Today I made muffins.
I say that I've made muffins because it was a small thing I could do, on the list of things to do, while the kids did projects in the dining room. Baking supposes cheerfulness, and while it seems impossible to feel gloomy while the scent of cinnamon wafted through the house, these actions can sometimes only just barely stretch enough to simulate normalcy in what feels like pervasive worry. But people have faced worry before! Look! In December of 2006 Nora Ephron wrote: “The morning talk shows will remind me (not that I need to be reminded) that the world is currently in the midst of a total meltdown, that we have the worst president in current history, that the elation of the recent election has passed to a numbing foreboding that nothing is going to change and that innocent people will continue to die in this hateful, violent episode we've unleashed.” And although I'm not sure which election she's talking about, and suspect the violence is about war and not racism, still, I kind of hope she was being sarcastic? Because this year’s meltdown feels like the meltdown of all meltdowns. Sometimes I feel silly for reading Nora Ephron. I picked up her book from the library on the last day it was open. It was a fat book titled The Most of Nora Ephron and I thought it could be the light reading alongside Harold Brodkey. Instead, Ephron's humour feels outdated. I’m partly to blame... I don’t get all the references. I do get the recipes though! That part is still pertinent.
(I’m editing this two weeks later, and that criticism about Ephron’s humour makes me feel guilty. Especially since I read the essay she wrote titled “Revision and Life: Take it From the Top – Again” and realize how much work she put into “a way of writing that looked chatty and informal” by her own description. Perhaps it would be more apt to say that her writing highlights the ways in which the conversation has changed, and I crave depth.)
I baked muffins. They’re breakfast muffins for my mother-in-law and I’m happy to make them because they are a small thing I can still do. I’m happy to drop them off so they’re ready for breakfast next morning even though we greet each other under separate clouds of worry. Hers are the worries of an 80 year old. Mine are the worries of motherhood. In Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie writes a scene wherein the children meet Captain Hook who enjoins them to become pirates. One of the lost boys’ name is Tootles. “‘Don't irritate him unnecessarily’ had been Wendy’s instruction in the hold; so Tootles stepped forward politely. Tootles hated the idea of signing under such a man, but an instinct told him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person; and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer. All children know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but make constant use of it.”
Mothers as buffers! Isn’t that so? I imagine myself providing for our home precisely that kind of buffer with enough realism and hope to guide them through this passage. I’m acutely aware that it’s not a game of pretend, that to provide a buffer for my children, I need to be a good example. When “How a Traumatized Nation Can Recover” offers advice like this: “Make sure that we disconnect and we turn our attention to our own wellbeing and stay connected to activities that feed us. Make sure you’re resourcing yourself like a plant. Watering and feeding yourself and engaging in activities that really do give you energy.” I agree, and come here to write. And when I don’t know what to write, I try to describe what I’m doing and what I’m thinking.