Cooking – The Excuses

I like to think that I’m moderately gnarly and a little bit capable.

For any dull, middle-aged Mum that is, not just one with a brain-injuiry. I can deal with cold seas, with blood, poo, phlegm and guts. I’m not afraid of my body – or other people’s bodies. I can carve a joint of meat. Go hiking alone. I’m cool with heights and small spaces. Unsavory people and language. Cows, geese and dogs. I’ll move a spider when it’s offending me, or ask for help if it’s offending me too much. Furthermore, I’ve looked like an idiot in absolutely every environment you can name.

Oh, yes! And furthermore than that, this saggy, wrinkly, middle-aged body never gets filtered on photos.

Except for that time. My eldest took of a picture of me – and instantly, I was prettified. In case you were wondering, I don’t have peachy skin, shapely eyebrows, good cheek-bones, those glasses or that cute nose, although my teddy-bear ears obviously remain unaltered.

‘Where’s the harm in it?’ my daughter says, before I’ve even said anything.

My eyes grow wide. ‘Are you kidding?’

I start painting a picture of a dystopian world. Women are so used to looking at this sort of image of themselves, that they come to hate what they actually see in the mirror. Because as every gnarly middle-aged woman knows, even gnarly middle-aged women have fears. Every day, new concepts come up from nowhere, freaking us out. The world doesn’t work as it did when we first learned all about it.

And yet still, we cling to the old ways. We live in this culture that calls not being gay a word that means not bent. We are so attached to old grammar that we’ve resisted the gender-neutral ‘they’, labelling it ‘plural.’ We still use Facebook for social media. Still we blog! And dress in the brands we discovered twenty years ago. We’re lazy, but we tell ourselves stories that our ways are, somehow, ‘better.’

Make-up. The story: I’m gnarly. Looking pretty doesnn’t matter to me . But what if I just have an ‘ick’ to getting stuff smeared over my face? Maybe it’s too easy for me to blame ‘not looking my best’ on societal pressure on women.

Making excuses could be why our brains get closed off, less adaptive. I used to say it’d never happen to me; that I would face things that make me uncomfortable. Yet it’s easier to pretend that make-up is somehow morally inferior, than something I just can’t be bothered to engage with. Easier to proclaim that Snapchat is, like, hell and abusive to women.

The only comfort is that I’m not alone. People tell ourselves all kinds of stories. Women who have never moved fearlessly with music, just tell themselves that they ‘can’t’, or don’t want to, dance.

Women who are afraid to show our bodies, say ‘I’m not that kind of exhibitionist.’

Women who’ve never been brave enough to speak their minds, blame a person who disagreed with them too vehemently once, or tell themselves ‘It’s because I’m a goody! Just too much of an empath.’

Women who don’t speak out against injustice, are ‘just not that kind of women who make a fuss.’

Cooking. I’ve always had excuses for that. It’s a ‘feminist’ refusal; I worked the hardest, therefore why the hell should I cook?

Then I had a brain injury, and cooking and shopping were literally the most complex things in the world. Following a recipe? Finding all the things, preparing the things, putting them all togather, without losing a packet or getting the order wrong. Getting things out of the oven at the right time? And oh! Did I mention? I actually prefer baking anyway.

It was my husband’s birthday last week. After nearly an hour in the oven, his birthday cake was still a bit soft, but beginning to burn on the outside. I took it out, removed the cake-ring and the whole thing collapsed in a puddle. Perhaps the self-raising flour was out of date. The family stood round and ate it with yogurt and spoons. Happy Birthday, Hubby!

Other excuses for not cooking, then?

My Mum said she taught my brother to cook really well, because he was a boy, and just assumed I’d pick it up. Not that that was thirty years ago, or anything.

My husband actually likes to do it – but not all the time, he doesn’t.

Nobody actually taught us at school – we were more devoted to algebra than any actual life-skill. Nobody gave you UCAS points for cooking. Which is odd, since for every uni student, cooking is something you’re going to have to do. But that was a long time ago, anyway. And they didn’t teach us climbing either, or how to read an OS map. But arguably, I learned those things okay.

Anyway, they taught us to make an ommelete in the girl-guides – true story – which could have been great. But I went to show off how good I was at juggling eggs…. and that was the end of that.

Anyway, I might be doing more cooking for a while.

You could say it’s an opportunity for success.

Someone gnarly, with a young mind, should throw themselves into it.