beauty Archives - Page 6 of 23

On cakes and life

January 12, 2012 jennifer Musings on Life and Beauty

I baked a cake on Monday. It was a recipe I’d never tried before and for some reason the rich brown batter in the bundt pan looked unusually pretty as I prepared to bake it.

Forty five minutes later the timer went off and I checked the cake. Looking good almost everywhere… except for one spot that had fallen. The hole looked deep and I wondered if it would turn out. Reminding myself that the recipe called for another ten minutes of baking, I closed the oven.

Ten minutes later the sunken spot tested fine and I removed the cake from the oven to cool. And for some reason my eyes kept moving back to it.

That sunken spot had created such beautiful texture on the cake, making me want to study it. Had it been perfectly smooth (as I planned and expected) there wouldn’t have been much to look at. I would have let it cool, inverted it and missed an opportunity to notice more.

This momentary pause in my day to study a flawed cake with rapt attention and fascination got me thinking. Isn’t life like that too? We think we know how things should go and confidently mix together the ingredients and pop them in the day with high expectations. But sometimes the day (insert just about anything in place of “day”) doesn’t turn out how we hoped. Part of it falls, sinks, looks mushy. We eye it warily and hope it will turn out, which it usually does , but not how we pictured. What was meant to be is now flawed and too often we wonder at its worth, or our worth.

But it was the flaws that created my moment of beauty, not a perfect cake. It was the sunken area that made me want to look at it longer. And you know what, the same is true of people. The things we wonder at are the sunken areas that turn out, the areas that somehow come together in spite of adversity. There is beauty there, not the perfect kind but the kind that we earn as we go through life. The kind of beauty that follows faith, hard work, squaring your shoulders to do the best you can. It’s a beauty that also follows the valleys in our lives, the days of uncertainty, fear, worry and tear-stained faces. But because it’s one-of-a-kind, completely custom beauty, we marvel at it.

{Funny how we appreciate this kind of beauty in others but rarely welcome it in ourselves…}
Another thought hit me as I was wondering at all of this. I know people whose lives hold no visible evidence of any flaws whatsoever. Although some cakes have no flaws, we can be assured that all people do. We all have disappointments, fears, heartaches. It’s just that most of us manage to invert our cakes pretty well and come off looking normal.

And as for my worry about the cake, I needn’t have wondered. It looked beautiful and delicious {which it was, every single crumb of it} and my family had no idea it wasn’t “perfect”. So when we’re worried that our holes reveal too much we can remember that most of the time the flaws end up on the bottom and the best that is in us rises to the top. And it all turns out just fine.

{I suppose I should insert here that this is probably just a pep talk to myself, but I’m sharing it in case it might cheer you up, too. Sometimes I feel like I have some deep, ugly holes…}

All this thinking reminded me of a quote I liked in one of my current reads:

“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ‘Oh, nothing!’ Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others.”
-George Eliot, Middlemarch , published 1871

Is it really Fall?

October 20, 2011 jennifer Gardening, Musings on Life and Beauty

The wind got hold of my top-heavy dahlias this week so I cut those that were blown over. I’ve got several vases FULL of enormous blooms. Two of them sit on my kitchen table next to a pumpkin, and every time I look at it I can’t help but marvel at the sight. There are more flowers outside where these came from, yet Halloween is just around the corner. I think that and shake my head. Is it really fall? When did that happen, and who forgot to tell my yard?

The children and I spent a glorious day outside together. We finally harvested our sunflower seeds and were amazed at how many we have. Tomorrow we’ll soak them. We also pulled out most of the garden plants, leaving only those things that are still thriving. There are still tomatoes, herbs, eggplant, and bell peppers but most of it is gone. The children enjoyed digging up the carrots while my little one picked a bunch of green tomatoes for us (because two year olds are helpful like that). The funniest moment was when she picked one of her sister’s bell peppers and the chase was on. Picture two little girls, ages two and three and almost the same size, chasing each other around the back yard screaming “No, that’s my pepper!” The three year old recovered her vegetable, then walked back to the plant and picked another pepper. “Here,” she said calmly as she offered one to her little sister, “A pepper for both of us.” We all laughed. No need now for that pepper plant we left in the garden.

I also pruned my lavender plants back for the year. Tonight my daughter and I sat and bundled another basket full of lavender to dry. I looked around my kitchen at homegrown vegetables piled all over the counter, buckets full of sunflower seeds and the enchanting smell of lavender on my hands and was overwhelmed with gratitude for the chance to grow things.

Sometimes fall seems like a time of cutting back, simplifying. This year fall feels like a crescendo that’s still building. It’s almost more than I can appreciate. We’re enjoying the beauties of summer alongside the slow turning of leaves. We’re picking pumpkins and flowers together, raking leaves and weeding flowerbeds in bare feet… with sunscreen on.