Of Mess and Moxie

by Jen Hatmaker

  How about some healthy recipes to accompany your workout phase? I love crap food as much as anyone, but even I am loath to pack on five times the calories I just burned going face-down in a bowl of chips and queso like Cookie Monster. Here are three absolutely delicious smoothie recipes that are super good for you and don’t taste like sadness and broken dreams. So many ingredients can live for ages in your freezer that you can be ready to rock a smoothie almost constantly. These are awesome for breakfast, midafternoon snack, postworkout refuel, or straight-up dessert.

  SMOOTHIES

  Let me say this first: I did it. I bought the Vitamix. I plunked down whatever-the-heck dumb amount they asked for and literally drank their Kool-Aid. The thing is, the Hatmakers drink us some smoothies, and one of the spawn cannot even deal with a single granule in his drink. Floating bits of kale? Armageddon. And all my Walmart blenders tried their best but ended up in our blender graveyard, so I finally just said, forget it, I’ll “invest” (this is how you sell these things to husbands) in a blender that will work forever and if it doesn’t, they’ll send me a new one. So now you know the story of my blender and thank you for listening. The point is, crappy blenders may or may not give you the smoothie of your dreams without making your house smell like a dumpster fire.

  The Green One

  This makes four to six smoothies depending on how you pour, so you can cut it in half for sure. It works for us, because my children drink smoothies like they have tapeworms, and even if I’m making this just for me, I like to have several in the fridge to drink for a couple of days. I just pour it in mason jars with lids and hide them behind the pickles so my kids can’t see them. Give the jar a quick shake when you pull it out and you are in business.

  4 cups baby spinach

  4 cups unsweetened coconut milk or almond milk (or real milk because everyone needs to RELAX)

  2 oranges, peeled

  2 cups cooked sweet potato, chilled (just peel, cube, and steam in the microwave and keep a baggie in your freezer for your smoothie needs)

  2 cups chopped frozen pineapple

  1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped (I always keep a big, gangly looking ginger root in my freezer and just lob off a piece when I need it)

  Juice of 1 lime

  Drizzle of honey

  Big spoonful of protein powder (order online!)

  Blend the spinach and milk first, because spinach is on a mission to jack all manufactured blenders. Get that nice and smooth and then add everything else. If you have a son like mine, put it on top speed and blend for two or three minutes so there will be “no gross floaties in it.”

  The Peanut Butter and Banana One

  Again, you’ll get around four smoothies out of these quantities. Halve the recipe if you aren’t raising a small army.

  4 cups coconut milk, almond milk, or cow’s milk

  2 cups baby spinach

  3 to 4 frozen bananas (we let bunches go brown every week, peel and halve them, and bag them in the freezer)

  1 cup unsweetened plain Greek yogurt (or regular yogurt; Greek is just nice and thick)

  ½ cup peanut butter

  2 tablespoons Nutella

  Blend the milk and spinach until smooth. Add the bananas and blend. Don’t freak out if your blender sounds like it is giving birth. Frozen bananas are no joke. Add everything else and blend until it is a creamy gift from God’s angels.

  The Berry Vanilla One

  This also makes around three or four smoothies. We maybe pour a lot. Maybe this makes six where you live. I can’t know. Four of my five kids are teenagers right now, and it is like living with Olympic swimmers who have to eat 12,000 calories a day.

  1 cup frozen unsweetened raspberries

  1 cup frozen unsweetened strawberries

  1½ cups unsweetened pineapple juice

  2 cups vanilla yogurt

  Put it all in your blender and give it a whirl. If this is too tart for you, add a drizzle of honey. Yum.

  One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.1

  — AGATHA CHRISTIE

  CHAPTER 14

  THE CABIN

  In 1971, Grandma and Grandpa King were leaving Denver to drive home to Kansas after a court reporter convention (my grandpa was the court reporter for Brown v. Board of Education), and they saw a sign for a brand-new development near Woodland Park: “Now selling lots in Indian Creek Wilderness Estates,” an impressive name that played fast and loose since they didn’t even have electricity. I don’t know many “estates” that run on propane tanks and a generator, but there I go, being all fancy. Anyhow, my grandpa pulled off the highway, drove right to the office, and asked for a lot at the top of a mountain. On the spot, he bought seven acres with a view of Pikes Peak and then built a modified A-frame cabin for $21,000.

