The Hard-to-See Stitches

I spent the past week alone on Cape Cod as I’ve done every year for the past several years. Long before I left, I had reached the point of burnout and I suppose it was that feeling of having way too much coming at me that prompted me to start up a needlework project in early February. Starting something that I know will easily take me months to finish seemed a little crazy but at the same time pulling a needle through fabric has long been a way for me to find order and calm when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the chaos around me.

As I prepared to leave for the Cape, I made the decision that I would not take any homework or school reading with me. I brought my bible, my journal, a novel and my needlework. I also brought my little Peter Rabbit and that Tale of Peter Rabbit and the Tale of Benjamin Bunny with me. I also made a promise to myself that I would listen to what I was feeling. I would rest when I was tired instead of trying to push myself to go see everything I possibly could in the time I had on the Cape. I knew I desperately needed some downtime, both mentally and physically.

Much to my delight, the townhouse I had for the week faced due east. I could sit by the sliding glass doors in the early morning sunlight and it was warm enough most days to open the doors in the morning and listen to the flock of blackbirds who lived in the marsh grasses. I spent several hours every morning working on my needlework, using the abundance of natural light to work on the lighter, harder-to-see colors and saving the darker colors for the evenings. By the third morning, I sat down to stitch and needed to work in nearly 100 white stitches, which barely even showed up against the pale ivory fabric. Given that these were the edge stitches between a pale yellow sunbeam and a bit of blank fabric, I pondered whether or not they were really necessary. They were very hard to see and seemed to serve little purpose. But after working over 1200 stitches over the course of the week, I noticed those 100 barely-there hard-to-see white stitches added texture and light in the larger scheme of things.

Sunday afternoon, as I sat by the ocean on a hidden gem of a beach, it occurred to me that maybe the time I spent every morning in my favorite pink hedgehog pajamas, sitting with my feet up, soaking up sunshine and birdsong whilst sipping my tea was just as important as the time I spent doing anything else. What might be considered wasted time actually added texture and light to the rest of life. And those four or five hours a day spent quietly pulling thread through fabric was time spent with mind and body at rest, time when prayer didn’t involve me reminding God of all the things in life that needed fixing. Instead, it was time simply spent in God’s presence. It was precisely that kind of time that I desperately needed.

Maybe that was what Peter Rabbit showed up to teach me. He sat in the chair opposite me the entire week and was rather pleasant company. I re-read those old stories every night and remembered when life wasn’t so complicated. And by the end of the week, I had realized that maybe it was okay once in awhile to flop down on the sand and rest or to go to bed early with a cup of tea when my own misadventures have me feeling worn out. Peter’s mother wondered what he’d be up to, but she didn’t get upset with him for losing his coat or his shoes. Instead, she took care of him. God certainly wasn’t upset with me for showing up worn out. Instead, God drew closer to me and cared for me as I rested in God’s presence.

Work in Progress

 

The Cookie Meditation

Something Yummy This Way Comes…

It starts as soon as the weather gets cold, sometimes as early as September, definitely by late October.  There’s a chill not only in the air outside but inside too.  Not in the house but in me. The only thing that chases that chill away is to bake and it has to be cookies. I never really paid it much mind until this year.  I felt so lousy for most of the past several years that a batch or two was about all I could pull off and the urge to bake was only another ache to be tolerated.  But this year, even with being back in school and the craziest busy season I’ve ever seen at work, I baked nearly every single weekend with energy to spare.  Batch after batch after batch. Snickerdoodles, Date Bars, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Snowflakes, Molasses Spice Drops, Scandinavian Butter Cookies and Mini Chocolate Chip cookies filled the cookie tins. I even wore out the old mixer. (In my defense, it was as old as I am.) I baked old school, grinding dates with my Grandma’s 100 year-old cast iron meat grinder and dusting confectioners sugar with Mom’s 60 year-old sifter. I spent my Saturday mornings sipping a strong cup of Irish tea, paging through the bright pink book known around here as simply The Cookie Book, and scoping out new things to try.

But why?  I knew I was looking for something but what? The warmth of the oven? The comforting smells of butter, chocolate, cinnamon, ginger and other spices? The nostalgia of doing what my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother had done for years? Maybe another batch would help me figure it out…

The funny part is, I don’t eat most of them. The boys do. Mom does. My sister does. I take them to work. I randomly drop them off to friends or neighbors. I’m in it for the making, not the eating.

I started to pay attention to what I was doing. I’m not a neat cook but I am a logical one. There’s a system to my madness. I have to work left to right and the ingredients go back into the cabinet once I’ve measured out what I need. I’ll only use one set of measuring spoons even though we have two. I have my good cookie sheets that no one else dares to use. My phone is my timer and I know how many cookies I can get on the trays before it’s time to rotate trays from oven to cooling rack.

Cookies are all about precision. Even when I tinker with my nearly-perfected chocolate chip recipe, I know exactly how much extra brown sugar I can sneak in or how much less vanilla I can use. So I was furious with myself when I screwed up a batch of chocolate snowflakes using baking soda instead of baking powder. They were beautiful but they were hard as rocks.  Such a simple thing really.  Most of my cookies use baking soda and I reached for it out of habit.  It wasn’t until after the cookies were done that I realized what I had done wrong.  Mom and I ate them anyway. Chocolate is chocolate after all and, dunked in hot cocoa, they softened up quite nicely.

But that mistake slowed me down a bit.  I paid closer attention to what I reached for, intentionally reading what I needed and not working out of habit. I noticed something else along the way. In seeking out new cookies, I was gravitating towards recipes that were more labor-intensive than my old favorites.  Most needed to be mixed then chilled for a few hours and then rolled into balls, then rolled in sugar, cinnamon or some combination of the two.  It takes time to roll 70 cookies into perfect little balls.

And it finally dawned on me last night, as cookies covered every flat space in the kitchen that this is what I was seeking: the time to slow down and work logically, methodically and precisely when everything at work and school and with the kids was out-of-control crazy.  I need the time to make a huge mess and then bring it back into perfect order.  There are only so many ways I know to pull that off: writing, stitching and baking. If I pull out my stitching or sit down at the kitchen table to write, suddenly everybody needs something from me.  But if I pull out the mixing bowls, the kitchen miraculously empties for a couple of hours.  Left alone in my mess, the crazy burns out in the oven, the stress washes off in the sink and the chill inside dissipates … at least for awhile.

What comes out of this oven is only as good as the combination of what goes into it.  Life is like that too.  It’s okay to have out-of-control crazy but only if there’s a slow down somewhere to balance it.  So if you happen to wander into my kitchen during these colder months and it looks like the cabinets may have exploded, it’s okay. I’m just meditating. And if you leave me be, I promise you, I will bring order from chaos and something sweet will come of it.