Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) (31 page)

What I
can
hear is him poking fun at the book’s cover design or correcting me on some trivial point. I can hear him jokingly comparing it to
The Lord of the Rings
: “Well, you didn’t create your own Elven language, but it was a decent read.”

What’s sometimes harder to accept is that I’m actually doing well, that I have carved out a beautiful life for myself. And that sometimes, I don’t need to keep fighting.

Annie Dillard writes: “At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then—and only then—it is handed to you.”

You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain,
and when it
is
finally handed to you, in whatever form it arrives, whether it’s a bowl of slow-simmered spicy pinto beans or your dream job or what looks like the beginning of a family with someone who loves you despite the countless times you pushed him away from ages fifteen through twenty-two, there is one last step. To claim it, to believe it belongs to you.

T
hree days after my due date, following a long walk around my very hilly neighborhood, a trip to the grocery store, three cups of raspberry leaf tea (rumored to help induce labor), and a dinner of rice and black beans in coconut milk (see page 261 for the recipe), I finally went into labor.

And the following morning, around eleven a.m., Matt’s and my son, Teddy, was born.

A week later, my mom came to stay with us for ten days. And whenever I would say something about how cute the baby is or how much I love him, she would say, “Just wait until he smiles at you,” followed by a guttural sigh of longing.

I didn’t know this (as I didn’t know most things about newborns), but apparently they don’t start smiling at you (on purpose at least) until they are about six weeks old. Well, tomorrow marks six weeks, and today he stared at me and smiled for a solid thirty seconds, during which my eyes welled with tears of extreme joy.

Don’t get me wrong. These six weeks have been hard. Each day has involved doing something I’d previously never done, from giving birth, to breast-feeding, to burping a baby, to recovering from giving birth, to putting a baby in a car seat, to finding a pacifier your baby deems acceptable, to operating
a breast pump, to taking your dog out to pee while the baby is inside hopefully sleeping and not suddenly crying, and so on and so forth.

And all the clichés about having a baby seem to be true: Matt and I are tired; our household chores have doubled; our piles of clean laundry may never get put away; and we’re both unsure if we’ll ever again have the pleasure of a relaxed dinner together instead of one spent in alternating shifts of eating and baby-holding.

But I’ve found that there are other truths too—ones no one had told me. Like, it will take just a matter of minutes for me to miss his face, that when he wakes up screaming to eat at three a.m., that though I’m exhausted, I’m almost relieved and instantly calmed upon seeing his big eyes and flailing arms; that I will feel a quiet yet powerful satisfaction in caring for him—in learning how to calm him down, in anticipating his needs, and in realizing how I hardly blink an eye anymore when he pees (amazingly) straight up in the air while I’m changing him; and that I will find a deep-seated happiness in seeing how much other people love him, in watching Matt play with him or read to him and my mom melt with joy when he’s in her arms.

During these six weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about my dad often. In the mornings, I think about how he would disapprove of me reheating my cold coffee in the microwave. I think about him when I’m staring at Teddy’s face and wondering what color his eyes will settle on in a few months, if they’ll become brown like Matt’s and my mom’s or if they’ll turn greenish blue like mine and my dad’s. I wonder if he would’ve held him for long periods of time or just a few moments here and there, and
how
he would’ve held him: if he would have
cradled him in his arms close to his chest or slightly farther from his body, placing his head in one open palm and his back in the other. I wonder if he would’ve sung to him the songs he sang to Billy and me—“Here Comes the Sun” and that weird Three Stooges’ “Alphabet Song.”

And though I’m not sure exactly what I believe in when it comes to an
afterlife
, I like to think of Grandma just getting settled into her new digs, catching up with Grandpa, and then bumping into Dad in the hallway: “
Bill?
What on earth are you doing here?”

“Oh, hey, Ruth. Yeah, I just got here, which
means
I outlived you by almost two weeks. So technically, I won,” Dad might kid, before the two of them got to talking, inevitably landing on the subject of Teddy—empathizing with each other that they didn’t get to meet him and agreeing on his adorableness.

During these six weeks, I’ve realized that everything I was worried about in terms of failing as a parent has for the most part been replaced with simply doing the best I can.

When we first brought Teddy home, the nights were particularly difficult, because—as he sleeps in the Moses basket my dad gave us at the side of our bed—any sound he made required one of us to flip on the light and make sure he was OK. But you can only keep up that kind of vigilance for so long. Soon enough, your own needs begin to resurface. Soon enough, you simply need to sleep.

And soon after that, a few of your
wants
emerge as well.