  The cabin was monumental to my entire childhood.

  My siblings, our cousins, and I grew up there and in every neighboring restaurant, store, amusement park (The North Pole!), and back road. In fact, my parents drove to the cabin from Kansas when I was a newborn in winter 1974, and at a restaurant in nearby Florissant, the waitresses asked if they could hold me while my parents ate, since Mom and Dad were one of two couples in the entire place during the off-season and the waitresses didn’t have a lot of tables to tend. They spent the next hour walking me around and apparently taking me back to the kitchen, which was not a thing first-time parents concerned themselves about in the seventies.

  To paint a picture of the cabin, you first have to know my grandparents. They were quite posh. (Y’all, my grandma passed away at ninety-four a few years ago, and she had her nails done four days before she died. She couldn’t walk and could barely move, but heck if she was going to be delivered into the arms of Jesus with grown-out acrylics.) If something was stylish, gaudy, or flashy, my grandma possessed it. Do you think a full-length mink coat just buys itself? No, it does not. And my grandpa regularly walked around with a boss fedora, casually smoking filtered Winstons like something out of a swanky Pan Am ad.

  So any cabin of theirs built in 1971 was going to be awash in the current style: it had the thickest red shag carpeting probably ever invented. It looked like the entire floor was covered in Muppets. The kitchen was decked out with avocado-colored appliances and bright-red Formica that did not even mess around. The mid-century modern furniture game was strong: blond wood, skinny metal legs, low and lean cabinets, tufted curved sectional. The console TV was on a mirrored brass beverage cart, because obviously. The cabin was three levels with a huge wraparound cedar deck. The top floor had slanted walls, and we’re pretty sure the bottom level was haunted.

  It was the cabin of our dreams.

  It was the scene of every fourth childhood memory. My parents’ tribe often came, too, so my friends share all the same memories. The cabin was in our family for twenty-two years, and during that time, we drove there at least once a year from wherever we lived: Wichita, Kansas; Fort Worth, Texas; Little Rock, Arkansas; Houma, Louisiana. We were a middle-class family that didn’t take fancy vacations, so the cabin was our escape, our shared obsession, our summer thrill.

  One time we attempted the thirty-six-hour drive from south Louisiana in our 1972 VW van in the dead of winter, and it broke down three times, stranding us in Sharon Springs, Kansas (population 738), where the locals kept visiting the garage to take “that nice family with the unfortunate van” to eat at the diner. We prayed for its recovery because it was truly a van fit for legend and lore. Who wouldn’t have wanted this ride: Dad took out the middle seat, cut a piece of carpet to fit, and we spread out sleeping bags and books like we were having a slumber party instead of hurtling down an icy highway unsecured. The only downside, besides imminent physical danger, was how our crayons would melt from the scorching engine a mere four inches away from our sprawled bodies. (My brother doesn’t remember this, because he was just a baby in a Moses basket wedged under the stick shift. Safety first.)
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  When we finally made it to the cabin, my grandpa was so upset, he took my dad straight to a dealership to trade in the van for a brand-new gray station wagon that we named The Ghost. How old school is this: my grandpa told the dealer, “This car will be in my son’s name. I don’t have any money in my main account to cover it, but I’ll wire it over when I get back to Kansas.” And the dealer shook his hand and let us drive The Ghost off the lot, deeded to one man because some other old guy promised to pay for it later. He simply asked my dad: “Could you ship me that middle seat sometime?” It was the nicest car we’d ever owned.

  The Ghost was an accomplice in one of our favorite cabin memories. My brother Drew and cousin Dori asked to watch a movie in The Ghost, because our only VCR plugged into a car lighter. They were six and seven years old respectively, and I have no idea how to help you process this, but the movie our parents allowed two first graders to watch inside a parked station wagon in the woods in the black of night was Candyman, an R-rated horror movie that made grown adults flee the theater.

