New York City is more than a place. It’s a mood. It’s a state of being.
Or so it has seemed to me, from the first time I visited during a high school chorus field trip (imagine a few dozen teenagers belting “Seasons of Love” atop the Empire State Building, in the rain), to my most recent stop just last month. It’s a place where things happen, and I can’t help but be caught up in that energy.
Perhaps that is why I never stay long in New York. Seventy-two hours is about my max. Then my need for solitude – or at least, the absence of a crowd – becomes so acute as to become a craving. Walking in Central Park or across the Brooklyn Bridge sometimes helps. The exercise and being out-of-doors typically buys me a little time. I can drift among strangers, cloaked in anonymity, and lose myself in my thoughts.
Brooklyn Bridge, postcard c. 1910. From the digital collection of the New York Public Library.
I did no such pensive walking on my last visit. It occurred in January, and the itinerary was decidedly indoorsy. ’d come to New York on a mission to see Keanu Reeves in Waiting for Godot. He was headlining a production at the Hudson Theater along with Alex Winter, and the opportunity to watch the stars of the Bill and Ted franchise in real, live, serious theater was one I couldn’t pass up.
I’ve been absolutely fascinated by Waiting for Godot for years. Decades, even. Admittedly, I’d never seen the show – I’d never even read the play – but I was well aware of its cachet as a touchstone for the theater of the absurd. The very first days of 2026 seemed as good a time as any to ante up.
And so Peter and I found ourselves queued up on sidewalks still covered with paper confetti from New Year’s Eve, waiting among the closing weekend crowds. Then we were in our seats, the house lights dimmed, and the curtain rose.
I realized my mistake immediately. In our haste to leave the hotel, I’d forgotten my glasses on the bedside table. I could see the stage, I could see the set, and I could make out the actors’ movements. But I could not see their faces. At least, I saw them only in a somewhat blurred, Impressionistic painting kind of way.
I squinted my way through the performance. By paying close attention to gestures and tone of voice, I followed what was going on. Not that there’s much of a plot in Waiting for Godot; that’s part of the point.
The irony of it struck me. Here I was, finally witnessing a piece of theater that had lived on my bucket list for years – in NYC, of all places. On closing weekend. With a celebrity cast. And I could not see the actors.
I like to think Samuel Beckett would have laughed. I did. Both at the situation, with all the ridiculous little tragedy folded into it, and at the play itself. Yes, it’s dark. It’s stark. Sometimes the language cascades into hopelessness, and the audience has no choice but to go right along with it.
And yet I could not say it was a sad play. Of all the emotions I witnessed on stage that night, fear was not among them. That fact whistled itself through my consciousness like a signal beacon. And with it, a whisper of hope.
I knew what it was to live with fear. And I knew what it was to live without it. I nodded, as if Samuel Beckett sat right beside me. I looked at the stage, smiling. I laughed again.
For this post, I did some math. I wanted to know if it was possible, based on “average” statistical numbers regarding American adults, to actually exercise the suggested amount each week, brush our teeth for 4 minutes a day, floss, eat meals that were neither ultraprocessed nor fast food, and do a deep cleaning at least once every season. In general, to follow recommended practices for healthy bodies and healthy homes.
The short answer is no.
No, it is not. And that isn’t even taking into account mental and emotional well-being, social connections, being a parent, or owning a pet. And if you’re in a food desert (as approximately 19 million Americans are), relying on public transportation to commute, or working multiple jobs, it only gets worse.
Based on my calculations – which are admittedly rough – if you’re working one fulltime job, own a car, and don’t have kids, 62% of your time each week will be taken up simply by the essential activities of eating, sleeping, earning a living, and basic hygiene. If you don’t own a car and rely on public transportation, work multiple jobs, and/or have children, that jumps up to around 72 – 82%.
The time crunch becomes compounded if someone’s responsibilities include caring for other family members, have an above-average commute length, and/or need to manage their own medical conditions. Even adding in basic healthcare (routine visits, dental cleanings, and eye exams) and 150 minutes per week of moderate activity (generally considered the threshold for adequate exercise) are stretch based on the numbers so far. Looking at just the time needed for essential activities plus household tasks— cleaning, laundry, yardwork and pet care — non-parents have 72% of their time taken up, while an adult with young children* has up to 90% of her or his hours spoken for.
