muffins to ease the sadness

Bluck. The weather yesterday was absolutely terrible, and I'll be honest. I taught for an hour. The rest of the day was spent cleaning or sitting in bed reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter", which has not been a pleasurable read. That with the rain cast a dark cloud over our apartment that no rainbow could peak through. The muffins I made perked me up a bit, but now I'm still sitting around asking Joe questions. Are we okay? When will we have children? How do you make sure your child is okay? Will you, if our child isn't "okay", give them to the nurse and tell her to take it away and then tell me that the baby died? (Sorry. I just spoiled the first 30 pages. No worries, there are 500 more to go.)

I'm a worrier. Books like this increase the worry and decrease the honeymoon happiness that usually floats around our apartment. Not good. Our apartment isn't big enough for the two of us and a bad mood. Today though, I put extra blame on the weather. Even Joe seemed to be under the same Eeyore cloud I'd found, sitting in his usual spot near the window clicking through articles and not willing to do much. We ate a quite dinner, read quietly and went to bed early. (Even Joe was asleep well before midnight.)

I made a big to-do list for today, trying to set myself up for two months of productivity now that classes are ending. To start: breakfast. Choco-coconut-strawberry muffins & strawberries with kiwi slices. Here is my first draft of the muffin recipe, though they're a bit lumpy and the batter is rather dry. I'm not sure how I want to adjust that. Regardless, they're moist enough and pretty tasty. (Plus dry batter is way easier to eat with your fingers.)

3/4 c sliced strawberries (that you then mash with a potato masher)
3/4 c sugar (less if it's raw or course sugar)
1/3 c melted butter, which is about 3 tablespoons
2 c flour
3/4 teaspoon each f baking soda & baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 c coconut flakes (or here, coconut powdery stuff)

Mix the first three ingredients, then add in the rest and stir (or fold, since it's so dry) until well combined. Throw in 3/4 c (oh, what the heck, a big cup) of your favorite kind of chocolate all chopped up. I used dark, as always. There was a huge sale on it this week–five bars for three dollars. They're gone now. Maybe less of a bargain and more of a way to ruin your ab routine. Bake them at 375F (190C) for about 20 minutes. Eat while warm, or don't even bake them and eat the batter with a spoon. There's no egg, so no worry!

I think the end of classes is having a bigger emotional impact on me than I expected. Saying goodbye to a law class that I'd had for both semesters, I got teary eyed. It doesn't take much for me to cry, but thinking about my students, who I'd come to know so well & understand how to work with, facing intimidating professors in an even more intimidating university system switched me into big sister mode. I wanted to protect them, to do more for them. I wanted to stay with them and remind them that a bad grade isn't the end of your ability. It's just an adjustment: You have to relearn how to read the figures. You have to figure out what the grades really mean and what you can really expect–what they really expect from you.

They're all capable. I want to sit on their shoulders and whisper that to them. I want them to stick with it and use their law degrees to change the world in ways I know they can. I've heard their ideas–from human rights policy reform to adjusting hiring practices to limit race and gender discrimination in the workplace. These are the moments they need to remember–when they sat in a group of four and forced themselves to use vocabulary they barely knew to create original ideas about what law should be.

I'm leaving them. Toward the end of class, when they started getting excited and loud, I reminded them that they only had 20 more minutes to deal with me. Twenty minutes, then they wouldn't even have to think of me being on the same continent. I was startled by how much that statement affected me. I'm leaving them, and in a way it feels like abandonment. Like I'm failing them. Like they could, in some way, need me.

Then I remind myself that of the 30 professors I worked with during college, I remember four our five–or I remember names, but not their course. They have years left for the real professors, the mentors and the ones that matter, to step in & push the crazy, married American girl to the back of their minds like that one class I took on world civilizations that only met once a month. Who was that guy again?

I'll miss teaching. I'll miss walking into that hot room & shouting for them to be quiet. I'll miss fearing that they'll one day ask a question I can't answer. I'll miss them assuming that I don't speak French. I'll miss being inspired by them to make myself into a teacher I'd never imagined–never thought I wanted–myself to be. We did a lot of learning together.