Now Vs. Later (Plus New Essays and Frangipane Tarts)

Hello from berry season in Alaska!

This is the second installment of my little newsletter experiment (if you missed the first about toddlers in the backcountry, writing on marriage, and rhubarb, here it is). This time: some writing about motherhood and domesticity, lessons from my toddler about living in the moment (and just eating the berries), and my new obsession with frangipane tarts.

Here’s a piece I wrote for Aeon about Virginia Woolf, the stigma of stay-at-home motherhood, and the shift I personally underwent from seeking danger in my twenties to living a more domestic life in my thirties. This essay felt vulnerable to write and publish for a number of reasons. First, I’m writing about motherhood, but only have a year of experience; I’m aware that my ideas and preferences may change over time. Second, among my cohort, the funny, intelligent, entertaining way to talk about motherhood is often by talking about the challenges – ranting about our unequal partnerships and grieving the loss of our identities. In this piece, I explore what now feels taboo: the deep joy and satisfaction I’ve also felt since becoming a mother. (So funny how taboos shift over time).

I’ve been writing a lot on motherhood recently, it turns out! I also wrote a short essay for Orion, “The Distance Between Objects,” about picking crowberries during the early months and reflecting on the geography of this new relationship. Last summer, picking berries often meant holding her in one arm and picking with the other, or seeing if I could crouch forward with her sleeping in the front carrier without rousing her. This year, she still often wants to be held, but every now and then, she’ll tolerate sitting in the tundra and picking berries herself. More on berry picking below.

For years, whenever I have picked berries, I’ve tried to keep myself from eating them. I have wanted to fill my bucket, which has meant filling the Ziplocs that will stack up in the freezer and later be used for pie and smoothies and oatmeal toppings. Eating too many berries in the moment would slow me down and lower the number I can take home. And that’s where my focus was: on what I could eat later. Somehow, “now” seemed like a waste.

With harvesting in general, I often find myself with this bias. I value the later version of me, who will eat the blueberries, the cranberries, the carrots, the turnips, the kale more than the present one who could also be eating them fresh off the vine (or the stem, or out of the dirt). The thing is, though, my daughter, Lila, does not think that way at all. When I pick our backyard raspberries with her on my hip, plucking juicy thimbles off the vine and placing them in a metal bowl. Lila reaches her little hand into that bowl, grabs as many as she can, and then sticks her fingers in her mouth, licking up every last drop of their fresh juice.

She has a good point: when will the berries be any fresher than right this minute?

One day, a friend came over and fed Lila every strawberry our garden had produced, maybe 30 of them at that point, while I picked arugula for a summer salad. Last year, those little strawberry plants, newly planted, only produced one berry, which a squirrel plucked off and ran away with before we got to it. David and I stood watching him from the porch, bright red clenched in his jaws. What had I been waiting for, anyway?

It’s been a challenge, but this year, I’ve been trying to follow her lead and enjoy the ephemeral abundance of summer, not only to fill the freezer or shelves of Mason jars, but also now.

Years ago, after a very scary bear encounter in which I wasn’t sure I would make it (also mentioned in the Aeon piece), I walked back to the cabin where I was staying and opened a jar of trout I’d canned that summer. Those jars had seemed so precious, so special, that I’d been waiting for some future time that would be right, when I’d really enjoy them. But the reminder of my mortality was also a reminder that now is always as good a time as any to do what you really want.

We learn via the marshmallow test that rewards come to the ones who wait, the ones who show restraint in the present and reap their bounty in the future. Berry picking is my own sort of marshmallow test, but the difference is I don’t get many more berries later for not eating them now. And they taste so amazing during those afternoons on the tundra, the sun shining at a slant, the bushes burgundy, the willows golden, Lila’s fingers and face smeared purple, my own hands tie-dyed red and blue. Each blueberry seems to explode in my mouth, tart and sweet, the wild variety a caricature of a blueberry, so much more intense than those water-infused ones at the store, too plump for their own good.

The point isn’t to blow all your savings now, of course, but I think I’ve been so conditioned in the opposite direction that it takes work to remember that the future isn’t better than the present. I can notice the same tendency in other areas of my life, too, including watching Lila’s development. The next thing always seems so exciting: when will she take her first steps, or string together her first sentence? I can feel rushed, wanting to leap ahead, but am trying to appreciate what’s here now, too: her wobbles as she clutches my finger and takes tentative steps, or the way she pulls up to stand on our dog Fiddle while wrapping her arms around Fiddle’s grey fur in a bear hug, or the way she sometimes babbles to herself for nearly an hour, her “baa baa baa’s” rising and falling in intonation. She is communicating, even if we don’t know what she’s saying yet.

And this year, as we gather the bounty of this season — blueberries, raspberries, cloudberries, salmonberries, oh my! —I’ve been picking for the freezer, and I do feel grateful, watching those Ziplocks crowd the shelves of our freezer. I want to put wild berries in my oatmeal each morning, make blueberry pies and raspberry tarts and cranberry sauces and some kind of baked good with salmonberries (I’ve never picked them for the freezer before this year - ideas welcome!) all year. But I don’t want to just count how many gallons we have and feel smug. I don’t want to hoard. I want to trust that there is enough. Enough to share. And enough to eat a handful in the present – hopefully so many handfuls that my mouth turns sour and my tongue tingles and I can’t eat anymore.

As noted at multiple points in this newsletter, it is the time of BERRIES! Of picking so many during the day that when I close my eyes, all I see are more berries. Following Lila’s cue, I’m also trying to use some now – while they’re so fresh, and I’m so enamored by this land that gives so much. Sometimes, it’s a challenge to be so recently reminded that it usually takes more than an hour to pick the six cups of blueberries needed for pie filling, but I’m doing my best.

Julia O’Malley’s great Substack, An Alaskan Life, reminded me of the delight of frangipane tarts, which I got turned onto shortly after Lila was born when a friend shared one from The Flying Dutchman. For the uninitiated, frangipane is that delightful, creamy filling you find inside almond croissants that, despite its seeming fanciness (perhaps it‘s the name?), is very easy to make and seems at least somewhat nutritious (it’s mostly almond flour, almond extract, and eggs and yes, some butter and sugar, too). I vaguely followed this recipe, though I reduced the sugar. I am now obsessed and very grateful for the raspberries our backyard bushes (and some of the neighborhood alleys) have provided.

Thanks so much for reading! As always, you can reply to this newsletter – I’d love to hear from you. Hope you are enjoying whatever fruit is ripe where you live.

Diana