Anna fights sleep, but she invariably loses. She is sleeping now. But I hope her fight was worth it. Today, in her attempts to stay awake, she managed to work in one more half-ounce of yummy yummy soy beans, one more giggle for her papa, one last attempt to roll over. (As of today, she has all the actions figured out that would allow her to turn over. She just can't put them together fast enough to get any momentum going.)
May she not seek to cram as much into every minute of the day as her mother, her grandmother, or -- god forbid -- any of her great-grandmothers. Oh, the long line of over-achieving women. Oh, the long life and long days ahead for daughters of these.
It's not the overwork that has been a big deal for me as much as my tendency to make things complicated -- or, in the worst cases, Complicated. This came home to me last year most clearly in what I came to refer to as the Lasagna Revelation. Simply enough, a friend invited us for dinner. Since I'm hard to feed due to celiac disease, I asked what was on the menu and what I might be able to contribute. "No problem," she said. "I'm making lasagna with brown rice noodles."
Lasagna, I thought to myself. Gee, that's a lot of work. I worried about my friend undertaking such a big project and having to add the complications of catering to my special needs -- checking ingredients, avoiding cross-contamination, the boring details of my kitchen life.
Lasagna, as it turned out, was not a big project at all. It is perfectly possible to make lasagna with some nice ground beef, some good quality bottled tomato sauce, layered with some brown rice noodles, and topped with some grated mozza. Pop it in a pan, heat to bubbly, and voila. Imagine my surprise at the lack of complication to this generous and kind meal.
This set off my Lasagna Revelation. I got home from the dinner and sat in the kitchen and cried. "Stephen," I said, "I didn't know lasagna could be so easy." He quietly (and mostly supportively) laughed as I burst into tears.
Why? Because I realized that lasagna, for me, really is a big project. Here's how I make lasagna.
First, I till the soil. Then I add compost and allow it to warm gently. Then I plant the tomatoes, the zucchini, the eggplants, the herbs. The garlic is already in the ground from last fall. We tend the vegetables, sporadically, interpreting "organic gardening" to include a harmonious relationship with weeds. At the end of the growing season, we harvest the tomatoes, the zucchini, the eggplants. I prepare some plain whole tomatoes and some tomato sauce for the freezer and freeze it in freezer bags. I make pesto and freeze it in ice cube trays.
At some point in the winter, I decide to make lasagna. I thaw the tomatoes or tomato sauce. Chop onions, garlic, zucchini, eggplant, red pepper, mushroom. Let them all simmer to a rich homemade sauce. I wash, stem, and chop a pound of spinach. This is a lot of spinach. I grate three kinds of cheese.
Then I make the lasagna. Sans ground beef, it is still basically tomato sauce, layered with some brown rice noodles and some spinach and cheese, and topped with some grated mozza. Pop it in a pan, heat to bubbly, and voila. But my lasagna required more than a year of careful tending in the lead-up. Delicious, of course. But, let's face it, Complicated.
It's more than gardening that went into that year of careful tending. It's always more than gardening. It's a whole lifetime's worth of complex, interrelated values (often expressed as Issues) that I can't escape, that I contend with every time I try to do something as simple as making supper or as challenging as making and rearing a baby. This does not mean I ever really live up to the ethical standards that I set for myself -- this is part of what makes it all so Complicated, with the rationalizations and the shifting priorities and the self-flagellation. But I do, truly, love the complexity of systems and value my part in that complexity, whether it makes things taste better or not.
A lot of the complications I create will probably, similarly be around food. With celiac rampant on both sides of Anna's family, she's likely to need to eschew wheat from the earliest age. I want for her to have passions and passionate values and expressions of them. I just hope they are not too complicated.
(My Libran friends who have made it to the end of this post are saying to themselves, "Sister, you don't know from Complicated until you try living on the scales." You are brave Librans, all. Help my baby!)
