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The year has come and gone in a dizzying splurge of turkeys, cookies and roasts, cranberries, walnuts and pears. We’ve lit the candles and cleaned up the wax, sang the carols and whispered the prayers. We’ve gone to bed late and woken up early, dreamed of rain in summer and summer in winter.
And now….thank goodness, it’s starting again. In the quiet week we take between Christmas and the New Year, I try to reacquaint myself with life’s slower rhythms. I find myself taking stock. Why do I do what I do? I look at my children, adults or almost, but still my boys. What can I tell them, if they even listen, about how to navigate another year?
After a few days of self-imposed exile, I find myself drifting back into the recipes and menus like a guilty ex-patriate. I make excuses about why I’m there, but I know the truth. I can’t stay away. I love the kitchen.
So strange the journey one takes to arrive home—the diesel-fumed nights in foreign train stations, the labyrinths of academic aspirations,
seashores swathed in fog, desk jobs, treks through the redwoods.
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What do you want to be when you grow up, we ask our children. What do we want to be tomorrow, we ask ourselves. What will we be next year?
I believe in organic growth, the kind that evolves from context and circumstance, the unforced flowering that defines itself as it unfurls. It’s not an easy philosophy, but it lends itself well to the world of food. It’s the tastes that develop in the slow braise, the experiment of seasonings. It’s the flavor at the end of the day.
So in January, armed with the compulsion to take stock, to clean house and minimize details, how do I start again? I light the flame under the pot so the olive oil shimmers. I throw in the sweet onion and the garlic, the red wine and the bay leaf. Shall I turn towards Spain or France or Mexico? I breathe in the spices and feel a deep joy spreading.
First, I tell my children, recognize what you love even if you can’t name it. Sometimes that comes later. Feel it in yourself and follow it. That commitment is the recipe for sanity in a life. That love is the recipe for joy.
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