  This outrageous parenting decision from yesteryear was bad enough, but my dad and uncle snuck out the back door of the cabin, counted to three, then banged on the car windows and screamed to further traumatize their youngest children who had just learned to read. To this living day, Drew and Dori break out in cold sweats at the memory and refuse to watch scary movies. It never even occurred to Dad and Uncle Tom to feel bad, because those were not the days of parent guilt, my friends.

  My grandparents’ best friends, Ann and Hoppy, built a cabin right across the street, and by “street” I mean the one-lane gravel road that precariously snaked up the mountain to the “estates” (we had to pull off the road to let oncoming cars pass). Virtually every day, we’d trek across the crunchy street to pitch horseshoes with Hoppy and drink Ann’s Tab after Grandma cut us off. They would come to our cabin at night and play Chicken Foot and 42 with us for hours. Nothing said “I am a child of the seventies” like having grandparents who taught you dominos on their lacquered table while drinking Sanka.

  Our parents basically let us have the run of the mountain in those days. We spent 80 percent of every day outside scrambling up boulders, riding our bikes, climbing trees, and making up “programs,” which we inflicted on our parents with no restraint or mercy. As the oldest cousin, I was always the director and everyone else my subjects. The programs were endless and complicated, and to this day I can still conjure the barely suppressed rage when none of those fools followed my choreography correctly: Lindsay, raise the umbrella and say your line! GAH! One time we held a beauty pageant in which I was the director, Lindsay and Angie were the emcees, and Cortney and Dori were the only contestants. They dressed up in sheets. Dori won and Cortney got Miss Congeniality, for which she is still enraged. (Seriously, get some counseling.) Our parents tried to pull the we’ll just turn the TV down during the program, but we weren’t having it. TV off, jokers. We’ve been practicing for six hours.

  The cabin encapsulated the magic of childhood. Every year, we’d build another layer of memories, adding to the growing monument of our family story. Even now, a smell, a sound, even just a key word sends us deep diving into the stored vault of twenty-two years out there together. The enchantment is all certainly inflated in memory, as these things often are, much like when you return to your childhood home and find it impossibly shrunk, but the cabin years provided touchstones for family solidarity into adulthood: this is what we did, this is where we went, this is how we laughed, this is what we shared.

  Mamas, the traditions and experiences we provide during the Family Years are paving a road our kids can always return to, one that always points home. There is something about a recurring shared memory; the sum becomes greater than the parts.

  Childhood is such a wonky, weird season. Do you remember the fears and confusion and insecurities we harbored, our own little private pile of worries? Kids are amazingly resilient and handle change better than we give them credit for, but there is something to be said for a given, some constant, an element of childhood that delivers over and over with predictability and joy. While their bodies and minds and friends and classes are a swirling vortex of volatility, while they are constantly required to adjust and shift and recalibrate and flex, providing a familiar touchpoint week after week or year after year is an anchor that keeps them grounded and a buffer against the scary winds of change. It says to them: Yes, everything is fluctuating, but you can count on this thing we do, this place we go, this meal we share, this memory we make.

  None of this needs to be expensive or fancy. Nor does it have to be incredibly comprehensive. I heard a speaker at a Christmas brunch once give a talk on traditions, and hand to God, she described at least fifty traditions she provided for her children: daily lunch notes with hand-drawn cartoons, thirty Birthday Month activities, leaving surprises under the lining of their trash cans to discover upon weekly removal, the What We Learned Today journal, family time capsules, the weekly thankful box. I don’t think there was one day of the year that didn’t involve some meaningful moment. I basically did a slow slide out of my chair onto the ground, because LADY PLEASE, I AM JUST TRYING NOT TO MAKE MAC AND CHEESE FOUR NIGHTS A WEEK.

