Her daughter brings out the best in her.
I like the way she explains things to her with truth even when the truth is too complicated for a two year old to completely grasp.
C no longer wears long gowns as standard daily wear. She wears jeans. I never saw her in jeans before she had her daughter.
C is still odd, quirky, neurotic, etc., but she is simultaneously managing to raise a daughter who is happy, well-fed, inquisitive and friendly. This is enormously encouraging.
I found watching her make soup to be inspiring, much the way I felt after watching K paint. That I could do that too. K would slap colours down without much thought, swirling them around to make basic shapes. No real preplanning other than a pencil line or two. When I asked her how she could know that would work, that it would turn into what she wanted it to, she would say, "I don't." And the response to, "What if you make a mistake?" was, "I'll paint over it." And somehow her paintings always turned out beautifully. It made me think I could do it to if I could just convince myself to relax and let go.
And watching C toss things into a soup pot, cutting vegetables in a half-assed way that defied my OCD desire to see them all be cut into equal sizes, was much like watching an artist. C isn't confident about many things but she knows how much garlic and how much ginger and how to fix it if it's not. She is brazen about tossing in leftovers, knowing that even though the recipe doesn't call for it, it will work. The soup she ended up with was nothing like the recipe, and it was absolutely perfect. I loved it.
I was inspired enough to go out, this morning, to get a soup pot of my own and a pile of vegetables. I chopped them with reckless abandon, paying no attention to the sizes or shapes (with a bit of effort) while listening to crazy Nova Scotia celtic folk music. The puppies stared at me in bewilderment. It's not often that I cook, and it's been never since the kitchen madness began. Tonight we're having soup.
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