OmegaMom

There are a few culinary disasters in my past that still make me wince, like the time I made a birthday cake for my mom using baking powder instead of baking soda (or was it vice versa?).  Another time relates to biscuits.

The No Exit Cafe in Rogers Park was a semi-hippy/semi-Bohemian kind of place, where people played chess or Go while sitting around, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and listening to folksy acoustic music played by women with long curling hair parted in the middle and held back by tie-dyed scarves folded into headbands.  My cousin K. was very fond of the No Exit, and for a period made a point of hauling me there along with him and his latest girlfriend.  For some reason, that Thanksgiving I was not doing a family do, and K. invited me to join in a community Thanksgiving meal at the No Exit.

In my innocence, I figured that I’d bring biscuits, because, well, hey:  biscuits.  Plain.  Simple.  Easy.  Right?

The cooks in my audience are howling with laughter now.

Of course, it turns out that biscuits–plain, simple, easy biscuits–are distressingly easy to make badly.  There are females in many families who are spoken of by descendents in reverential whispers when it comes to biscuits, because they know The Biscuit Secret. 

I did not know The Biscuit Secret:  my contribution to the feast was a bowl full of beautiful golden hockey pucks:  hard, rocky, flavorless.

Sigh.

That was enough to make me swear off making biscuits forever.

Perhaps I have learned by this time to never take something I’ve made for the first time to a potluck or gathering…

A few years ago, OmegaDad announced to me that he was on a quest to learn to make biscuits.  I wished him well, but was dubious.  His first batch was very similar to my original batch.  But he persevered, making an occasional biscuit batch now and then.

Tonight we had “breakfast for dinner”.  Bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits, butter, apricot preserves.  Notably not a “healthy” dinner; I could feel my arteries slamming shut as I chowed down. 

The bacon was perfectly crispy, falling into bite-sized pieces with the merest crunch of one’s teeth.

The scrambled eggs–which are one of the things I do cook very well–were light and fluffy and gently seasoned with Italian seasoning.

And the biscuits–ahhhh, the biscuits.

Each biscuit had, on one side, a dainty little split beginning.  I would insert a fork at the split, and the biscuit would fall open like a flower, with a faint puff of steam rising into the air.  A little pat of butter, and then a tablespoon of apricot preserves, and I would open my mouth to a little bite of heaven.

OmegaDad’s biscuits, these days, are a piece of culinary artwork.  Delicate, fluffy, delicious, they are meltingly wonderful, and I can’t stop at one.  They are comfort food at its peak, and I hope that the dotter will be able to pass on to her children and grandchildren that she learned how to make biscuits from her father, who had the Best Biscuits Ever.

The first reply to my angsting about OmegaDotter maybe joining the gymnastics Tiny Team was Johnny’s:

But….if it’s her DESTINY?

Johnny being Johnny, I can’t tell if he’s being serious, or commenting on some people’s tendency to think in terms of DESTINY, or just poking fun at my angst.

Seriously:  I don’t think it’s her DESTINY.  Frankly, I think her DESTINY is to become a chef or an artist.  Or maybe just a salesman.  Or something.  ;)  But I do think she has a talent and a love for gymnastics.  But I don’t want her to end up like Z:

I was your daughter back when I was that age. And I joined the team.

20+ years later: I have had 10 surgeries, one for a broken back, all for orthopedic issues caused by or exacerbated by gymnastics. When I look back, it is not fondly.

As a child, I loved jumping and flipping and tumbling - and I was good at it. I could do a backhandspring by myself at the age of 6, a back tuck less than a year later. I chose to join the team, and become a “serious” gymnast - it was not something my parents forced on me. But once in, things changed. Gradually, but inevitably. Gymnastics changed from something I loved and looked forward to, into something I had to do - every day, for hours on end. It became my life, and though I grew to hate it, I didn’t know how to stop it because it was all I knew. My parents, I know, would have supported me no matter what, but I just didn’t know how to tell them I wanted to stop. After all, I was good. And I’d chosen it. And it would get me a scholarship and an education, so… I couldn’t just quit, could I? (I remained a gymnast until my injuries sidelined me at the age of 18)

And then I broke my back. On top of the foot and knee injuries I’d already been suffering through. And that ended it. And as much as it sucked, I was relieved, too. It was over.

So: my admittedly completely biased perspective? I’d try to keep it as fun and light as long as possible. Then let her choose. And always keep checking in on her to make sure the choice remains the one she wants… (I wouldn’t advocate taking her out mid-way through a season she’d adamantly committed to in the beginning, but at the end of each one, have a serious discussion about the next one)

Also? Every gymnast I know got injured. Some more seriously than others, but I don’t know of one yet who hasn’t spent a good portion of time on crutches. Yet another thing to consider…

Trust me–I consider it!  A lot!  (Angst.  Lots of angst.)  I worry about pushing her into something she really doesn’t want to do, but she does it because she thinks we like it, and keeps quiet about her anxiety because she wants us to be happy and love, love, love her, and blah, blah, blah.  I worry about her getting injured, and Z’s tale is eye-opening.  I worry about the cultural pressure in gymnastics to stay tiny and lean towards anorexia (like YouKnowWhereYouAreWith says) (which is, of course, another angst-y thing).  I worry, like Blog Antagonist did, whether putting her on a “team” will turn something she loves into a chore.

In terms of “destiny”, though…well, what if she is really good?  What if she keeps on loving it?  What if she keeps getting better and better?  What do we do then?! 

And on the other hand–well, there’s Johnny maybe poking fun, quietly saying:  Hey.  It’s not like you’re setting her life in stone by doing this.  She joins the team, she has fun, she learns stuff, and maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t, and in the end it’s no big deal. 

To top it all off…well, this is all foreign territory for me.  Truly foreign.  I am about as athletic as a three-toed sloth hanging in a tree, slowly peeling a banana and munching on it while staring off into space.  My preference has always been to just hang out on a sofa or snuggled in bed and read.  My experience as a child was being the one who was always chosen last to be on the team; my only inkling of athleticism was in early high school, when a buddy and I discovered that you could play badminton hard, and we took to pairing off during phys ed and running across the court and slamming birdies over the net at each other while most of the other girls were tip-toeing around and daintily bouncing birdies oh-so-gently off the racket.  I have no experience at, say, being on a team.  Or being the mother of someone who is on a team.  It’s a time commitment, is what it is, and probably a you’ve-got-to-volunteer kind of commitment, and there may be driving off to kiddie gymnastics meets and what-not.  (Trust me, I’ve read BA’s posts on being a baseball mom, and my main response is “omigawd, that’s a lot of work!“)  I’m lazy at heart.  In the middle of winter, I want to be curled up on the sofa reading (see?), not coping with icy roads on the way to Big City for gymnastics meets.

Angst, angst, angst.  Trust me, Johnny, I’m rolling my eyes at myself about this navel-gazing.

We’ll probably give it a whirl for a year, see how it goes.  At least it’s not too terribly expensive; it could have been horses.