This calculation doesn’t include miscellaneous errands or chores like paying bills, renewing your driver’s license, getting kids to or from daycare or school, changing lightbulbs, getting a haircut, buying toothpaste, or the dozens of other activities considered routine aspects of adulting. It doesn’t include socializing with friends, spending time with family, or participation in any hobbies or sports. It doesn’t include television or social media.
It doesn’t account for the fact that if you’re a woman, you’re more likely to be spending additional hours on food preparation and your appearance.
Yes, I’m using estimates based on averages, and individual experiences can vary quite a lot depending on region, age, gender, marital status, and half a dozen other factors. For example, people aged 75 and up spend nearly an hour a day reading, while teenagers average less than 10 minutes. Gen Z loves to take long showers. If you’re an adult aged 35 to 44, you probably have less leisure time than any other demographic.
And yet, no matter how you slice it, I think it is fair to say that we are time poor. No wonder we “multitask.” No wonder eating while watching some streaming service is common. No wonder we miss doctor’s visits, skip flossing, and can live for a week off frozen pizzas. We forget to clean the oven and can’t muster the effort to get to the gym.
There are those who will argue that with enough hard work, enough discipline, enough determination, we can do it all. It’s personal choices, not social and economic structures that hold the key to our fates. People should spend less time complaining and more time picking themselves up by their bootstraps.
I would disagree. That math just doesn’t work. I wish it did. And it until it does, maybe we should spend less time dispensing well-meaning yet unrealistic advice on matters both big and small. Advice that is wildly unattuned to life’s realities helps no one. Maybe its time to ask what does.
The Numbers
Activity (Average Hours per Week)
Single Job, Car, OwnHome
Multiple Jobs, No Car, RentHome
Sleep
49
49
Work
42
50
Commute
5
10
Food purchase
2
4
Food preparation
5
7
Hygiene
2
2
Subtotal: Essentials
105
122
Percentage of time (Subtotal / 168 hours = %)
62%
72%
Household chores (cleaning, laundry, yardwork)
10
6
Pet care
7
7
Child care
7
13
Subtotal – Add chores
115
128
Subtotal – Add chores, add pet
122
135
Subtotal – Add chore, add pet, add child
129
148
Percentage of time (Subtotal / 168 hours = %)
68 – 78%
76 – 87%
Note: Hours and percentages rounded to nearest whole number. Sleep calculated at 7 hours per night. *Young child is a child under age 6
References:
American Cleaning Institute. (2018). Survey results: Americans spend nearly six hours each week cleaning—no wonder it feels like it. https://www.cleaninginstitute.org/newsroom/releases/2018/survey-results-americans-spend-nearly-six-hours-each-week-cleaning-wonder-it
Capital One Shopping. (n.d.). Grocery shopping statistics. https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/grocery-shopping-statistics/
Mayo Clinic. (n.d.). Brushing your teeth. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/brushing-your-teeth/faq-20058193
Pennsylvania Association of Realtors. (n.d.). Homeowners more likely to spend longer hours on household chores. https://www.parealtors.org/blog/homeowners-more-likely-to-spend-longer-hours-on-household-chores/
Severn River Animal Hospital. (2024, March 18). Do you pay enough attention to your pets? https://severnriverah.com/2024/03/18/do-you-pay-enough-attention-to-your-pets/
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Employment by full-time and part-time status and educational attainment. https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/emp-by-ftpt-job-edu-h.htm
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Time spent in primary activities by parents. https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). American Time Use Survey—2023 results. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). American Community Survey 1-year estimates: Commuting guidance. https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/commuting/guidance/acs-1yr.html
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. (n.d.). Food Access Research Atlas. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. (2020, April). More Americans spend more time in food-related activities than a decade ago. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/april/more-americans-spend-more-time-in-food-related-activities-than-a-decade-ago
Earlier this fall I became a college student. Not a full-time one (I kept my day job), and not at a brick-and-mortar university (I’d enrolled in an online program), but a student nevertheless.
Returning to formal education in my forties brought excitement and a strong waft of nostalgia. In my late teens and early 20s, I’d loved college. This wasn’t simply because, 600 miles away from home and on a picturesque campus nestled on the edge of one of country’s largest metropolitan areas, I had more autonomy and more options than I’d ever experienced. Of course I enjoyed meeting new people, seeing new places, and the general thrill of having my universe widen. On campus parties. Off-campus parties. Women I befriended and guys I crushed on. Discovering that I could indeed stay out past 10pm and even enjoy myself while doing so.
