Joy in the Not Knowing
Was I good at these things? Well, no. But grade school me didn’t know that. Grade school me didn’t let that keep me from trying.
“That was always the dream, wasn’t it? ‘I wish I knew then what I know now’?” (Pratchett 163). But sometimes I look at me back then and wish I could remember now what didn’t know then.
As a kid I was full of self-confidence. Was it justified? Probably not, like Pratchett says, “You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp” (163). But what I liked about me then is that I thought I could, and so I tried. I wanted to play football with the boys at recess, so I showed up on the football field and waited to be picked for a team. I wanted to sing, so I tried out for the musical. I wanted to play baseball, so no amount of booing kept me off the pitcher’s mound.
Was I good at these things? Well, no. But grade school me didn’t know that. Grade school me didn’t let that keep me from trying. Grade school me had the confidence to put myself out there and try what I wanted. No coach, no BOY, no dress code, was going to tell me what I could and couldn’t try. Was I a twerp? Most likely. But, looking back, I’m glad to see that 11-year-old standing in her pleated plaid skirt, maroon turtleneck (don’t judge, it was the ‘80’s) and a pair of sneakers running in the mud to catch a football.
It wasn’t just at school. My mother was always cooking and canning and baking, so I figured I could, too. One day when she and my father were gone, I attempted a Lemon Meringue Pie. I didn’t know pies were supposed to be hard to make, and I saw no reason not to attempt this in our little linoleum floored kitchen. I don’t remember fighting the pie dough, like I do now, or being concerned that the egg yolk would scramble in the filling. What I remember was a textbook pie, the egg white meringue a peeked perfection.
However, when I pulled it out of the oven, it was not a toasted brown. It looked like an raw marshmallow, dreaming about s’moredom. My 12-year-old heart knew that was not RIGHT, and figured a couple minutes on broil would create that caramel color campfire perfection. I changed the dial from “bake” to “broil” on that old yellow oven and left the kitchen. 12-year-old me did not understand the power of “broil.”
I learned.
When the timer went off, I walked in to see smoke escaping from the oven door, and when I pulled it open, I saw my pie in flames.
But, again, fully confident in my skills, I located the red and white Amway fire extinguisher on the wall, and pulled the tab, aiming carefully in the oven. Success. The pie was no longer a flambe. Now, I had another problem: the fire extinguisher kept going.
It was at this point my younger brother entered the room, helpfully shouting advice:
“IT’S ON FIRE!!”
“No, it’s not. I put it out.”
“THERE WAS FIRE!”
“It’s under control.”
But with each sentence I was turning in a different direction in the kitchen, with the extinguisher still spewing retardant. Always one to be thorough, I made sure to face every cardinal direction of the compass: north toward the oven, west at the fridge, south to my brother and finally east to the kitchen sink, which I hoped would contain the mess I was making. The pie was a loss. And now, the kitchen was covered in white powder, like a cocaine lab explosion. And, of course, mom and dad were due back anytime. After all, I’d had enough time to make a pie, set it on fire, and save the house from burning down.
If memory serves, twerp-y Tamarah was sweeping up the white menace, which was the consistency of powdered sugar, discovering just how many places flame retardant can go in a kitchen, when my parents walked in. And that, my dear readers, is the favorite Thanksgiving story told to my nephews and nieces around the table, EVERY YEAR.
These stories can make me cringe at my younger self. Football?! I actually looked everyone in the eye and thought I could pitch? That’s some serious lack of self-awareness. But it was also a girl who wasn’t going to be told what she could and couldn’t do. She was going to determine that herself.
I still make Lemon Meringue Pies. But I don’t think I approach pie making with the confidence of young Tamarah. I approach it with the reverence and respect pastry deserves. I know all the places baking can bite you, and I speak to it with all the authority Vimes spoke to the new recruits.. I sometimes still get an unexpected crossbow in my ear if I’m getting too cocky, and I have to take my lumps, but the confidence of young me, keeps me trying. That young girl, who didn’t know she couldn’t, taught me to try anything. She taught me I could put out fires. She taught me to go where they said I didn’t belong and wear the clothes I wanted. She taught me failure isn’t final and to try another day.
Turns out, that twerp was an okay kid.
#joyasresistance