June 5, 2011

• Once again…

  I have proven to myself, by a circuitous and deeply thoughtful process, what I already knew.

  Last night, when I told a new online friend that I had been waiting for a pie to come out of the oven, he said that he is a cooking and baking fanatic.  There was a time, I realized, when that description would have fit me, but it no longer does.

  I didn’t really give it much thought at the time.  It was late in a long busy day, I was mentally tired and physically fatigued, and focused on that keyboard conversation.  This morning, it lurked in my mind, a puzzle to unravel:  Why do I no longer derive the joy I once did from my kitchen creativity?

  The moment that I hit upon the phrase, “kitchen creativity,” I realized that although I still like to cook and to eat my own cooking, there is just one aspect of cooking that still fully engages me and gives me great joy.  It’s the improvisation, and the tinkering to perfect, then record and share, new recipes.  Last night’s pie was a version of my apricot, pepita, oatmeal, quick and easy gluten-free pie, made with a different, not better, crust recipe, and too much oatmeal — still tinkering… still having fun with it.  The fun, I realized, comes not from the process nor the product, but from the challenge. 

  How long have I known that I thrive on challenge, that this is where my joy comes alive?  I don’t think I’d reached that realization yet when I came to Alaska around the end of my twenties.  I already knew it by the time my youngest son was born, eight years later.  He turns 30 this summer, so it has been roughly close to half my life that I’ve known I live for challenge.  The knowledge has been a saving grace through three decades of parenting this challenged and challenging man, but in only one way is he still a challenge to me.

  This leads me into the answer to the next questions I asked myself today:  Where now does my joy reside?  What’s the big challenge currently engaging my consciousness?  As soon as asked, those questions were answered.  The task that puts the smile on my face each morning is nothing more than mere survival, to live another day.  The secondary one that draws me toward this machine is challenging indeed:  human relations.  Ironically, after spending most of my life becoming the hermit and learning how to survive in relative solitude, I’m facing the challenge of relating to other people. 

  For this joy, I am grateful to those who developed the web and social networking sites, and to the flaky southern man who asked me to move in here on the grid and house-sit for him while he went south for the winter, more than a decade ago, and then never came back.  I certainly would not give up my life out here on the edge of the fringe of the back of beyond to undertake the challenge of people. 

  

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