Those were the social and developmental aspects of college, and I relished them.
But I also loved the college part of college. The academic part. The time I spent with books (I was an English lit major). I loved that college gave me a full-time license to go on long mental perambulations, to wade deep into ideas, to weight them and to try them out. My public middle and high schools certainly had a place for kids of an academic bent, but with college – at a small liberal arts university – I felt I’d found a whole new tribe of kin.
During the pandemic I’d taken some online courses on topics related to my professional field and allowed Duolingo to hound me into daily French practice. I’d made attempts to learn to play the guitar. I dabbled in webinars.
This felt different.
First, the sheer volume of reading. On a screen. I lost count of the hours I spent doing online modules. Then there was the digital textbook, which for some mind-boggling and inexplicable reason lacked compatibility with any e-reader known to man. I ended up reading the entire thing on my phone (grudgingly). I got used to it, but I never stopped missing printed textbooks. Something about the ability to highlight and annotate pages made me feel more connected to what I was reading, as if knowledge were a physical thing that I could hold in my hands.
I missed classroom discussions. I didn’t want to type my thoughts, I wanted to speak them.
And I wanted to hear my classmates’ opinions. I wanted to feel the energy of ideas connecting. I wanted to communicate in real time. I wanted to be part of a common endeavor instead of a woman sitting alone at her laptop, tapping on keys. Yes, I, the introvert, found myself yearning to talk to people.
With so many dimensions of the experience so different from what I most fondly associated with college, I felt somewhat at a loss. Was there anything that would connect my present circumstances to my youthful memories? Anything that could?
The answer, I found, was yes. Textbook woes and asynchronous discussions aside, I’d nevertheless embarked on an intellectual adventure. My mind traveled into new places, exploring a discipline that I’d long been curious about but hadn’t properly explored.
Now I was, in a way, on the road less traveled, taking the path I hadn’t chosen as an undergrad. And that, perhaps, might make all the difference.
I spent most of my life disliking the month of November. It seemed to me the doldrums of the year: too few leaves for autumn, too little snow for winter. Summer is long past, and spring a distant dream. Few things can grow. Few even want to.
The clouds are low and gray and heavy. The days are short. In the mornings there may be frost on the ground, and the wind is cold. After the splendor of autumn, the world appears almost colorless. Instead of bright vibrancy, we see only shades of brown and ash. One week passes into the next with little distinction.
In short, neglected November has nothing of its own to recommend it. It is neither fish nor fowl. It is a month to be passed through on the way to something better.
And yet, it is precisely these amorphous qualities that have given me a new appreciation for November. It is a blank canvas. November’s very emptiness creates a bleak beauty.
It’s a great month for writing. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, NaNoWriMo takes place in November.) As fallen leaves shuffle outside it is easy to sit at a desk, or a coffee shop, and let pen move over paper, or fingers type on keyboard. Dark days are good for gestation. We can incubate our thoughts, turn them around, swaddle them, turn them again, and perhaps eventually send them out into the world.
I’m reminded of the pandemic and the opportunity it gave us to turn inward. For some, those long months of collective pause and uncertainty created loneliness and distress. For others, it brought a form of relief. There was no longer the pressure —or even the possibility —of participating in social rituals that felt more performative than substantive. There was no expectation to be “on.” I for one felt no grief at having post-work happy hours indefinitely suspended. I had a German shepherd and two cats to keep me company, and plenty of books.
That’s not to say I avoided interaction altogether, or that I never desired or sought out connection. I did. Virtually. I took a strange form of joy in the possibilities that online happenings brought. Thanks to Zoom and similar platforms, I experienced a cocktail party at Highclere Castle, watched a live webcast of the “great conjunction,” attended a panel discussion with Anthony Fauci, and listened to a pianist riff as she blended American blues with Celtic folk. I took classes. I met friends for drinks, except I was on my couch, and they were on theirs.
I enjoyed these as much— or more than— gathering in-person. First, I remained in the comfort of my own home. Secondly, no matter how put-together I appeared from the waist up, there were high odds that my pants had an elastic waist. And last but not least, I partook in everything on my own terms. I could consume as much or as little as I pleased. Or none at all.
Our present culture often equates being still with being stagnant. This is unfortunate. I believe there are times when we must all like fallow. To pause. To feel the a quiet power of a full stop.
