a single one of the many novels we were assigned in that class (lest you think me a total slacker, I read every play, poem, and short story).  I think it was a quiet, self-destructive form of rebellion; I’d always done my readings in every other English class but I had more important things on my mind (namely a real-life version of the subject matter explored in P&P, like most 18 year olds).  I really started to fall for P&P when a friend checked out the BBC’s mini-series version from the library the summer after graduation, we spent many hours enthralled by the characters, costumes, and story.  If I’d been able to picture Mr. Darcy as Colin Firth when I’d been assigned the book, no doubt I would have been able to finish it.  Whenever A&E would play the P&P mini-series I would stop what I was doing and watch it, all five hours of it, often enticing even the most macho of my family members to get sucked into the drama.

In graduate school, when DVDs started getting cheap, I bought the BBC mini-series, and I watched it, a lot!  Whenever I would get depressed about my love life, or lack-there-of, I would pull out the P&P DVDs and lose myself in Jane Austen’s world, usually watching all five hours at one go.  This happened more than I would care to admit.  Eventually I decided to go ahead and try to read the novel again, this time finishing it easily.  It’s been many years now since I’ve felt the need to watch P&P for a romantic escape, but I still watch it from time to time, just for sheer enjoyment.  And I’ve seen all the other reiterations, the Kiera Knightly version of P&P, the Bollywood take “Bride and Prejudice,” and “The Jane Austen Book Club” film.  I’ve read both Bridget Jones novels and adore the first “Bridget Jones’ Diary” film (in case you didn’t know, Bridget Jones is a blatant, modern-day rip-off of P&P, with both movies even having the same Mr. Darcy).  I’ve read novels written by modern day writers trying to explore what happened after P&P.  I’ve also read a set of books that are a contemporary writer’s attempt to tell P&P from Mr. Darcy’s perspective (she took three books to do it).  The P&P world is a bit of guilty pleasure for me, you see, I generally eschew “romance novels” and P&P is widely considered to be the original.

When I saw Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, I was outraged: how dare someone be so sacrilegious to poor Jane?!?  My initial reaction was quickly overcome with amusement at the concept.  I choose Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for my book club selection with the thought: I like musical mash-ups, so why not a literary one?  This novel takes the classic P&P tale of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy and adds a dash of ninjas and a sprinkle of zombies.  The “undead” have become a nuisance in polite British society, waylaying carriages, eating brains, and just generally making themselves unwelcome.  Not only does society value manners and breeding, it also values proficiency with sword and musket (even if guns are unladylike).  The British have turned to the far East for fighting skills, with the wealthiest training in Japan, with lower ranking families traveling to China for training.  The zombie plague even affects some of the inner circle the main characters.  In the end, it’s still P&P.  I’m not sure how well the zombie thing really works, the words just seem wrong.  Elizabeth Bennett discussing dojos and self-mutilation cannot blend with the prose of Austen, or at least it doesn’t in this novel.  I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the book, and chuckle at the new additions from time to time.  In the end though, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a gimmick, and though fun to read, unless you feel like refreshing your P&P, it may not be worth your time.

Berkeley, CA. December 2009.
More about Wordless Wednesday here.

It’s hard to get in the holiday spirit here.  Perhaps it’s the spring-like weather, but the bay area is just not very conducive to Christmas Cheer.  It could also be that we’re away from all our family, and even had to skip out on church and seeing friends because yours truly has a nasty cold (germs do not make good presents).  I’ve been thinking about what Christmas was like for me as a child and imagining what it will be like for Jocelyn.  When I was young, Christmas vacation seemed to last forever.  It felt like every day was Saturday, camped out in front of my grandparents’ TV, watching cartoons and playing with cousins.  A never ending supply of cookies and fudge was always present, I was probably bouncing off the walls (have my parents tell you about the effect of sugar on me as a little girl, there are some great stories).  I remember piles of wrapping paper and mad searches for the right kind of batteries.  What I don’t really remember are the presents, though they were always nice, I don’t have concrete memories of gifts.  I do have vivid recollections of the emotions, the love, the fun.