For me, this has meant finding time to make dinner (even if it involves chopping a few cloves of garlic and an onion at three p.m. only to sauté them hours later), to manage to bake a cake brimming with chocolate, dates, and pecans, to take
myself and Mavis for walks (with Teddy strapped to my chest), to squeeze in productive writing sessions (while Teddy sleeps next to me on the couch), to let my mind wander to thoughts of book number two and baby number two, and sometimes even to let myself dream; specifically, of moving the family to Paris for a few years and/or of renting a cabin with friends and shooting a Bon Appétempt movie. Of course, both of these ideas feel completely out of reach and highly impractical, which is sort of how I felt about that chocolate peppermint cake.

First and foremost, I want to thank the readers of my blog. Without all of you, this book would never have happened. I especially want to thank those who, through their thoughtful comments on the site and occasional e-mails, became more than just readers but cheerleaders and friends. Whether you knew it or not, your digital messages often served as tangible proof I actually
had
readers, which translated into quiet encouragement to continue the blog (and to continue writing in general).

I want to thank my agent Amy Hughes for calling me three years ago and proposing the idea for this book as well as for her continued support through this whole process, not to mention other important processes, e.g., childbirth and child-rearing.

I want to thank my editor Emily Griffin, who encouraged me to write the kind of book I always wanted to write and who took so much care not only with this manuscript but also with
me
. I like to joke with my writing students about how writers are naturally fragile, self-conscious, sensitive creatures, and during the writing of this book, I was all of these as well as pregnant, and then
very
pregnant and grieving. I couldn’t have asked for a better or more understanding person to help me shape this book.

I want to thank Wendy Brenner—my professor and thesis director while I was at the University of North Carolina Wilmington—who has always encouraged my writing, both fiction and non-, and who has been a reader and supporter of the blog from the very beginning. I also want to thank her for convincing me to watch the 1948 classic film
The Red Shoes
during a time period when I was feeling particularly down and out. She wrote to me, “the MOVIE is insolent and… you (Amelia) have to be insolent (defiant) to be an artist of any kind.” It was exactly what I needed to hear at the time.

I also want to thank my other writing professors who believed in me enough to allow me to believe in myself (if even for a few fleeting moments). I’m referring to you: Rebecca Lee, Lucy Bucknell, and Stephen Dixon.

I want to thank my fellow “food bloggers,” or perhaps better-put, this creative, supportive community I’ve found myself in; specifically, Tim from Lottie and Doof, Luisa from The Wednesday Chef, Kimberley from The Year in Food, Sarah from The Yellow House, and Kelsey from Happyolks. Each one of you and your sites have been sources of encouragement as well as inspiration.

I want to thank my friends, coworkers, and bosses at Heath Ceramics. Although the job might have brought me to tears on more than one occasion, the people I worked with made me smile way more often. Plus, I found daily inspiration in the company’s dedication to the
art of making
as well as the beautiful ceramics.

I’m a demanding friend. (Or, as my friend Liz once kindly put it, “Amy is complicated.”) I want to thank my close circle of friends for their support. Mary Anne, Raena, Sonya, Liz,
Kara, Tim, Corinne, Jodi, Neal, Sara, Sean, you guys have been there for me time and time again, and I can’t thank you enough. Thank you also to those of you who served as trusty recipe testers. Your feedback was invaluable to this self-taught home cook.

Of course, this book really wouldn’t be possible without its main topic, my family. They say, “you can’t choose your family,” but if you could, I bet very few people would choose someone who was writing a memoir in which you were a main character. Yet my immediate family has been nothing but supportive of this project—from my kindhearted stepdad to my loving and enthusiastic in-laws (aka Mombers Dadbers) to my amazing siblings-in-law (Andrea, Adam, and Fave) to my late grandma, my culinary guardian angel, and, of course, my late father who supported this book in his own unique way.

I especially want to thank my mom and brother, who helped me write this book by picking up the phone when I called (just about daily) while on a walk in the late afternoon after a morning at my computer. When Matt asked my mom for permission to marry me, and she famously warned him that I’m
extremely
difficult, she was
extremely
right. With that in mind, I also want to thank my mom and brother for loving me despite all of my many flaws
and
all of the instances I’ve taken the time to point out theirs. The truth is that no matter what I might say (or write), I love them with my whole heart.

Of course as much gratitude as I owe to all of the aforementioned people, I am most indebted to my husband and best friend, Matt, without whom I would have given up the blog long ago; without whom this story wouldn’t be worth telling.

To be on the receiving end of Matt’s specific, highly energized, and openhearted brand of unconditional love is a very special thing. And to watch it in action with our six-week-old son is possibly even more special. Just for introducing me to this kind of love, I’ll never be able to thank him enough.