Flour on the Floor: Focaccia & Avoiding Retirement

This week my daughter and I decide to make focaccia, a flat, oven-baked Italian bread. It’s like a pizza stopped short--no pesky toppings, only olive oil, sea salt, and maybe herbs standing between you and its crusty goodness.

For some reason my few forays into bread-making have flustered me. I can’t hold the directions in my mind long enough to walk from the cookbook to the mixer; I’m increasingly making mistakes in the kitchen. Over the holidays I made a batch of gooey toffee butter cake and forgot the, um, toffee and butter. I left challah in the oven--twice. January has had me googling “early memory loss” and reading articles like “So, you’re losing your mind!” If 40 is to be viewed, according to modern life expectancy rates, as some sort of midpoint, the peak of the mountain, then my mental state seems to be rapidly descending the other side.

When starting the focaccia, I’m slowed not only by my addled brain but by my daughter’s rapidfire questions (why can’t I eat bread batter; why do you call it dough instead of batter; what did you forget now mommy; why are you throwing the batter away; mommy why do you have a sad face). Fittingly, I botch the first batch. But the old noggin’s still nimble enough to conjure a memory of the other time I made rosemary focaccia. I can’t say exactly where my husband and I were living (we’ve lived in six homes together) but we didn’t have children yet so I know this: The kitchen was quiet. We worked together stretching the dough onto the pizza stone we got as a wedding gift; it was perhaps the only thing we’ve ever made on that toe-crushingly heavy slab.

In those days we had the time to make other things too like fried green tomatoes, Tuscan bread soup, and Sidecar cocktails with freshly-squeezed lemon juice. We lived mostly in two bedroom apartments, spending one week in the master bedroom then switching to the guest room for another week thus cutting our laundry schedule to twice a month. We watched entire seasons of television at a clip (a Saturday for Real World) and trilogies all at once (a Sunday for Star Wars). We played two-person games: backgammon, cribbage, mancala.

Back in those twilight days when we didn’t know to appreciate our freedoms, my husband and I baked rosemary focaccia then sat on our roof deck toasting our accomplishment with martinis. But today’s baking feels obligatory and rushed. On our first attempt, I mistakenly add the full amount of the ingredients at the beginning instead of metering them out as per the directions; I toss the mess and we start all over.

My daughter continues her barrage of questions. I am distracted and worn down by the sheer quantity of interaction and have entered that dangerous parental zone where I answer without thinking. In this state I have answered yes to things like, “will you bet me a dollar that I can’t finish this cupcake?” and “can we get a dog?”

When she asks me what I want to be when I grow up, I turn the question back on her (another one of my tactics for slowing down the relentless chug-a-chug of my kids’ train of thought) but she presses. Finally, I assert, “I already am grown up.” She clarifies, “No, I mean even taller.” How is it that even a three-foot tall five-year old can recognize that I’m short?

I try to explain that I’ve already decided what I’m going to be and, well, this is it. But I also think of my husband’s most recent favorite topic of conversation--retirement--and realize that more choices are on the horizon. Our holiday ski trip had him pointing out the Colorado mountains and streams, trying to sell me on the place for after the kids leave home.

He doesn’t understand why I keep shunning the topic. So much of our self-definition comes from our work. When I left my training and development career to raise kids, I felt rudderless for a while. In the eight years since, I’ve taken to jokingly referring to my departure from the paying workforce as my “early retirement” though my days are longer and I am infinitely more overworked and exhausted.

But the concept of actual retirement, the idea of my kids being too old to need me in a daily way anymore, makes me feel a little bit like it’s the end of my usefulness. I was vital in all sorts of other ways before I became a mother, but this role has been my most fulfilling (and maddening). And though I long for our early marital days of wiling away a Saturday in bed while watching the running of the bulls, I’m not interested in moving backwards. It feels like we are in the sweet spot right now.

The new Toyota commercials would have me believe that my post-children future will be filled with activity; still, my husband’s insistence on talking about it unsettles me. It makes me think about a time when my first sights in the morning won’t be my little girl in feety jammies, cheeks flushed from sleep, or my son with his hair rock-star messy sneaking animal crackers before breakfast.

The only thing that really appeals about an empty house? The well of time that will open up. Since my current role has me caring for children, I am engaged a good part of the day. When I think about an empty house, I savor the idea of writing and reading without interruption.

The rub? My house won’t really be empty--my husband will the be there, and he has other ideas. He says: We can play games; we can hike; we can go out to eat; we can travel. We. We. We. In the Venn diagram of our retirement plans, his circle is completely contained within mine--all of his plans involve me. His requests are not unreasonable. In fact, some of them sound great, but I wonder where I’ll fit my own solo activities.

I find myself in the position of romanticizing our pre-children past while sort-of dreading our post-children future. It’s one thing to have an empty nest because you’ve yet to feather it but it’s quite another when it’s that way because the little birds have all flown away. It feels desolate.

My reticence to plan for the future puts me in the now now now. And now I am trying for the second time to make Baking Illustrated's rosemary focaccia with my chatty daughter. When I catch myself longing for that hushed kitchen of my past and future, I look over at her, her small fingers sticky with dough, and feel a welling of gratefulness.

We add the yeast to the bowl of ingredients and my daughter presses her hands to the outside of the metal bowl and thrills at the chemical reaction that makes it heat up quickly--something that I likely wouldn’t have noticed alone. We both enjoy the oily process that is pressing the dough into the rectangular pan and making divots to hold the salt and rosemary toppings. It smells great while baking.

My husband and I have fun debating the bread’s pronunciation and trying on different accents; I say, “fo-cosh-a,” you say “fo-cot-chia”. When it’s done, my daughter is nervous to try it because of “those green things” otherwise known as chopped rosemary but the rest of us dig in. It is crispy at the edges and thick and bready at the middle with a salty finish. Of course, I remember the first focaccia I made with my husband to be infinitely better, with more crunch and even more flavor. But soon, baking and eating this focaccia will be the memory I romanticize. You know, if I can remember it at all.