Cooking for Gracie: The Making of a Parent from Scratch - Couverture rigide

Dixon, Keith

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0307591875 ISBN 13 : 9780307591876

Editeur : Crown Pub, 2011

Synopsis

Book by Dixon Keith

A propos du livre

Extrait

OCTOBER

Famished

Just weeks into the experience of parenthood, I seem to experience a fresh epiphany about every other day-moments of clarity, addicts call them, in which the camera lens of life is screwed sharply into focus and the afflicted suddenly realizes what path he must take.

I'm having a moment of clarity now, alone here in my kitchen at night, where I'm spooning and spooning cold cereal. This is dinner these days: standing at the kitchen window with a bowl of breakfast. I'm nettled by problems with sleep, and with timing, and with other things. The hour is late enough that even the pointillist panorama of New York, a city I've called home for fifteen years, seems almost subdued; York Avenue, five stories below, is nearly deserted, and taxis streak by only occasionally. Summer is barely hanging on, having exhausted itself with hot September. The scene appears tranquil to the naked eye, but it's really not-if this kitchen were the galley of a Boeing jet, the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign would be blinking right now, directing all passengers to buckle up and prepare for terrible turbulence. I've ruined dinner, blackened it to the pan-the haze hanging below the ceiling is the proof. My wife, Jessica, and I were going to eat six pristine lamb chops an hour ago, but as we sat down at the table our -weeks--old daughter, Grace, gave a cry of hunger from her room-and I looked up with the troubled expression of a picnicker who hears distant thunder.

Just weeks in, and I'm already a worried dad. The big questions seek me out after midnight and apprehend me at the moment of sleep. There in the night I face down my fears about Gracie's low birth weight and, one at a time, put them in the proper perspective-the next morning, though, the fears are always somehow revived, renewed, reinvigorated. Our daughter was born light, far too light, and whenever she delivers a cry of hunger we snap to attention. So an hour ago we abandoned dinner, and just now I blackened the chops trying to reheat them. I'd thought this would be a simple process of applying the flame, the necessary heat, but things moved much faster than I expected and quickly evolved into a Larry, Moe, and Curly scene of the highest order. As I heaved the window open, fanning the smoke out into the night, I wondered if it was possible to be mad at a kitchen implement. But no, it's hunger itself that I'm mad at-I was hungry for those chops, and now I'm having a bowl of breakfast instead. There was a time when I thought of hunger as a useful, instructive thing-not just physical hunger but hunger for things like success or romantic love. The idea was that the wanting could teach you things about yourself, about your various prowling appetites, and perhaps I was right in that, because tonight's hunger has propelled me into a moment of clarity, with all of its dreadful data about my situation.

Here is what I'm slowly coming to understand: What is broken in the kitchen is broken elsewhere-the problem would appear to be that life no longer moves according to my schedule. If you're a writer or a cook, timing is crucial; if you happen to be both, as I am, you're finished without it. I used to have it, this timing, in the kitchen and on the page, but now it's gone. I'm a beat behind in everything I do-I go around half the time feeling like an actor who belongs in a drama and finds himself instead in a comedy, where the jokes are all at his expense.

I've felt this way for weeks-since September 9, 2007, when I surfaced from a deep sleep around 4 a.m. and found Jessica standing over me in the pale bedside light. Marriage has taught me a few things, among them that you should be worried when your pregnant wife wakes you at 4 a.m. by standing over you with the lights already on.

My confusion resolved itself quickly enough when Jessica told me in no uncertain terms that she hadn't slept one minute all night and added that she was pretty sure our baby was on the way, showing me startling evidence to the same. (I'll not describe it here but rather note that the condition "bloody show" is very well named indeed, and as bracing as two strong cups of coffee to see. Google it.) I slapped around on the floor for about ten minutes, searching for my clothes, and we phoned the obstetrician. The baby, if she came today, would be five weeks early. At our latest sonogram we were told that the baby's weight was just north of four pounds. In most cases an obstetrician encourages a couple to remain at home until the woman is through early labor, but the fact that we were five weeks early, combined with other unusual conditions of the pregnancy, was enough to cause him to tell us to come on in, and right away. There were no cars out so early-we hunted down a cab, and the driver seemed to understand everything with a glance. He thundered through intersection and along crosscut, around hairpin and down avenue. Jessica was in that trancelike state women achieve when the biological imperative asserts itself; that is, she was an arresting example of female -can--do. If there'd been any time to stop and think, I suppose I would have panicked, but I was fully occupied by the events unfolding around me, and anyway, I was still shaking off the anesthetic effects of the martini I'd had at dinner the night before. We swept past the sleepy hospital admitting desk and were fired skyward by the express elevator to the birthing floor, where an IV was inserted into the back of Jessica's hand. At this point Jessica's blood pressure swirled upward, and I heard a staffer in attendance use the word preeclampsia. A monitor strapped over Jessica's navel, which measured the contractions she was experiencing, began delivering data to a printer beside the bed-this immediately began drawing rolling ocean swells, and for a moment the illusion was complete: I imagined that this was indeed an ocean liner, and here were the heavy seas, with their attendant queasiness. But then the IV began to do its work, Jessica's blood pressure eased, and the printout swells subsided into barely noticeable upticks.

That's it? I asked, and the attending doctor repeated my question in the declarative.

Four brief hours at the hospital, and our fortunes had turned.

