The other night I had a breakdown, the likes of which my husband, Ken, has seen before.  It was late at night and the things I'd been pushing down and aside, in my commendable efforts to rise above, or at least put off until a good time, erupted.  After all these years, I'm still not very good at seeing when I am close to blowing my lid.

The mechanics of my breakdown had everything to do with the circumstances, the most significant of which is probably the fact that I have been unable to sleep past 6 AM for weeks.  And 6 has been more the exception than the norm.  Ugh.

The subject of my breakdown (at least in my mind) was cooking.  I've been doing too much of it.  Admittedly, much of the pressure I've felt around cooking comes from my own desire to be making - and eating - amazing, wholesome food all the time. 

To an outsider, my family is eating amazing, wholesome food almost all the time.  We really do eat incredibly well.  To my own inner over-achiever, however, there is much work to be done.  I want to be making sprouted grain bread, kombucha, my own vinegar, and delectable stews and ambitious dishes from cuisines all over the world.  The realities of my life, as pointed-out by many of my loving friends, make achieving my goals nearly impossible: I am running my own law practice, I am in a performing choir, I am the chair of the School Site Council, and I am making really good food a lot of time time and also trying to be a present mother and partner and friend.  Not even getting into how busy my husband is.

Ironically, my attempts to rise above my exhaustion in the kitchen, and my putting off having a conversation with my husband about shifting the division of labor in our house, were motivated by my love of cooking.  On weekends, cooking is a favorite recreational activity of mine.  I read cookbooks and cooking magazines for fun.  I have been slow to realize that things have felt burdensome to me in part because that is my character flaw (see note above re: my inability to see my emotional storms coming) but also in part because it didn't fit into my concept of things.  I love to cook, so why don't I love cooking right now?

All this got me to thinking about the strange phenomenon of how things we love can become burdens.

For example, I love my children.  Beyond all that there is.  But my husband and I have a carefully orchestrated schedule of who puts them to bed, and the schedule is not the result of us vying for our own fair turn at this joyous activity.  It is a who HAS to put them to bed issue, not a who GETS to put them to bed one.  As much as bedtime can be a big, fat drag, it is also precious, special time with two of my favorite people in all of human history.  When I can relax into the nighttime routine, it is gloriously tender.  My children are still and listening (a rare treat), we are cuddling and I have the opportunity to be privy to secrets and details that come out as they process and just babble about the days they had.

Often, however, I can't Zen into the bedtime routine.  It is time consuming, and there are a ton of things I want to do with my precious night at home.  They are whiny and resistant to the idea of sleep.  I am stuck in a dark room with kids who need to just go to sleep.  I obsess over everything we've done wrong in NOT developing good sleep habits.  I just want out.

Clearly, the lovable nature of things becomes obscured when obligation comes into the picture.  Cooking often feels like a drag when I have to make dinner for four hungry people every night, after work, and I've only got 45 minutes to get it all cooked and ready -  notwithstanding the fact that I'd jump at the chance to plan and prepare a dinner party with friends.  Lying tenderly with my children in a dark room telling stories is an awesome way to pass the time, but when I am doing it because it needs to be done . . . well, then I have more difficulty remembering that given the choice, I might actually choose to do it.

If I were a yoga teacher, I'd have a good lesson here and I'd be able to recall some parable, originally written in Sanskrit (after thousands of years of developing as part of an oral history) that exemplifies the teaching moment. 

I'm not a yoga teacher (yet) and I don't really have this one all figured out.  It seems to have a lot to do with the must-ness of the thing, and how that must-ness triggers something in us - something human, western, high-schoolish - that makes us want to do something else.  Just because we can't. 

Mostly, though, I know that really the love is, and should be, not just for the thing but also for the burden.  For the beautiful children and loving family, needy and hungry they may be.  The gift is the interdependence, the obligation - that is what gives any of it meaning.  Otherwise, its all free choice and self-determination, and that is way too much of a good thing. 

I was nearly finished with a piece about midwifery.  It started with a link to this article about home funerals and death midwives.  I find the whole thing totally cool, and an inspiring intersection of my work and a part of me that has not been my work but maybe should be.

In the piece I shared some intensely personal things, so the fact that the whole thing just got erased and disappeared I'm taking to be an indicator that I'm not ready to share all that stuff with the 7 people who read this regularly. 

But I did want to share the article and to state, for the record, that I would like a home funeral, if possible, and I would like my family (in the most inclusive sense to the word) to have the opportunity to touch my dead body without doctors or chemicals. 

I have a reputation for burning food that I am cooking in a frying pan.  I'd like to make a good case in my own defense - and I can, sort of - but the fact remains that I do burn things that I am frying.  And sometimes baking.  If not a lot, then a noticeable percentage of the time.

My husband rides me for this to no end.  At this point, we've been together long enough that all he has to do is look me in the eye and smile sympathetically when something I've cooked verges on blackened.  Even the kids are in on the joke. 

