Another grey, wet and cold day.  Am I ever going to put my winter coat away in the hall closet?  I’ve put it away and taken it out again twice.

This morning supervising Julia at the library during her volunteer time. Observing what she can do and do well, and how much she gets in her own way. She has so much more ability than she uses. Mood and lack of regulation ability dampen potential. Trauma masks the possibility of ambition, and without ambition, goals are hard to come by. It’s the goals that have helped me push through bad days. I’ve lived through many a hard time murmuring “eyes on the prize.” When you can see no prize, where do you ever put your eyes.  

This morning, my friend wrote, “you’re not supposed to ace this.” I sigh. I guess I’ve always wanted to ace all my “this.” Time and age and especially Julia have smoothed out so many of my edges. I accept a good deal more and haven’t thought much about acing for awhile.

Living up to potential is not always what I imagined it to be. These days, acing my this is more about support and patience than it is about getting anywhere, accomplishing anything.

Trauma and distraction crowd out aiming for a prize, staying on task and target. And acceptance and flexibility become the goals.

Should I have realized this years ago? I am not a quick learner.

It is a week before Easter, less.  I didn’t write pasanky this year, didn’t feel like I had the time and concentration for it.  Now, I am a bit sad I didn’t do it.  I have been getting Facebook adds for poppyseed roll which really is a bit bazaar but reminds me that I am not baking for Easter. Not poppyseed rolls, not babka.

As a kid, I went to my grandmother’s house on Good Friday every year to help her bake babka.  She didn’t let me do much of the baking.  I was relegated to sorting through soaking raisins, taking out the small “bad” ones, and flouring pans, although she checked my floured pans scrupulously. Mostly, I kept her company, listened to her stories of the old country and the grandmother who raised her, and spent some time quietly by myself which was a treat coming from a family of four very noise kids. 

We called the bread either Babka or Paska. I never knew the difference.  Looking it up now, I find: “Paska and babka share a rich, golden, sweet dough.  To me, paska is round, wider with braided dough and decorations on top, and babkas are round, tall and skinny.” See Instant Ukrainian . The author talks about “helping” her grandmother and directions like “add enough flour” which makes me smile.  There was a year when I tried to write down my grandmother’s recipe only to be frustrated with my grandma’s complete lack of specificity.  Four to eight eggs, six to ten and sometimes more cups of flour. I did not appreciate as a young teen her years of baking by the feel of the dough beneath her fingers.

My grandma used small metal pans to bake her bread in. They were more for mixing something than they were baking pans.  The blog author uses tin cans and her babka is tall and skinny. My grandma made round and generous loaves.

The website’s recipe pictures–golden raisins, eggy dough rising and finished babkas–leave me lusting to bake! I remind myself more than once that it is a day-long project—multiple risings each at least an hour, lots of kneading, even the initial mixing is time consuming. The work is very different from writing pysanky but the baking takes the kind of time that I have been avoiding.  

Now, right now, I am looking at my calendar wondering if it would be a good use of my Good Friday.  I have a writing group in the morning on Zoom.  If I do the first mixing before 10 a.m., starting much earlier that I usually begin a day, I can do half of the writing group during the first rise, punch the dough down, knead on the counter during our break, with the second kneading coming after the group.  

How crazy is this?