  Traditions can be simple. Heck, my girlfriend’s grown kids never stop talking about Friday Puzzle Night. It can be anything: Saturday pancakes and bacon, that rental house in Destin, Monopoly Monday, cutting down a Christmas tree together, lake days, sledding down that one hill every year, family camp, Grandma’s house, summer road trips, popcorn and movie night, backyard picnics. Whether it is a place you return to, a tradition you create, or a story you rewrite over and over together, miraculously, the fighting and whining and eye-rolling that often accompany that custom will one day recede and what emerges is a rock-solid bank of memories your family will share forever. Never fear, Mamas, the energy you are logging toward any tradition will not return void. You are building something special, and your kids will not forget.

  I know I didn’t. I remembered.

  And then one day, say, twenty-three years after your special place is gone, one of your grown kids might call your family together on your back porch because she wants to write about this tradition and mine everyone’s memories, and your husband will walk out with his outdated camcorder to record the conversation that is supposed to last around thirty minutes but goes on for three hours, because once you start down the rabbit hole of VW vans and haunted basements and programs and Chicken Foot, your laughter carries you from one memory to the next, and that grown daughter will finally tell her sister to just open another bottle of wine because, happily, you are all going to be there for quite a while.

  I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.1

  — MAE WEST

  CHAPTER 15

  DOLDRUMS

  Author’s note: This essay does not apply to serious trauma or depression. The doldrums are a funk, not a severe crisis. Sometimes we require therapy, intervention, and possibly medication, and the practices I describe are inadequate.

  dol•drums

  [dohl-druh mz, dol-, dawl-]

  noun (used with a plural verb)

  1. a state of inactivity or stagnation, as in business or art: August is a time of doldrums for many enterprises.

  2. a belt of calms and light baffling winds north of the equator between the northern and southern trade winds in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

  3. a dull, listless, depressed mood; low spirits.1

  Conversation with Brandon:

  ME: Blah.

  B: What’s wrong?

  ME: Nothing. Just everything. Everything is bad.

  B: Specifically?

  ME: Just that our kids are probably all going to hate us and struggle with multiple incarcerations, I apparently will gain a pound a month until I die, this house is a craphole of chaos, and my weird quirks are getting worse. I hid in the bathroom at another conference.

  B: Is that all?

  ME: And also, only two
of my kids love to read, so obviously, Failure, your name is Motherhood, and all I do is discipline and put out fires, so I’ve basically come to hate the sound of my own voice. I can’t stand myself, and these kids aren’t faring much better on my Like-O-Meter. And I’m sorry to tell you, but your scores aren’t great either. I cannot even talk about e-mails. My Bible feels like a useless lead weight. I don’t feel like I’m taking skin care seriously enough. I also ate a tub of pimento cheese. All hope is lost.

  B: But at least you’re working on that melodramatic tendency.

  ME: Just lost another four points, pal. Feels like a dangerous time to mess with me.

  I essentially slid into a two-month case of the doldrums, trapped by inertia and overwhelmed by the escape requirements. On my best days, our life is heavy duty, but during my low days, I Google search “fake my own death and disappear,” which Brandon might dub melodramatic, but he is just a man with a stable mind and can’t be trusted.

  Here is the bummer about the doldrums: the very efforts needed to lift yourself out are the same things you’ve lost energy to do. The simplest remedies feel like weights drudged up from the bottom of the ocean. Your mind knows to do them, but your will refuses to cooperate. Which makes your mind furious and mired in shame, which makes your will dig its heels and wallow, which makes you realize you are turning on yourself. You are your own worst enemy. No one can oppress me like myself.

  How did I eventually get out of this funk? Nothing miraculous happened, except one day I said, This is enough. Virtually nothing changed that day. Or the next. These things aren’t overnight success stories, because if it took three months and 459 lazy, unhealthy choices to get stuck, it takes some time to climb out. Also, the work required is unsexy, ordinary, boring old labor that lacks the appeal of instant gratification and the pizzazz of an unsolicited miracle. I wish I had better news about breaking free, but apparently we just have to grab a shovel and start digging.