Every family has their own set of traditions, my mom’s family always opened gifts Christmas Eve after a dinner of Oyster stew.  At my Dad’s parents, I remember eating at the children’s table through many years of hams and turkeys.  I’m excited to make new traditions for our little family, but we’re not starting from scratch.  Though we didn’t put up a tree or do gifts this year with Jocelyn being so young, I did make the traditional Bauer family holiday breakfast, Monkey Bread.  I thought I’d share the recipe as part of our holiday wishes.  Be warned, this is very sweet, and could have your kids bouncing off the walls!

Monkey Bread

4 cups biscuits (one can “Grands” biscuits, I like the flaky layer kind, but plain work well too)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar, loosely packed

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

1.  Preheat oven to 350oF.  Grease a simple bundt cake pan.

2.  Mix together the sugar and cinnamon.

3.  Cut the biscuits into 1/2 inch pieces.  Roll the pieces in the cinnamon/sugar mixture and then distribute evenly in the pan.  Sprinkle some of the remaining sugar mixture over the biscuits if you’re a fan of cinnamon like me.

4.  Melt the butter in a sauce pan, add the brown sugar and bring to a boil.  Pour over the biscuits.

5.  Bake approximately 20 minutes or until well browned and cooked through.

6.  Try not to eat the whole thing by yourself!

I’ll just let the cuteness speak for itself.

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Pumpkin caramel cheesecake.

November 2009.

More about Wordless Wednesday here.

A year ago today, we became a family of three. What a year it has been. On this, our daughter’s first birthday, the whole country is giving thanks, her father and I most of all, we couldn’t be more grateful for the amazing gift we have been given.

In college, I had a roommate from Japan.  I brought her to my parents’ house for Easter one year, thought she would enjoy the experience of a “typical” American holiday meal.  I will never forget her perplexed expression when I tried to explain the Jello salad to her, “But there’s no lettuce!” she had exclaimed.  Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that there might be something unusual about Jello salad.  At every family holiday, at every potluck, and family reunion, for my entire childhood and even to this day, someone has always brought some sort of Jello salad.  And I’m proud to admit, that like no-bake cheesecake, rice-krispie treats, and Kraft mac-n-cheese, I love Jello salad.  I currently reside in, what may very well be, the most snobbish place on earth when it comes to food.  With the climate here, great fresh food is available year-round, and I love that, I really do, but I also like a lot of things any self-respecting “foodie” would turn his or her nose up at in a jiffy.  The thing is I love all good food, I’m not prejudiced, give me a good old-fashioned mid-western meal of steak, corn on the cob, baked potato and jello salad and I’m one happy camper.

With my favorite holiday fast approaching, I received an unanticipated request, to bring a jello salad to Thanksgiving dinner in SF.  I shouldn’t really be surprised, about half of the attendants will be displaced mid-westerners, but I find it funny all the same.  A few years back, we went to a wonderful Turkey Day celebration given by the same couple who will be our hosts this year.  For that holiday, I prepared my family’s traditional holiday Jello-salad.  This layered strawberry and sour cream salad was a specialty of my maternal grandmother.  When I was a teenager and learned how to make this dish myself, I remember being a bit dismayed that there was a layer of sour cream between two layers of sweet jello, it just didn’t seem right.  I’ve since gotten over that initial quibble, and love that jello salad dearly, but I’m not going to make it this year.  It doesn’t travel well.  The year we took it the city, the BART trip caused its carefully deposited layers to slip and slide, so it wasn’t as appetizing as it had been when we left home, but it still tasted good.  I thought however, that I would share the recipe with anyone who reads this blog, should they feel like a traditional Cook family holiday dish.

Grandma Cook’s Strawberry Sour Cream Jello Salad

Directions

Asilomar Beach, California.  October 2009.

More about Wordless Wednesday here.