Baking and autumn hope

Not all those who wander are lost. I've been thinking about this phrase a lot this last couple of weeks. Maybe because I feel I am. Lost, that is. I have been feeling low and unwell and lost for the past couple of weeks. I've tried writing positive things in hopes that it will cheer me up but I am not a cheerful-inspirational kind of person so unfortunately it did not work as planned and I got some not-so-nice reactions which left me feeling even more low, and questioning the whole blogging thing. I felt my blog (or maybe it's me) is going nowhere or maybe backwards as everyone around me is moving forward. So I tried taking a few days off and hide from the rest of the world - no twitter, no facebook, no contact with anyone. But that just made me feel even worse, as I watched one episode after another of TV shows where everything gets better in just 45 minutes, while I had too much time to think and not like where all my thoughts were taking me. So I tried to take all the anti-flu medications I could find in my medicine-drawer (and believe you me, there are a lot of them there) because according to other people (Hidai) when I'm sick I get depressed. You know how it is that you can look at your child and your first thought is "I think he is coming down with something"? With my kids it's eating. The minute they eat less is the minute you know they are coming down with the flu. For me it's the doom & gloom. When you start hearing me talk about how my life is ruined and it will never get better, that's your sign to give me a couple of Lemsips and send me to bed (and not talk to me, unless you want to hear how miserable my life has been since the moment I was born). All those pills did help a bit, but I have been left in this not-really-sick-not-really-healthy kind of thing, which left me in a place where I can laugh at my gloom & doom but I still feel it creeping back up.

So when hiding, self-medicating and feeling sorry for myself didn't help and everything did look like it will never get any better, I took solace in the fact that everyone around me seemed as miserable as I am. Everywhere I went, every blog I read, every person I talked to said the same thing - November isn't a good month. It's not its fault, I guess, that there is nothing very comforting or nice about it - the weather gets colder, the days get shorter, the gloom is everywhere. Christmas is still too far away to get into the spirit, and it all seems kind of hopeless. I went back to check (se easy to do when you have a blog where your life is just spread out) and last year was exactly the same. November was not a good month.
I guess there is something comforting about this consistency. It's like the tide. But not while you are in the middle of it. Not while you are bust constantly looking around and seeing the should-haves, the could-haves the why-didn't-I. Not in the moments where hope seems like your worst enemy and not what helps you get up in the morning.

But then hope doesn't ask you when to show up does it? On Friday Ron & I watched the last of the Bake Off Masterclass shows, and after I explained to him that a. real baking is not as easy as watching Paul & Merry on TV, and b. baking is part science and part art, Ron decided to learn how to bake. I didn't take him seriously because, well, because none of my boys has ever showed any interest in baking apart from the eating part of it. But as it turned out he was serious, and that is how on Sunday morning I found myself explaining the basic of baking to an 8 years old, and letting him bake his first cake all by himself.

I don't get a lot of shared activities with my kids, I mean ones I also enjoy. I have always been secretly jealous of those parents whose kids enjoy baking, or shopping, or making jewellery, while I had to learn all about football. And zoo animals. I hate animals, and all things sports. But I love my kids, so I can tell you everything you didn't want to know about the English Premier League, and the London zoo. Baking has always been my thing, and being able to share it with Ron was a wonderful experience both for me and for him, one I resigned myself to thinking will never happen.

I chose a simple old fashion coffee cake for him to try out from a children's baking book I bought years ago when I was under the impression that my kids will for sure be into baking. First thing I learned is - I need a new children's book. Preferably a British one. But after Ron and I overcame the fact that the ingredients we had at home were a little different than the ones in the recipe (I told him I will teach him only if he won't complain when I change ingredients or quantities), I overcame my need to have everything done my way (also known as "the right way"), and Hidai overcame his fear of having the kitchen all messy, we were on our way to baking.

Ron did most of it by himself, from setting out the ingredients, to breaking the eggs, mixing everything, pouring the mixture and doing the dishes, with I was just standing alongside him, cheering him on (and helping with the oven). After an hour in the oven his first cake was ready and I got a moment I have long ago gave up on hoping for.