Awakening from A Long Winter's Nap
Hello from the other side of kind of a lot
Sometimes you inadvertently take a month’s-long break from the internet, and you look up and realize you’ve traveled to London and celebrated Christmas and gone to New York and turned thirty and been very pregnant and had a third baby and basically stopped cooking for a few months, and then it’s simply the Holy Week and you’re trying to remember how to read a recipe. And your husband is back at work and your older two kids are at Mother’s Day Out, and there’s a newborn asleep in the car seat. What else is there to do with a teeny baby except for find a coffee shop and write something as fast as possible, for crying out loud.
That’s where I’ve found myself today. Back where this whole newsletter began, me and a sleeping baby, trying to sort myself out. It’s been four years since I started writing. Recently more than ever, I’ve felt the ebb more than the flow, the words and the writerly impulse have drawn back into the sea, and I have let them go out with the tide.
Where I used to sit around and have entire paragraphs pop into my head, I now occasionally have a sentence fragment come to mind. A word or phrase breaks through and then recedes. I don’t mean to sound like my cognitive function is declining (although there is something to consider here given the very small amount of sleep I’m running on). Rather, I am allowing myself to have a quiet season. To worry less about my output in any kind of professional capacity and concern myself more with cultivating a strong inner life.
It’s funny to say I’m entering a quiet season, because having three children is, in fact, a lot noisier than having two. I would not call this morning “quiet” when the hungry newborn was screaming and my overconfident four-year-old touched the stove while flipping her own French toast. Nobody call the cops, we are all A-OK.
Somehow I feel more certain of myself, even in the midst of the craziness. Caring for these three precious children is a hard job but it’s a very good one. I feel privileged to step into this role in an even fuller capacity, and it’s my goal to approach these days with joy. I’ll write more about the profoundly altering experience of childbirth next time when I remember to bring my laptop charger to the coffee shop.
Welcome to the party, Mary Elizabeth. We’ll be sure to keep things interesting for you.
Here’s the deal. I genuinely haven’t read anything on Substack in four months. My brain has been too full and I won’t try to catch up. I recommend this course of action. Just quit the internet for a while! See what happens.
So where to resume? I’m feeling rusty on writing, so don’t call the Pulitzer committee on this one, but I’ll get back to my usual shenanigans in no time.
For one, we’ve officially disembarked from the blessed post-baby Meal Train (choo choo). What a gift to not even have to think about what’s for dinner for five (5!) weeks. If you’re wondering if you should ever go to church, I would argue that besides salvation from sin and the gift of eternal life with God, meal trains are a good enough reason to cross the threshold.
I’m back in the vast wilderness of meal planning and grocery shopping. Great timing on my part, because heaven knows we were all tired of winter food. Now it’s just lemons and asparagus and green goddess dressing from now til the pumpkins show up.
What’s for dinner has become the dominant question coursing along my neural pathways. Once again, I’m tying myself in knots trying to decide just what combination of meals we should have this week. Should I do blackened fish with rice or baked fish with potatoes, chicken tacos or beef tacos, or greek chicken and potatoes or chicken and rice or shepherds pie or bolognese sauce or or or how many times a week can you eat rice and potatoes and feel ok? Give me a freakin break, and just PICK SOMETHING, I tell myself. This pep talk strategy does little to move the needle, and often I don’t know what will end up on the plate until I pick up a knife. What a dangerous way to live! Such mystery and intrigue! Well, when you don’t really go anywhere because it’s so hard to get three kids in and out of car seats without breaking a sweat, we have to find adventure where we can. For me, it’s the refrigerator.
All that to say, this week:
Melissa Clark’s baked fish and chips. I tried a new local seafood market and got some beautiful grouper fillets. Ended up going with this wonderful sheet pan dinner and everyone in my house loved it, two-year-old included.
I’m planning to do some kind of taco night tonight. Protein TBD.
Wednesday we will do easy leftovers from taco night.
And now I’m left thinking about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday meals leading up to Easter Sunday.
Me and my tendency toward nostalgia and romanticism want to create some gorgeous beautiful family traditions around these days. I’m still having a think on this. What kind of meals capture the days leading up to Easter? Perhaps something simple and austere, something Passover adjacent? We shall see. And I have to get my ducks in a row for my annual Good Friday baking project. Hot cross buns are back on the docket this year after my 2024 Croissant Challenge. Newborn land is not the year for laminating pastry, me thinks.
There is much to busy ourselves with in preparation for some great days of feasting and celebrating. I always love Holy Week and the great anticipation it brings for Sunday morning.
I hope to be popping in your inbox more regularly again now that hopefully the worst of the brain fog is lifting. Wishing you a blessed Holy Week and Eastertide!
XOXO
Allison
I always enjoy reading whatever words, sentences, or paragraphs you choose to
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So unexpectedly lovely to see you in my inbox, Allison. Huge, huge congratulations on Mary Elizabeth and this new adventure -- mama of three! -- in your life.
Also: you are doing the very hardest work right now, and I can't believe you're cooking 🤯