During the cab ride home I was electric with the cherry high of someone who has been granted a reprieve-every other block I felt the urge to seize the cabbie by the shoulder and say, "That was a close one, wasn't it?" Now I had time to prepare for this thing I hadn't been prepared for. I helped Jessica into bed, seared a grilled cheese sandwich for her and watched her eat, then pulled the covers up to her chin and drew the curtains. After offering a heartfelt plea that she rest, and rest well, I stepped into the shower.

What a still moment that was, standing blameless beneath the roaring showerhead, nodding to myself, arms crossed, eyes closed, breathing deeply through my nose and reflecting on the near miss of a -five--week--premature birth. Close, Keith, I thought, so close, too close, and then hollering Jessica ran into the bathroom and leaped, fully dressed and exultant, into the shower with me.

Her water had broken.

The warning shot had revealed itself to be the report of a starting gun.

We stood in silence for a moment-facing each other, hands clasped, like a couple about to recite a marriage vow. Even the most vivid memories tend to fade with time, but decades from now, when Death appears in my doorway and beckons with a bent finger, this is the image that will burn brightly in my mind's eye-Jessica standing fully dressed in the shower, clothes dripping, wet hair plastered to her face and neck, and the waters that had protected Gracie for the first -thirty--five weeks of her life now swirling around my bare ankles.

Here comes the future, at 140 heartbeats per minute.

I have a funny relationship with pain. The experts say that pain is trying to tell us something, that it is delivering a distress signal from a body part that is being misused and that we ought to listen to that signal. For that very reason I don't mind small amounts of pain-I'm strongly resistant to taking aspirin, cough medicine, allergy medicine, and other such palliatives for headaches, scrapes, burns, cuts, and so on-but I just can't stomach the bad stuff. When it comes to the -big--ticket items-knee operations, cavity fillings, -room--spinning migraines-I immediately cave, jettison all principles, and request as much painkiller as possible, and the sooner, and stronger, the better. Were I faced with the prospect of eight or more hours of labor, I would surely arrive at the hospital pretranquilized, all but holding out my arm and slapping the vein to offer the doctor assistance. Jessica, on the other hand, has always been a believer in using aspirin and other painkillers to ease the discomfort of everyday headaches, sore muscles, cramps, and so on-which suggests that she believes in using modern medicine to ease pain. I was surprised, then, to learn that she planned to scale what is considered by many to be the Mount Everest of pain: to push a baby out with a -drug--free birth. Upon hearing this news, my first thought, selfishly, was to fear that in this extreme circumstance I would be placed in a position that any husband deeply dreads: that of feeling essentially useless.1 There were a number of logical fallacies we employed to mitigate my (and Jessica's) fear about meeting this challenge. "It's temporary," she would say, referring to the pain, "it's temporary," and I would nod my head and say, "Yes, it's temporary," thinking, But, Jessica, this is a very long temporary, lasting hours (or even, God help us, days) instead of moments. Nevertheless, we stuck with this line of logic, to great success. "It's temporary," she would say, and I'd nod my head and repeat the phrase back.

We would discuss this matter of painkillers nightly, sometimes more than once a night, and we even took a -weeks--long class on how to survive a -drug--free delivery.2 Through the early stages of this, there remained an element of unreality about the wh...

Présentation de l'éditeur

A touching, insightful and uplifting memoir, complete with more than 40 recipes, that recounts a year in the life of a new parent learning to cook for three.

Keith Dixon’s passion was cooking. For years, he sustained himself through difficult days by dreaming about the lavish recipes he was going to attempt when he got home—Thai curries, Indian raitas, Sichuan noodles. All that changed when his daughter, Gracie, was born five weeks early, at just four pounds. Keith and his wife, Jessica, adapted to life with a newborn as all parents do: walking around in a sleep deprived haze, trying to bond with Gracie and meet the needs of this new person in their lives—all while dealing with the overwhelming fear that they were going to catastrophically fail in their new roles. After Gracie became a part of their family, Keith no longer had time to cook the way he once knew; when he did find time to make something, he learned the hard way that his daughter woke easily to the simplest kitchen noise, and soon realized that if he wanted his family to eat well, he was going to have to learn to cook all over again.
 
Based on three popular articles in the New York Times, Cooking for Gracie is a memoir of the first year of Gracie’s life, as Keith learns to cook for three—discovering what it means to be a father while still holding on to what made him who he was before his daughter came along. Keith and Jessica’s hilarious and poignant struggles to adjust to life with a newborn will resonate with new parents; foodies’ mouths will water over the tempting meals Keith creates; amateur cooks will laugh at his missteps in the kitchen—and it’s just impossible not to fall in love with the adorable Gracie.
 
A critically acclaimed novelist, Keith Dixon reflects on food, parenting, and cooking with both humor and reverence, and shares the delicious, accessible parent- and family-friendly recipes he discovered along the way. Beautifully written and compulsively readable, Cooking for Gracie is an irresistible and unforgettable story, for foodies and parents alike, of a family of three learning to find their way together
 
KEITH DIXON has been on the staff of the New York Times for seventeen years. He is also the author of two novels : The Art of Losing—which received starred reviews in both Kirkus and Booklist and was named “Editor’s Choice” by the Philadelphia Inquirer—and Ghostfires, named one of the five best first novels of 2004 by Poets & Writers magazine.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Crown Pub
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0307591875
• ISBN 13: 9780307591876
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 206
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: MUSIC STORE professional GmbH; 022188841282; Lars.Mueller@musicstore.de; ; Istanbulstr. 22-26; Köln; 51103; Allemagne