baking up a storm
With Chinese New Year looming (or maybe, 'booming', thanks to the awful incessant migraine-inducing festive music that plagues our malls, airwaves, and everywhere outside my home) comes the inevitable routine that I will no doubt associate with the festival for the rest of my life: helping my mother make New Year cookies.
It has recently occurred to me that I have been helping my mother make these cookies for more than two decades. She mixes the dough, rolls it out, divides the cut pieces onto a tray, and manages the oven. My job is to place nuts or an egg-yolk glaze or pineapple balls, etc onto the cookies, prep them for baking, and pack them into jars once they are out of the oven and cooled. The hand-eye coordination required of me has been deeply ingrained after so many years of practice. I can read books and magazines (and at one point, my A-levels notes) in-between trays, play with the dog (obviously washing my hands after!), sing along to the radio. The cookie system is such that it works most effectively with only two people (plus perhaps one dog, lying in front of the oven) in the kitchen; when others come in and try to 'help', efficiency drops. I have also grown to like this one-on-one time with my mother. We chat, she nags, I complain, we gossip.
Pineapple tarts - so easy to pop into your mouth, but so hard to make!
My mother has gradually been cutting down on the number of cookies she makes each year. When I was younger and the family didn't have much money, she made these cookies in huge numbers and sold them to friends, colleagues, anyone who wanted them. We no longer do this, mostly because it's tiring, and partly because my sister and I no longer have as much spare time to help her. These days we only make the cookies for our family and close friends. I have bittersweet feelings over this: on one hand, I am glad I don't have to spend uncountable weekends and evenings in a hot kitchen, but then again, this has been such a part of my childhood and our family tradition, that a New Year without my mother's cookies would seem strange.
I have not just been baking cookies in the last few weeks though. As one childhood tradition ends, another is on the cusp of forming. Since I've never really been much of a planner, it always comes as a pleasant surprise when somewhere, somehow, things just seem to fall into place. Case in point:
For some reason, everyone keeps asking me, 'Was it planned?' to which I will say, no, not in the honey, I'm ovulating, get in bed right now! way. Although making a mini-me was in the Grand Plan of Life that J and I discussed, us being our usual indefinable, procrastinating selves meant that we didn't embark on this particular part of the plan with action-schemes and flowcharts (heh) and whatever else.
Anyway, since I'm writing all this for posterity, J and I found out about the Bun (as in, the bun in the oven) in early December, while I was in the throes of the thesis and my word processor. By the time I decided to pee on a stick I was already ten days late; when the little blue cross appeared we couldn't quite believe our eyes so like many other couples in our position, we promptly went to the pharmacy across the road to buy another test kit and peed on that one to see if that turned out positive, too.
And so it was.
The Bun is currently 13 weeks old, give or take a few days, and as I tell my parents, the basic infrastructure has been completed - hands, feet, fingerprints (!), vital organs, etc. This amazes them, since thirty years ago there were no such thing as ultrasounds and the first thing my father did upon meeting me at birth was to count my fingers and toes. I've been very lucky not to get any morning sickness at all and life hasn't changed all that much yet, apart from gradually tightening waistbands and a newfound cleavage (hello, girls!). Since I'm not terribly bump-y yet (I only look like I had a very heavy lunch), the idea of omigod-another-human-being inside me has not quite struck home. Only at my check-ups does reality strike:
Left: The Bun at 7wks; Right: The Bun at 10wks
So that's my big project for 2009; just as one major project (thesis) ends, so another one commences. The stakes seem much higher with this one though! All my employment plans I had lined up post-grad school have kind of flown out of the window, due to scheduling and physical conflicts, so I'm presently unemployed but working on a small volunteer writing project. Despite the poor economic climate, The Bun's timing seems to be just right for us. After being married nearly six years, J and I have had the chance to enjoy couplehood, a year in NYC, and a lot of traveling and 'alone' time. It's time for someone else to join in the game, a new opportunity for our relationship to grow.