November’s gift is space to reflect. To find peace, even in the long dark nights, knowing only that you’ll someday emerge. So settle in. Get comfortable. The world will be there when you’re ready.
P.S. I am aware that November includes Thanksgiving, one of the busiest holidays of the year in the U.S. For this one, my husband and I did next to nothing. We joined friends for a Turkey Trot, ate quiche, and played Battleship. That night I cooked dinner from stuff I found in the pantry, and we watched Die Hard 2. It was wonderful.
Contrary to its title, this post is actually about being in the woods. Not in the woods in the sense of being lost, or of going deep into the backcountry, hatchet and compass in hand. As wilderness visits go, this one proved rather tame: I slept indoors every night on a comfortable mattress, I ate meals prepared in restaurants, and my time spent in the woods consisted of daily afternoon hikes on well-marked trails.
Even so, it was a far cry from my every day. The woods sounded different, smelled different, felt different. I deliberately walked slowly. Back in the city, I spent too much of my life moving quickly. Here I allowed myself to sink into the stillness. I looked around me. I paused enough to notice things. I tried to pay attention to what was small.
For example, the lichens, ranging from the palest grey-green to a color nearly as deep as emerald. The bright yellow of fern leaves. The way the sunlight hit the trunk of a hemlock, illuminating a sliver of the forest in transient brilliance.
I found myself surrounded by living things, yet it created the opposite sensation of feeling crowded. The trees afforded quiet company. We shared space, but nothing more. There was something soothing in their remoteness, a peace in being among creatures who asked me for nothing.
When I did encounter other hikers, I went out of my way to avoid them. Perhaps a part of me felt safer alone with the trees than I did in proximity to homo sapiens. Trees hold no ideologies.
The woods were quiet. At times, they felt almost unnaturally devoid of noise. If I listened, I could discern traffic or human voices in the distance. I heard an occasional call of a blue jay, or sometimes a chipmunk rustling among the leaves. Once I caught the sound of a crow’s feathers stirring the air as it flew overhead.
Most of these moments were mine alone, but I wasn’t always in solitude. One morning Peter and I sat on a large boulder next to the Clarion River. An angler walked along the opposite bank, speaking noisily with his companion, and we exchanged annoyed glances at the sound. Why did people with no sensitivity to nature insist on visiting it? Or perhaps the situation was simpler: humans are merely poor judges of the sound of our own voices.
I looked upstream. A bald eagle perched in one of the trees. As I watched, it lifted off from its branch and flew nearly directly overhead. I followed it with my eyes, breathless. I’d seen bald eagles in their natural habitats before, but never this close.
The situation I’d been lamenting only a moment before instantly transformed. I suddenly felt lucky to be exactly where I was. Sitting on a naked boulder, feeling the stone’s coldness leach through my clothes and its unyielding surface supporting me. But that didn’t matter: I was in the presence wild things. And I was glad, very glad, not to be “out of the woods.”
I buy a lot of books. Mostly the printed, 3-dimensional variety, composed of paper and ink. Rarely, rarely do I dip into e-books. I did at one time own a Kindle, and I’ve flirted with the idea of upgrading to a Paperwhite e-reader, or possibly a Nook. But I’ve never been able to actually do it.
I like to think it isn’t because of my age. I’m a proud Xennial, born into the weird micro generational space between Gen Xers and the Millennials. I remember rotary phones and record players. But I also started using computers in grade school, and by the time high school rolled around, the World Wide Web was a thing. It had chatrooms, games, mp3 files (I smile every time I remember Napster and dial-up internet!), blogs, and websites. There was barely any e-commerce. There was no social media at all. On the whole, I remember it as being pretty great.
In adulthood, I’ve built most of my career around digital spaces, so it’s not a dislike for technology or a reluctance to try new products that holds me back. I don’t think it’s nostalgia, either. I suspect something deeper is in play, something that has layers to it.
It might be this: books leave a paper trail. They can show you not only who read them, but how they were read. Bookplates and inscriptions name previous owners. They can indicate if the book was a gift. Notes or annotations reveal a reader’s reactions to the text. Even – heaven forbid! – dog-eared pages offer clues as to where a reader had been and where they might want to return.
I didn’t learn the word for readers’ scribblings until I was in my twenties and working at the Folger Shakespeare Library. They’re called marginalia. And as soon as I heard the term, I loved it. It gave a name to these literary curiosities. It let me know I wasn’t the only one who found them fascinating.
