THINK BEFORE YOU FLING
December 2 2012
I am so glad November is over; it’s not just this one, I’ve never liked Novembers.
There’s a gloom I feel in the penultimate month, no matter where I’ve lived on the planet. Is it the shortening of the days, the light leaving us in a sphere of diminishment? I don’t think so, as I rather like the coziness of a winter evening. I think it has more to do with a sense of time running out. Rather like Sundays, late afternoon, back in my schooldays. When the church clock tolled – rather than pealed – 4 o’clock, a sense of dread would envelope me; dread that my homework was improperly done, if done at all, and the longing for the freedom and fun of the weekend to last forever.
So I suppose in terms of the measurement of a year, November is my Sunday 4 p.m., the 11th month as opposed to the 11th hour, but with the same emotional atmosphere of sadness for time lost, or wasted, or not used to its fullest capacity. So it’s a relief to be in December; to feel energy arise as it does when one has a last fling at anything. Now there’s a word, ‘fling’ both carefree and careless. When you fling a party or an insult it is without aforethought, design or intention; a devil-may-care action that has an unbalanced mix of impulse and daring inflicted with a total lack of regard for the outcome as in “flinging caution to the wind.”
I’ve had a few flings in my time, most of them in my alcoholic years and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy them. The dictionary defines a fling as a brief period of indulging one's impulses. So yes, there’s been a lot flings flying around in my life. And December seems to me to be the quintessential fling of the year: a month of near-universal indulgence; food, drink, parties, gifts and the Rockettes, flinging their legs heavenward. Then there’s tinsel flinging, the last ornamental hurrah, not to mention the shops flinging Christmas at us for weeks and while you’re at it fling a few more chestnuts on the fire.
Of course, all flings carry consequences; a few extra inches around the waist, hangovers for many, over spending for most. And there are the flings that end in broken hearts. Looking back, one can see that all that good fun wasn’t really that good or that much fun in the long run.
The urge to fling, it seems to me, comes from having spent to much time feeling hemmed in by outside circumstances; the economy, politics, natural disasters, but what about the personal circumstances (barring the loss of loved ones). What choices and decisions, looking back, could we have made differently? In what ways could we have treated ourselves and others more kindly, thereby fulfilling ourselves to the extent that the impulse to fling would not arise?
As I write this, I caution myself not to go from gloom to fling, but rather enter into the true spirit of the season. To enjoy the perfume of pine trees, to cook for friends, donate more money to the victims of Sandy, play some silly games by the fire and hopefully to bake thimble cookies with my daughter which for the two of us is not only a once-a-year tradition but is a humble reminder of the distance we journeyed separately and together.
Our recipe comes from a little cookbook that we bought at a library fair when my daughter was five. Those were our poverty years, years when I worked 3 waitressing shifts a day in 3 different cafes. Months of borrowing cars to pick up my daughter from her father’s house, some 20 miles away. Months of food stamps and eating grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.
I bought the cookbook because it was cheap and tattered and homemade. And inside was the simple recipe for the Thimble cookies, the ingredients of which we could just about afford. And oh, the joy, of watching my little girl put her tiny thumb into each small ball of dough, the imprint then filled with jams, an assortment of blackberry, raspberry and apricot, their colors glistening like jewels. Then there was the delight of removing the cookie sheet from the oven and admiring our work while they cooled just enough to eat one each without burning our tongues. When they were thoroughly cool, we would layer them between wax paper and place them in a cookie tin overnight and then on Christmas Day, arrange them on a platter where they lay in the splendor of their simplicity before being devoured by friends and the two of us.
To me, those cookies represent the true meaning of good fun. They are far from a fling. The whole journey from the discovery of the book at the library fair to the shopping for ingredients, the careful measuring and sifting, the blend of butter and sugar and egg, the just right little dollops of jam, the timing of their baking until not quite golden, the cooling on the rack, the airtight overnight sleep in the tin and each moment of melt in the mouth; this to me is an example of both how little and how much it takes to live a good life. We really don’t need a lot, but we do need to make the most of what we have. By that I mean honoring the pleasure inherent in each step on the path toward consciousness.
We’re counting the days now until we leave for our year in Europe. For a while I was telling people we were going to fling ourselves out into the world one more time, but I’ve changed my mind. We’re going the thimble cookie route, beginning with each new discovery along the way, a path that measures our capacity for simplicity, sifting the precious moments of each day and accepting there will be some misshapen, even burnt ones along the way, which will allow us to savor the good ones, even as they melt away.