I find myself fluctuating between great excitement and self-doubt, wondering just how much life will change and how much I will change by the end of this year. Perhaps that's what you're really supposed to do in the nine-month interval - rethink your priorities, enjoy and remember your carefree couplehood life, and prepare to meet and greet the new person who will take over your heart.
It has recently occurred to me that I have been helping my mother make these cookies for more than two decades. She mixes the dough, rolls it out, divides the cut pieces onto a tray, and manages the oven. My job is to place nuts or an egg-yolk glaze or pineapple balls, etc onto the cookies, prep them for baking, and pack them into jars once they are out of the oven and cooled. The hand-eye coordination required of me has been deeply ingrained after so many years of practice. I can read books and magazines (and at one point, my A-levels notes) in-between trays, play with the dog (obviously washing my hands after!), sing along to the radio. The cookie system is such that it works most effectively with only two people (plus perhaps one dog, lying in front of the oven) in the kitchen; when others come in and try to 'help', efficiency drops. I have also grown to like this one-on-one time with my mother. We chat, she nags, I complain, we gossip.
Pineapple tarts - so easy to pop into your mouth, but so hard to make!
My mother has gradually been cutting down on the number of cookies she makes each year. When I was younger and the family didn't have much money, she made these cookies in huge numbers and sold them to friends, colleagues, anyone who wanted them. We no longer do this, mostly because it's tiring, and partly because my sister and I no longer have as much spare time to help her. These days we only make the cookies for our family and close friends. I have bittersweet feelings over this: on one hand, I am glad I don't have to spend uncountable weekends and evenings in a hot kitchen, but then again, this has been such a part of my childhood and our family tradition, that a New Year without my mother's cookies would seem strange.
I have not just been baking cookies in the last few weeks though. As one childhood tradition ends, another is on the cusp of forming. Since I've never really been much of a planner, it always comes as a pleasant surprise when somewhere, somehow, things just seem to fall into place. Case in point:
For some reason, everyone keeps asking me, 'Was it planned?' to which I will say, no, not in the honey, I'm ovulating, get in bed right now! way. Although making a mini-me was in the Grand Plan of Life that J and I discussed, us being our usual indefinable, procrastinating selves meant that we didn't embark on this particular part of the plan with action-schemes and flowcharts (heh) and whatever else.
Anyway, since I'm writing all this for posterity, J and I found out about the Bun (as in, the bun in the oven) in early December, while I was in the throes of the thesis and my word processor. By the time I decided to pee on a stick I was already ten days late; when the little blue cross appeared we couldn't quite believe our eyes so like many other couples in our position, we promptly went to the pharmacy across the road to buy another test kit and peed on that one to see if that turned out positive, too.
And so it was.
The Bun is currently 13 weeks old, give or take a few days, and as I tell my parents, the basic infrastructure has been completed - hands, feet, fingerprints (!), vital organs, etc. This amazes them, since thirty years ago there were no such thing as ultrasounds and the first thing my father did upon meeting me at birth was to count my fingers and toes. I've been very lucky not to get any morning sickness at all and life hasn't changed all that much yet, apart from gradually tightening waistbands and a newfound cleavage (hello, girls!). Since I'm not terribly bump-y yet (I only look like I had a very heavy lunch), the idea of omigod-another-human-being inside me has not quite struck home. Only at my check-ups does reality strike:
Left: The Bun at 7wks; Right: The Bun at 10wks
So that's my big project for 2009; just as one major project (thesis) ends, so another one commences. The stakes seem much higher with this one though! All my employment plans I had lined up post-grad school have kind of flown out of the window, due to scheduling and physical conflicts, so I'm presently unemployed but working on a small volunteer writing project. Despite the poor economic climate, The Bun's timing seems to be just right for us. After being married nearly six years, J and I have had the chance to enjoy couplehood, a year in NYC, and a lot of traveling and 'alone' time. It's time for someone else to join in the game, a new opportunity for our relationship to grow.
I find myself fluctuating between great excitement and self-doubt, wondering just how much life will change and how much I will change by the end of this year. Perhaps that's what you're really supposed to do in the nine-month interval - rethink your priorities, enjoy and remember your carefree couplehood life, and prepare to meet and greet the new person who will take over your heart.