Marginalia isn’t just made by bookish types. World figures like Henry VIII and Josef Stalin marked up their books. So did Jane Austen and Charles Darwin. Ordinary people leave their traces as well, such as a student named J. T. Brooks who attended Yale in the early 1900s and left extensive notes within the covers of his copy of Ivanhoe, which now rests on my bookshelf. (I am assuming Brooks was male since Yale did not begin admitting women until 1969).
As I think about it, almost any handwritten record offers an invitation to reflect, or even play detective (I’ve contacted Yale to see if there are any student records on Brooks). I remember the joy I took in reading a diary from 1868, and how holding the actual book in my hands made the experience infinitely more personal.
My fascination isn’t only for consuming marginalia. I’m guilty of producing it myself. My college textbooks are full of penciled notes and occasionally marked by highlighters. Opening the pages and seeing these traces of my twenty-something self lets me view not only where I’d been, but gives me a glimpse of who I’d been, too.
I’m not in the habit of making much in the way of marginalia these days. I’m far more likely to jot my thoughts down on a sticky note of either the paper or virtual kind. But I am as fond as ever of physical books. Perhaps because there’s always a chance that while I’m reading, I too will have something to say.
As I type this, these late August days in Pittsburgh are unseasonably cool. Nighttime temperatures dip to the low 50s; I have a desire to drink hot coca and put on a sweater.
But I’m not here to write about the weather. As you may have guessed, this post is actually about dogs. One dog in particular: the latest addition to our family, a handsome, zippy little fellow we named Wilson.
Wilson on the car ride home from the shelter. He was recently neutered, so he’s got the cone of shame.
Wilson is a roughly 1-year-old (possibly younger), mixed breed pup who appears to be part boxer, part retriever, part Staffordshire terrier, part tornado. He made his way to us by first being picked up as a stray by a local shelter, then taken into their care for a brief time, and then a fateful meeting during an adoption weekend.
He came into the room all tail wags and wiggles. He was a black and white bundle of energy, inquisitive, friendly, and very, very cute. In a few moments I was sitting on the floor, and Wilson had clambered into my lap and was licking my face. That’s when I melted.
We brought him home the next day and cautiously introduced him to our resident cat, Abby. Wilson approached her slowly, his tail gently wagging. Abby responded by jumping onto the kitchen table, arching her back, and hissing. (She’s since warmed up slightly – slightly – to the point of tolerating/ignoring Wilson. Thankfully, she’s not anywhere near as resentful as she appeared with the foster kittens this spring.)
Of course, not everything has gone smoothly. Wilson has a penchant for chewing. Not only toys, but paper, plastic, wood, sandals…even a sanding block and container of spackling paste. He typically cries if left alone. His leash manners are a long way from being polished. He’s destroyed two dog beds and is now prohibited from accessing foam or stuffing of any kind. He’s an incorrigible jumper and a loud barker. His reactions to other people range from spastic alarm to calm sniffs to nonevents. He climbs on furniture – and not just the upholstered kind.
Wilson sitting on the kitchen table.
But he is making headway.
His reactive barking is less frequent. He knows his name and comes when called. He’s learning to sit and stay and lay down. He has a laser focus on treats, which makes training him easier than it might be otherwise. He is having doggy adventures, like hikes (loves them), dog parks (loves them), and baths (tolerate, with treats.) And after his manic episodes pass, Wilson is the sweetest snuggler.
Wilson and Peter on a local trail.
And I am reminded that dogs do not come into our lives to create convenience. They are often incredibly inconvenient. They require quite a lot of resources to care for: our time, our money, our energy.
Dogs ask a lot of us.
But they are also wonderful. Their exuberance is a source of joy, their boundless affection a continuous comfort, their progress a source of pride. They connect us to the best parts of ourselves. Which makes what we receive from them in return priceless.
It’s 9:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I’ve already been awake for the better part of five hours. The air is warm and muggy as I navigate through uneven terrain of rocks, mud, sand, and tree roots. I’ve just swallowed a second gnat.
Yet I’m exactly where I want to be, here on this twisting, narrow path through the woods. Slogging through the humid air, feeling my muscles beginning to protest what I’m putting them through.
Preparing to compete in the 700m swim, July 22, 2025 (in blue cap on the right). Photo by Peter Sabol.
