Halfway through the Wood.

Maybe it’s the fact that my shoes were too tight, or something to do with my head not being screwed on just right, or however that goes, but by January 1st 2024, I was ready to self-isolate on Mount Crumpit. The year of two-thousand and twenty-three was a hefty tome that closed like the big book at the end of a Disney movie.

On the day of the 1st, my children played very loud make-believe games in the living room, and I sat on the couch to read. I’m usually not a napper because when I close my eyes during the day it’s like an anxiety slideshow…I think about how the floor could use a Swiffer, or I wonder if I’m doing something tragically wrong because my kids refuse to eat pizza, or I remember that I should have texted my friend about her upcoming work thing, and my to-do list triples. The internal list-making is worse when I close my eyes during the day because it’s riddled with the panic of looming tasks I could be completing at that very moment.  

I despise the term, “mom-brain,” because mom-brain is a symptom of a lack of support. Mom-brain is that mental load business we all keep talking about. Yet, despite my usually fraught relationship with naps, on the 1st of January, the scattered mom-brain subsided, and I napped through the shouts of children, the dings of texts and the roar of roadwork. My eyelids protested and shut me down when I tried to keep them open, so I stayed on the couch and the world completely tuned out. It was the culmination of a very difficult year being over. In many ways, it was a beautiful year, but I’m happy to put it on the shelf. And before I open the next novel in the series, I need 2 weeks of binging Boy Meets World in Pajamas while the world stands still.

I recently read an Instagram post for women that celebrated being your own best friend, your own gym partner, your own coffee buddy and how you should be everything for yourself, rather than relying on others. This was my song of 2023, but it is also why I’m so tired. I tore through 2023 with a determined adrenaline rush and feeling of power and capability that served me, but good lord, it’s a lot to carry.  It reminds me of my first pastry chef job.

Before I was a mom, and before my partner left the parenting team, and before I’d ever given two minutes to think about the mental-load, I was a pastry cook. I moved to the Hudson Valley, New York to be with my boyfriend. I’d given up my job with a James-Beard award winning pastry chef and accepted a job at a castle-like hotel that sat nestled in the northern suburbs of New York City. The stone interior, tapestries and regal staircases, provided a sought-after venue for extravagant weddings. Garishly decorated cakes with pillars between the tiers and banquets ruled our schedule, along with regular lunch and dinner service. Until then, I’d worked in bakeries and gaining plated dessert experience was one of the reasons I’d come to the job (aside from the geographic compromise). Little did I know that I was about to be thrown directly into the deep end of a serious sink or swim situation.

Within one month of accepting the new job, everyone quit - the chef, the pastry chef, the interns…everyone. A couple weeks into the job, the executive chef pulled me into his office. He congratulated me on my hard work and skill. My chest puffed with pride. He asked my opinion of the operations and dynamics of the team. I continued to swell. And after I’d been properly inflated, he brought out the pin. The pastry chef was leaving. She’d given her two-weeks' notice and I would be temporarily taking over all of her duties. A slight panic swept over me, but I knew I would have the support of the executive chef and I’d still have the rest of the team. It would be okay.

As I left the office and headed toward the bake shop, I overheard the other pastry cook say “well, if she’s leaving, I’m not staying” and she swept past me toward the office. My wide eyes scanned the bake shop and watched the intern, who would head back to school in a month. It would be a few short weeks later that the executive chef would pull me into his office yet again to tell me that he too would be leaving the hotel, which was being sold to a high-end Japanese hospitality group.

I drove to my alma mater to find help. I hired a friend of mine who was still working his way through the bachelor’s program. He came to work for me part-time and my friend, Matt, will always be dear friend & bread savior.

Every moment of the day became as fast-paced as peak dinner service. Every morning prior to arrival, I created a detailed timeline that filled every minute with efficient movement. I’d begin a recipe, but during any downtime in that production, I was working on whatever needed to come next.

There was an exhilaration because I was proud of my orchestration. I was doing all the fucking things. I was setting up party trays, decorating wedding cakes, keeping the line stocked for service, working the line each evening, and then running downstairs to cut the wedding cake for the banquet.

At 2 am one evening, I was searching for a chapstick in my car, and a cop pulled me over. I’d been so high on adrenaline; my lips were dry, and I had my music up too high. I was not paying attention to the lines on the road.

A week later on my way home, I hit a deer and totaled the front of my cute, Nissan Cube.

Soon after that, I gave myself a day off because my mom was in town. There was a big banquet, but I’d set up the staff with everything they’d need. Yet, at 9pm, I got a call that they didn’t have enough mousse domes and the banquet staff took it upon themselves to slice the beautiful, shiny chocolate domes in half and plate them anyway. I cried and cried from my apartment on my mom’s shoulder. I should have never taken the day off, I thought.

2023 had the same brand of momentum as time at that hotel. I couldn’t stop because everything might fall apart. But also, on the sidelines, I was hitting deer, loosing chapstick and I was short 10 mousse domes. In 2012. I ended up quitting my job at the hotel and ran away to Singapore for five months. In my current life, it’s not mousse cakes, but children and I can’t cut them the in half, nor run away. Instead, I will work on more naps without thinking about Swiffered floors, accept more help from others, fall into new love, and continue to trust myself, but also trust that I’m not actually so alone. “And if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard, because if it isn’t there. I never really lost it to begin with.”