#Baking Fail
Every year around this time, my kitchen turns into a cookie factory. It's one of the things I used to do when I was a kid, bake and decorate Christmas cookies. This was a tradition I wanted to keep and pass on to my children. Last year we skipped baking cookies all together. After I made the difficult and still heart wrenching decision for my husband and I to separate, baking cookies was the furthest thing on my mind. We didn’t send out Christmas cards, and I barely had enough in me to put up a Christmas tree. We all limped through the advent season in much need of hope, peace, love, and joy. The knowledge that one day things would come didn’t minimize the pain and ache in my heart.
As 2020 rolled in so did the depression, insomnia, and other medical issues as well, prompting my doctor and counselor to put me on a medical leave from work. Shortly after we figured out a routine for co-parenting and my doctors encouraged me to return to work on a modified schedule, COVID hit the nation and the world. The isolation, loneliness, and pain seemed to be amplified. We tried our best to learn how to co-parent in two homes with the added complexity of various stay at home orders, zoom schooling, and working from home. By the time we begin to find a somewhat new normal and hope for a low-key summer, the nation experienced civil unrest, and I felt like my cry “how long, oh Lord,” continues to be amplified with each passing month. To say It’s been a helluva year seems like an understatement.
As the holiday season approached, the smell and sounds brought about something different for me this year. I couldn’t call to mind laughter or the images of my kitchen in disarray from our cookie factory. Or the kids beaming with frosting on their lips. What came to mind was the tears that rolled down their cheeks and the questions that formed on their lips. What came to mind was the weeks without sleep and the inability to eat. The inconsolable grief and this emptiness that seemed to creep into my home and inhabit all of the spaces around.
The hives and panic attacks returned as my body remembered it all anew.
As November inched along, my recent memories of last December continued to override the memories of years gone by. I allowed myself to cry and grieve the loss of what was and the loss of dreams unfulfilled. I gave myself permission to process the pain whenever it came, but I also began to ask myself what do I want to hold on to moving forward, a question that each new holiday begs of me to ask. I wasn’t sure what traditions I’d keep as we began to figure out our new normal. I wasn’t sure what we would do, but trusted that I’d do only what I wanted and invite the kids into that or allow them space to do what seemed best.
A few days before Thanksgiving I knew that one that I wanted to hold on to was the Christmas cookie tradition. It was something my kids and I each enjoyed in our own way. It was also a gift we shared with our friends and families. So we decided this year we’d make those cookies again. After researching and figuring out how we could make and deliver cookies safely to folks, we stocked up on cookie staples to begin again.
Today, my daughter and I decided to make our first batch of cookies to be mailed to Illinois. My son was in some kind of mood because he realized he still had one full week of school left before he could be released from zoom school. Yet the joy Cailyn and I had as we measured and mixed and laughed and smiled didn’t dissipate as he had his 5th grader version of a tantrum.
We followed the recipe and placed them in the oven. Cailyn went off to zoom school and I set the timer. I wasn’t at all prepared for the cookies to look the way they did. It was and is the worst batch of cookies I have, we have ever made in our life. It was a complete baking fail. I shook my head and moaned--I think a few other choice words may have stumbled through my mind. But I decided something must have gone wrong and all I can do is try again. It was a complete failure, one that makes little to no sense, given I know this recipe by heart, we followed it carefully and have never had problems with it at all.
As I got ready to post my failure on IG, I hesitated and thought I should wait till I have the picture perfect ones to go along with it, because the phrase “if you don’t succeed, try again” seems better and will get better likes when you have proof that you should keep trying. But I decided against that at least for now. Somewhere between the sigh and the discussion to keep it moving I realized I need to simply celebrate my failure.
I’m celebrating my failure because a year ago, 6 months ago, a month ago I don’t know that I would have been so eager to try again. A year ago I would have been confined to my room and dragging myself to fulfill obligations and back to the bed again as a high functioning depressed person. 6 months ago, it would have crushed me, and I would have listened to that voice that has been a constant, annoying companion that told me “look you failed again, give up.”
You see, I judge myself way too harshly and have been afraid of how my failures will be perceived. Afraid of how people will critique me. In many ways choosing to separate from my husband made me feel like I failed. Like I failed my kids, my family, my marriage, and God. I saw the look in their eyes each day they switched homes. I dealt with the breakdowns that came seemingly out of nowhere. I listened to them express how they felt, and blame me when their hurt overwhelmed them. I felt the ache that came each time I laid down in an empty home and I often wondered if I had done enough, fought enough and if this was really the right choice.
But as I sit and reflect, this year, I realize that in many ways I failed was in not being true to myself. In my fear of failing I tried so hard to follow the recipe and not stray from the path. And along the way somewhere I was simply going through the motions like a worker in the cookie factory. Along the way I lost my ability to laugh, to dance, to find joy. I lost my voice and so much more not because of marriage but because of this prescribed recipe I was following. I followed the recipe, the way they told us, taught us to go. But life is not like a recipe you can simply follow and expect the same results each time. It doesn’t happen that way.
Sometimes things just fail, but failure isn’t the end, it’s literally one of the most important parts of the process. It’s just the one we forget to post on our wall. It’s the one we try to push out of our memory and look only to the success that eventually came.
A friend told me something 6 months ago when I made the decision to start my business after being laid off from my job of 8 years during the middle of a pandemic. She said, “Tracey, failure is information.” That one phrase has begun to help me have a different point of view. I’ve been so afraid that failure would define me that I haven’t allowed myself to realize the beauty that comes when I take a moment to allow the failure to define me, to shape and grow me. If I embrace my failures and allow it to be information, it has the potential to shape me for the better. Failing baking those cookies helped this truth sink into my soul, especially since I take such pride in my baking. Which is why today I’m celebrating this failure, because it’s given me new information about me. It’s giving me new information about my road to healing. Today I’m celebrating my failures because today they reminded me of just how far I’ve come. Today, this baking failure has helped me to keep going. It’s helped me to face the day knowing that whatever failure and mishaps happen along the way it’s information to help shape me.
I'll still know there will be days when my recent memories and the pain in my heart will continue to come. I don’t know what 2021 will bring or what my family will look like in the future. All I know is that each day I must learn to take whatever ingredients life throws me and choose what kind of recipe I need to follow for that day.
So here I am smiling and proudly showing off my baking fail. These are definitely going in the trash, I tasted them and I think I know what the problem is. I’ll take that information and figure out what to do tomorrow. But today, this failure is bringing me so much joy!
I’d love to hear how your failures are defining and shaping you. I wonder what information it’s trying to teach you and me.