This was my second chance. This was redemption for last summer, when a torn hamstring a few weeks before the triathlon made participating as an athlete impossible. Now I was back, relying on my training and preparation to carry me through this time.
I wore the same tri suit as I had 11 years before, when I’d done my first and only previous triathlon. I rode the same bike, my trusty red Trek on which I’d had many adventures (and misadventures).
But my mindset was different. I was more determined. More grateful to be present. I no longer took my mobility for granted.
For much of the previous twelve months, running any distance more than a mile had been intensely uncomfortable, if not impossible. During that time, I often berated myself for not running further, faster, or more often. I held the 10-mile jogs I used to do from Capitol Hill down the National Mall, across the Potomac, and through Georgetown as the standard of excellence. And that mental picture meant that by comparison, every run I made fell far short. I felt defeated before I could even get myself to the playing field.
Then one day, as an experiment, I decided to stop treating my body as the enemy. Because it wasn’t. I might not be able to replicate the level of performance I’d done the past, but I was still capable of an awful lot. Instead of issuing critiques, I allowed my inner voice to start cheering me on.
This mental shift – along with a medication change, time away from running, and a triathlon training program that very gradually increased intensity – enabled me to start reclaiming my ability to run short distances. And it felt good.
Sometime between the day I began training and the morning of the event, I reached a mental and physical tipping point. Training became not a punitive obligation, but a celebration of the possible. I decided to stop fixating on the gap between what I could do and what I wanted to do. Instead, I’d appreciate my own capabilities.
Because wasn’t that all what we’d come here on this July morning to do? To race against ourselves. To find achievable challenges, and embrace them. To recognize that others were doing the same.
I lost track of how many strangers called “Great job!” “Keep it up!” “You’ve got this” as I made my slow progress through the woods. Sometimes their encouragement did result in me picking up the pace. Other times, I moved to the side and let them pass.
Because even getting here was something. I had made the time to train five days a week. I had put in hours at the pool (and my arms and shoulders were nicely toned to show for it.) I’d done the hard climbs on my bike, I had made the sweaty runs. All so I could get across the finish line this morning.
And when I got there, I’d celebrate.
And I did. I saw Peter in the distance and heard his cheers, along with a friend ringing an enormous cowbell. I smiled. I picked up speed, running across the finish. There were hugs, gulps of water, congratulations. And for myself, pride in a job done not perfectly, but well.
My tri suit, after over a decade in service, is headed for retirement. But that doesn’t mean I’m done. I’m already thinking about next year.
Art is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Cesar A. Cruz
I can’t recall the first time I encountered that quote. But I do remember feeling intrigued, amused, and slightly uneasy as I read it. I wasn’t sure which category I belonged to. Neither? Both? I viewed myself as too conventional to be an artist, and too idealistic to be comfortable with the status quo.
I wobbled in the middle. Which, I’ve discovered, is often an uncomfortable place to be. The middle ground has many connotations. It can be a noncommittal retreat, or a compromise, or a self-preserving ethos. Or it can be stormy and ambiguous, a vortex of conflicting winds and strange tides for which there are no reliable maps or pathways. Perhaps the middle is a combustible place where the fiercest monsters live, and might be found and wrestled with, but where people tend not to stay for long.
Maybe it all depends on the day.
What I do know is this: I find myself there often. Whenever the world is “too much with me” (to borrow from William Wordsworth), going inside my own head is as reflexive as a child ducking under the covers during a thunderstorm. I don’t go in search of dragons. But I sometimes find them, nevertheless.
My head can be an unruly and unpredictable place. Memories are untidy things. They don’t always remain where I left them. Perceptions, too, can shift around, change color, grow or shrink.
But for all its peculiarities, my mind is also, sometimes, the only place that feels at all familiar. It’s the only place where I can make sense of anything – or at least attempt to. If I can find the words.
Writing is what anchored me during the pandemic. It anchored me through my divorce, job losses, and grief. In the most trying and chaotic periods of my life, writing brought me comfort. The simple act of choosing words, typing them onto a page, became the place where I was most myself.
Untitled. c. 2021
But sometimes even that failed. In the darkest, darkest times, I didn’t write. I painted. Not because I had a talent for painting, or wanted to become a painter, or thought I should have a new hobby. The truth is simply that selecting words and arranging them in ways that were sensible took too much effort. I picked up a brush and mixed paint. I let the colors say what I couldn’t find the words for.
