Abby's cake...

a collaboration with *Abigail Thomas* + big mom's kitchen rules, mother-artists, and summer closes up shop

I love outward expressions of love:

hey-ho,

It appears summer is closing shop in Portland. We’ve had cool mornings and cool evenings. Bodacious clouds float lazily across the sky, and the peanut butter trees (also known as Harlequin Glorybower, but have you ever smelled the leaves?) are in full bloom.

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Another thing that feels like autumn? A county fair! What a delight to race through on a late August evening as a storm barreled toward us. Log rollers, pickles, pigs, fried elephant ears in greasy paper, the rapid-fire auctioneer, the shady looking ferris wheel operator, the bravado of flirting teenagers, the toddler meltdowns… all of it. But best of all? The poultry! Who knew I’m a chicken girl? That Sasquatch chicken, amazing!

Also, loved learning about 4H Clubs. Many of the fair kids were 4H kids, raising their animals, growing their tomatoes. The 4H motto is: Head, Heart, Hands, Help. I don’t know, Im shrugging over here, that motto seems pretty terrific for writing too.

Honestly, this is my favorite time of year, the shoulder between summer and autumn, when you crack the spine on a new academic calendar, get new shoes, a hair cut, and spend one last long weekend and the beach.

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Plus my friends, we have the DNC happening, which feels like such a seasonal burst. More on that soon, with lots of opportunities to participate. Kamala/Harris!

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read:

I’m still into MONSTERS: A Fan’s Dilemma, by Claire Dederer, particularly I’m engaged with her chapter about mother-artists. I’m jonesing for insights into the hairsplitting necessary when a mom/artist is present for her children, which is both a joyful and depleting experience, and also strives to be present for her own creative expression, also joyful and depleting, though in different ways. The chapter didn’t offer me any answers beyond what I’ve known and felt. It’s much easier for a man to ignore “the pram in the hallway.” At times I’ve felt resentful. Demands of motherhood always trump demands of my life as a writer, and I don’t regret it one whit, but I also want to acknowledge the choice.

Dederer quotes the writer Jenny Diski who questions the necessity of art vis-à-vis the needs of family and children. Diski questions the collateral damage of prioritizing art, wondering what is the limit of “the pain that others have to tolerate so that art could be made?” It comes down to a feeling of self-erasure with which a mother must contend. And that is terribly difficult.

Art is often seen as voluntary, an item in a list of choices you're making, a task that can be prioritized or dispensed with, depending on available resources and time. An item to be balanced against the exigencies of family. But. If you are an artist and you always, always put your children's needs first, eventually your own need will make itself heard and you will wonder, What would I have made in those lost years? You will wonder, Am I too late?

I guess the beauty in this passage is in untethering ourselves from a sense of failure. And, sheesh, in the moments when it’s difficult with one’s kids, there are always those stretches (adolescence anyone?) when kiddos don’t seem delighted that you’ve come home with a car full of groceries, a writer can feel they’ve given away their time and energy to what end? Maybe we can accept we made the best choices we could given our capacious hearts. We musn’t expect everything from ourselves.

…

Abigail Thomas

is a writer who seems to merge motherhood and writing seamlessly. Motherhood is often the subject of her writing and the prose is lithe and honest, inviting, sometimes funny, always loving. I’m rereading SAFEKEEPING just now and I think you should read it too. Consider this from a chapter entitled “Grateful” in which Thomas speaks of herself in the 3rd person:

She used to think she needed to know things to be the mother. How to fix things, make everything better. And she couldn't, she just didn't know how. She felt sometimes not like a mother but like an older sister with an impatient streak. But one weekend when her oldest daughter was afraid she was losing her baby, she spoke to her son-in-law on the telephone. Shyly she asked him, "Do you think I should come?"

"My wife needs her mother," said her son-in-law, and in that second she understood all at once and forever everything she needed to know. And she got on the bus directly and went out to their house and she sat by her daughter's bed and held her hand.

The reasons I love this passage:

• We think, as moms, that we need to know how to repair the world, and for awhile we can, but ultimately with the complications of love and life, we simply cannot.

• That adverb, shyly… ugh, wanting to help and afraid to ask, afraid that maybe those moments when we couldn’t fix things, the history, would rise up as barriers? The asking is so brave!

• The son-in-law’s response. The call to action! “My wife needs her mother.” The gift of being necessary!

• An entire life in a few sentences.

Do tell. What are you reading?

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A quick housekeeping note! Every Friday I’ve got a WEEKEND READING chat stream going. I want to hear from you all, please! Do tell, what are you excited to read? What are you loving? What could be better than a reader curated TBR? Here’s a recent rich thread…

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For our next r.w.e. book group we will be reading and discussing THE MOST by Jessica Anthony. It’s about a mother who begs off going to church with her family one Sunday morning. She chooses to go for a swim instead and then refuses to get out of the pool! I cannot wait to read!

The book group is a perk for paid subscribers and let me tell you we are a lively bunch!

We meet on Zoom, 8 September from 9:30 - 11a PT. Do consider joining us. A paid subscription is less than the cost of one coffee. Go ahead, upgrade to paid and claim your spot. Hope to get to know you better!

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Check my read.write.eat. Bookshop Store, where you will find many of the books I've recommended in the newsletter. Buying books from my shop is a way you can be a friend to the newsletter. 

