Meanderings on making banana bread

I am not the world's greatest cook. By which I mean, I totally do not have the talent my husband has, to take a look at a pantry and throw something together that tastes good. I can follow a recipe (so long as it's not complicated) and as the sign jokingly says, millions have eaten my cooking and gone on to lead normal lives.

(I am also not the world's greatest blogger *blush*. 2011 has been...well...busy. I'm trying to post more regularly, honest. :-))

But lately, I've started baking again. Our last apartment had two outlets, and one was taken up by the refrigerator. Adding in that, the lack of counter space and that our kitchen faced into the sun most days...and the stand mixer stayed under the counter, gathering dust. But in this apartment---there's both some counter space and outlets so...yeah. I'm baking again. Bread, sometimes. Banana bread, tonight. Brown bread (for an office get-together) earlier this week.

There's something curiously satisfying about making bread...I can't really explain it. A friend of mine, also a Wiccan, says cooking is a form of worship...after all, the cauldron is one of the witch's tools and certainly there's no more powerful magic than throwing together a bunch of ingredients to feed your family. For me lately, it's been a form of meditation. We've had a lot of challenges this year (who hasn't?) and anything that brings a small amount of peace into the chaos can only be good.

And banana bread? Yum. How can you beat that?

Body image and the preschooler

Yesterday, my daughter and I were snacking on grapes when she said to me, "Don't eat all those or you'll get fat."

Whaaaaaaattttt?

She's four and not a cruel child, but the remark brought me up short. I have...curves, putting it mildly, but I'm sure I've never said such a thing to her. I've tried not to discuss food issues in terms of being thinner or trying to lose weight, but only in terms of eating more healthy foods, especially since she herself is at a perfectly normal weight for her height and age. So where did she get the idea?

When I picked my jaw up off the floor, I told her, as calmly as I could, that it wasn't nice to say such things, that it was mean and could really hurt someone's feelings. I think she understood, but again, she's four and of the age when the world is entirely black and white and it's okay to say what you're thinking when you think it. (Which I usually admire in her but um...yeah. Sometimes, not so much.)

The remark, though, made me think---about all the things we tell little girls about how they should look and what they should be. Abercrombie and Fitch just got into trouble (again) for marketing push-up bikini tops to seven year olds. I've seen platform shoes and ultra-short skirts marketed to kids Roisin's age and younger. We've done our level best to innoculate her from the worst of things, but I don't fool myself--the pressure from her peers, from society itself, is never-ending. I don't want her to look in the mirror and feel fat or ugly, not ever, but especially not at four. And I also don't want her to think it's okay to be rude to other people, even if she is speaking a literal truth. Sometimes, people are overweight for reasons other than eating too much food and even if they are, it's not her place to say so.

Sigh. There isn't anything like parenthood to make you worry. :)

"Do you love me?" :)

Today is Valentine's Day, and I confess that our family is pretty much ignoring it this year.

My husband and I will have been married eight years at the end of April. In that eight years, we've had four moves, one miscarriage, one premature birth, one cardiac bypass surgery, one NICU stint and all the other various and sundry things that happen in a marriage. I'm reminded of the line from "Fiddler on the Roof" where Tevya asks his wife, after twenty five years, if she loves him. She gives him a laundry list of all the things she's done and at the end of it, says, "If that's not love, what is?"

After eight years, I agree with Tevya's wife. My husband is an excellent father and husband---if he has kitchen sink blindness occasionally, he's also the same guy who can make a good meal out of seemingly nothing in the pantry, the same guy who also remembered a remark I made in passing, and bought me my favorite lip gloss.

In eight years, we've struggled, grieved, loved, lost, laughed and learned...together. I don't need a card to remind me to tell him I love him. I already do. And I know he loves me and loves our daughter. We don't need the day....it's nice, but not necessary.

If that's not love, what is? :)