Sometimes I find myself comforted by others’ art. Sometimes I find myself disturbed. And sometimes, I just need to make my own.
Writing is an escape hatch when the world feels smallest and coldest and at its most cruel. A life of the mind can become a bunker. But a bunker with sunlight. A bunker with infinite pathways, strange gardens, subterranean rivers. A bunker with trapdoors and ghosts.
There is a kind of magic inside. As the external world whirls in chaos, the bunker contains only what its creator permits. What is written, what is painted, what is composed, what is captured or spoken may come into being. The rest does not exist. What better alchemy for coping with trying times? What better proof for seeing that we are not alone?
By peeking into other bunkers, we might see beyond the borders of our experiences, our countries, our ideologies. We might venture into the middle ground. We may encounter dragons and pass them by; we might see monsters and not wish them tamed.
As a woman who will happily spend a weekend tramping around old battlefields or watching a demonstration of 19th-century metalsmithing, getting me interested in anything history-related is rarely a hard sell. The same goes for food: whether it’s growing it, shopping for it, cooking it, or eating it, it’s a rare day when someone has to twist my arm for a culinary adventure.
And when the two are together? Dangerous indeed.
I recently fell down such a rabbit hole. I’d been browsing the wares at a museum shop when I spotted a neat paperboard box labeled “An Edible Timeline of Modern Candy”. The box purported to claim candies like those manufactured in the 1800s. I could see what appeared to be chocolates and Good n’Plenty through the cellophane window.
A sugar-spiked history lesson? I had to buy it. Then, naturally, I had to try what was inside.
I’ll jump right to the spoiler: for those of us raised on the hyper sweet, artificially colored, artificially flavored confections of the 20th century onward, candies from the 19th century are, in a word, underwhelming.
Perhaps it’s not fair to pit humble rock candy and marshmallows against a Reese’s cup or Milk Duds. How could the sweets of yesteryear – with their simple flavors and muted colors – possibly compare against the likes of PopRocks, gummi worms, Tootsie Pops, or my personal guilty pleasure, a Snickers bar?
Of course, as technology advanced, candy production became more sophisticated, with the likes of chocolate-covered nuts and candy corn appearing by the end of the 1800s. There was apparently plenty of sugar to be found at home, too. Watch any costume drama set between the Regency period and Victoria era, and I’ll bet you $20 you can’t get through it without at least one scene of the characters drinking tea and eating dainty cakes.
I get it. If I were a production designer, nothing screams “period piece” like neatly matched china, tiny spoons, a fireplace, and a passive-aggressive manner of offering strawberry jam. But this convention happens, best as I can tell, to be somewhat grounded in fact.
I flipped to my favorite source for what was on the menu in the early 1800s: A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs. Rundell. Part recipe book, part housekeeping guide, this volume has been my go-to source for the eating habits of 200 years ago.
“Candy” makes only one appearance, and that in a recipe for preserving fruit by coating it in sugar. “Chocolate” is also rare: it is an ingredient in a beverage recipe (hello, hot chocolate!) and referred to again for variations on a dessert.
Mrs. Rundell has no shortage of cake recipes. There are several recipes for “cream,” from almond and coffee to orange and lemon; a look at the ingredients list (heavy cream, eggs, milk, sugar) makes me think the result might resemble what we’d call custard. Pies, tarts, and puddings are plentiful, even if the methods of preparing them seem unfamiliar.
Perhaps that is what is the most striking: the work involved in preparation. Any cook who bakes from scratch can attest to the labor involved. I imagine making one of my most intricate recipes in a kitchen where water needed to be brought in by hand, the ovens were heated with coal or wood, and there were no stand mixers.
Speaking of cooking, it’s time to get dinner started. And I can’t help but wonder, on a day when I’m feeling brave, if I just might try one of Mrs. Rundell’s recipes.
P.S. If you’re curious, her trifle recipe is below.
Apple Trifle
Scald such a quantity of fruit as when pulped through a sieve, will make a thick layer at the bottom of your dish; of apples, mix the rind of half a lemon, grated fine, and as much sugar as will be pleasant.
Mix half a pint of milk, half a pint of cream, and the yolk of one egg; give it a scald over the fire and stir it all the time: don’t let it boil; add a little sugar only, and let it grow cold. Lay it over the apples with a spoon; and then put on it a whip made the day before.
