I come in peace

Sometimes, I feel like an alien who has crash landed in a place that seems vaguely familiar but is not home.  I try to figure out if it is parenthood that has catapulted me to this frontier, with all the noise and pressure of trying to raise good enough kids.  Trying to support their passions and keep them from cheating in front of all their relatives in an endless game of Trivial Pursuit (all hypothetical, of course).  Or is it marriage?  The seesaw effort of keeping things in balance when God Damn It things hurt now when I climb and why did you rip the wallpaper off the walls when all I wanted to do was change out the toilet. 

I don't want to host Thanksgiving at my house and nobody would have asked me to until I landed in this place, and started making these things: 

My husband is travelling in this land, as well: (using drywall screws to make a turkey centerpiece that was mistaken for a peacock)

 

 

Julia Child started cooking in her mid thirties out of boredom and out of a desire to keep her renaissance husband happy.  Until that point, she had viewed food as fuel.  She was an all-in kind of gal and threw herself into the literal foreign land of France and French cooking.  It is possible she was an alcoholic, serving shots of vermouth to her crew before cooking for 14 hours to "steady the hands" but maybe she was just trying to get back to her own place.

Spiritual masters talk about the 1000 deaths we experience as we let go of our old selves and embrace our new paths.  Middle age seems to be about nostalgia for what was and a bit of confusion about what is coming.  I'm going to keep reading about feisty women who said "the hell with it" and reinvented themselves over and over again.  And I may try a French recipe or two....Tant pis!