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write:

A chance to write with me:

Autumn Essay Writing Intensive:

Have you been watching the DNC? I’ve got lots to say about it all… I am so energized! Tuesday night Doug Emhoff spoke intimately about his wife, Kamala Harris, calling her a ‘joyful warrior’ and I’m in. That is what we are going to become in this Essay Writing Intensive. Joyful Warriors ready to commit to getting words down, exploring our thoughts and stories and connecting with readers. We will write four essays in five weeks. Participants will have the opportunity to respond to prompts based upon sample essays we’ve read, or to follow their own curiosity. Everyone will read a couple essays aloud and receive on-the-spot feedback. Each participant will also have the chance for a longer workshop of one essay draft, plus an opportunity to send me a revised essay when our class is complete for further editorial suggestions. We’ll also spend some time talking about where to submit your work.

Let’s be joyful warriors and write essays!

• write 4 short essays (1k - 1.5k words)

• read your work aloud to peers 2x for on-the-spot discussions,

• submit an essay for complete workshop

• submit to me, post workshop, a revised essay for my deeper editorial suggestions

• read and discuss great sample essays

• October 23 - November 20

• Wednesday afternoons 5:00 - 7:30p pacific time on Zoom

• $375.00

• 8 students max (only four spots left)

If you’re interested, save your seat:

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The prompts now live in the P.S. (Paid Subscriber/Post Script 🥳) section at the bottom of this newsletter.

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I love bringing this newsletter to you every week, and it takes some time to put together. Thanks to all for being here with me

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If you love the newsletter too, consider upping your subscription to paid. It’s a mere 1.25 a week, far less than a cup of coffee, and for that you get all the goods, plus my affection!

So, hit the red button! With the hope of encouraging more paid subscribers, a sort of honor system :) the recipe is not behind a paywall this week. And, this month, I’m offering 15% off for a subscription!

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eat:

We also get to be joyful eaters! This week I have a collaboration with the wonderful writer (and baker—who knew?!?)

Abigail Thomas

which came about because she has a new substack to which you should subscribe. What Comes Next is authentic and charming and makes us all feel pretty good about this project of being human. In a recent post she wrote:

I can carry on a reasonable conversation, make a birthday cake, get to the bathroom, feed the dogs. I can make things out of clay. If I keep my wits about me I can handle whatever shows up in the present, but mention something interesting that happened yesterday and it’s a different story.

I love this list because it keeps us present, keeps us real, no? And, as I mentioned above about 4H (head, heart, hands, help) this note hits it! A conversation for the head. Feeding the dogs, help. Making a birthday cake, heart. Making things from clay, hands. It’s a 4H moment. I love Abby’s writing for the pleasure she takes from life.

Here’s Abby and her cake:

This is special mostly because of Big Mom's Icing, and Big Mom’s Rules.

The recipe is from a cookbook called A Piece of Cake, by  Susan Purdy. It’s a rich yellow cake, very easy to make. Easy to find in my cookbook because the pages get stuck together with the batter. Big Mom made sponge cake, but I prefer this:

Rich Yellow Cake

• 3c sifted all purpose flour

• 1T baking powder

• Little bit of salt

• 2 sticks of butter, nice and soft

• 2c white sugar

• 4 large eggs

• 1c milk

• vanilla (generous amount)

• lavishly butter two 8 or 9 inch pans or one sheet cake pan 9x13

•  Preheat oven to 350

1. Sift flour, baking powder, salt. Set aside for now. In large bowl, beat softened butter with the two cups of sugar until nice and light and smooth. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each one. *Try not to eat any of this although it is yummy.

2. With your mixer on low, add the flour mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla. Lick beaters. Don’t overbeat. Just until smooth.

3. Divide batter between the buttered baking pans. Lick bowl. Lick spoon. Bake for thirty or thirty-five minutes until broom straw inserted in middle of cakes comes out clean. Cool cakes. Lacking a straw broom, use a sharp skinny knife.

*Big Mom’s rules while cakes were in the oven:

• no noise in the kitchen

• no talking unless in whispers

• no slamming of doors or cakes will fall

We  tiptoed around. We licked the bowl and spoons and beaters. I don’t think Big Mom had an electric mixer back in the day. She used the hand held kind. I’m spoiled, love the electrric ones.

Big Mom’s Icing

Confectioners’ sugar, softened butter, lots of vanilla, little bit cream Mix this all together with beaters until smooth and how you like it. I’m afraid I never measure this part, but make plenty. But here’s a standard recipe for buttercream icing.

• 1 c softened butter

• 3 c confectioner’s sugar

• 3 T heavy cream or more if needed.

1. Beat the hell out of it.

2. When cakes are cool, cover them in the icing, set them on top of each other. Then, and this is the fun part, melt a couple of squares of bitter chocolate and do a Jackson Pollock thing with it all over the cake. It’s so much fun. Plus, the bitter chocolate and the sweet white icing is divine together. Put candles wherever you want.

Big Mom had geraniums on every kitchen windowsill. I used to get up early when she did, sit in a rocker (*she had a rocker in the kitchen) and have her all to myself until the household woke up. It was a big, very old, haunted house in Amagansett. We spent every summer there from the forties until the late sixties.

Thank you, Abby! My grandma and I used to share Sara Lee Banana Cake on her screened in breezeway. Cake with Big Mom, or Grandma was a sublime time, sure did make me feel loved and special.

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Find terrific prompts from Abigail Thomas’s book, THINKING ABOUT MEMOIR, in the paid subscriber section below. If you’re not a paid subscriber, come on in, now is the perfect time to join, and you’ll make me so happy!

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Stanley has a house guest!

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xxN