If I am frying something, be it pancakes or frozen taquitos, and one or a few should over cook a bit, I am quick to put them on my own plate, hopefully to prevent the others in my family from noticing.  If that doesn't work, I silently defend myself to anticipated dissing: I like them that way.  I am being selfless and giving the best morsels to my family.

Once I made the mistake of telling my husband about this exercise we did in 5th or 6th grade.  Our teacher gave us a piece of paper with a list of instructions, numbered one through fifty.  Item number one instructed us to READ THROUGH ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS before starting in on following them.  Items two through forty-nine told us to write our name on the top of the paper, perform various computations, count the number of steps from our table to the bathroom, draw a big X across our paper, etc.  Then number fifty said, "Go back to the start of this list and complete ONLY items one and two."  Items one and two were, respectively, to read all of the instructions before beginning and to put our name at the top of the paper.

Being a smart, overly-confident kid (at least overly-confident in academic matters), I looked at my paper, and essentially ignored instruction number one.  I probably skimmed the first ten items and then decided I didn't really need to read through all the directions - I'd be able to wing it.  I then proceeded to write my name on the top of my page, make X's, count steps, the whole charade.  I ended up totally humilated: I'd been outed as a non-direction-reader.

My husband rides me for this one, too.   Anytime I don't read the instructions thoroughly and it comes back to bite me, or is even revealed in the smallest, most harmless way, he gives me the look.  Not unlike the burned food look.  The sympathetic smile and slightly raised eyebrow that says, "I know you: You are a non-direction-reader and you can acquire all the advanced degrees in the world and still you will never learn."  At least he loves me anyway.

Originally my plan was to write about deconstructing this whole notion and process of identity - our own and ours as perceived by others - and how it is both descriptive and prescriptive.  Do I really burn things more than other people or is that just the perception based on the reputation? 

Then last night I made apricot jam. 

I am way into preserves and pickles and making them.  I was making an enormous batch of jam, the largest I'd ever put up, and I was really concerned about burning the bottom of the pan.  A significant concern in jam-making, even if you don't generally burn stuff.

When the jam was about 80% ready, I had a proud moment.  I'd cooked the jam very carefully.  I'd patiently heated it slowly, stirred frequently.  I hadn't burned it.  Progress!

So what did I do?  I turned up the heat, of course.   Just a little, what I thought was not too much.  I'd been patiently cooking for nearly two hours, I still had to process the jars, and I was kind of ready to go to bed.  Plus I wanted the jam to be a bit thicker than most homemade jams you taste.

Then, not 10 minutes later, I felt solid matter scrape off the bottom of the pan while I was stirring.  Large, dark flecks came up with the spoon.  I did it again - same thing, solid matter, dark flecks.  I did it a third time before I admitted that I had burned the fucking jam.   ARGH!  I took it off the heat immediately so as not to burn it more, and stifled my desire to stir it again just to see, since I'd already brought too much of the burned gunk into the jam. 

Turns out that at the end you really have to stir it more.  And maybe I shouldn't have turned it up that little bit.  Over-confident again.

Out the window goes my deconstruction of the notion and process of identity.  Cooking on low heat and reading directions are my behavioral mantras - guidelines I know I must follow, despite all of my impulses.  I give thanks to the apricot jam for reminding me to accept, once again, that I must return to these mantras.  Always.  I try to be more patient and more humble. 

A few months ago, an acquaintance of mine died.  His death was immediately preceded by a short hospitalization - he lost consciousness fairly quickly after admitting himself to the hospital for his illness.  His final weeks contained quite a narrative: the health crisis, the coma, the changing levels of organ and brain function, the determination that death was inevitable, the final visits, and, finally, his passing.

This young man's death was exceptional in a number of ways, as was he during his life.  One part of the experience I come back to, over and over, in my mind is the way that his extended community, and the extended communities of the numerous members of his incredible extended family, witnessed and participated in his final weeks through Facebook. 

I'm not even going to begin to tackle the larger subject of communication technologies here.  There is way too much to say, and much of it I don't find particularly interesting to be perfectly honest. 

Furthermore, Facebook is the only thing of its kind (meaning any form of electronic communication or community other than paleolithic email and listservs) in which I've participated.  So I'm not actually qualified to talk about any other new forms of communications.  Not that utter lack of experience has prevented me from expounding in the past.

Something that has struck me about Facebook, and that I say in its defense when Luddites (and even some techies) call it out as a time-waster, is that it provides us with the opportunity to hang out.

I did a LOT of hanging out in my 20's.  Spending time with friends.  Doing stuff, doing nothing.  Running errands together, making art together, listening to music together.  Hanging out.

I don't do so much hanging out anymore.  My time has shifted from my friends to my family.  I'm busy.  I have young kids.  There just isn't that much down time in my life, and there is less opportunity to casually and frequently gather in a group or to just stop by someone's house.

Enter Facebook.  I pretty quickly got past the thrill of locating people from elementary school and looking at humiliating and hilarious old photos, and now Facebook has settled into a comfortable, functional role in my life.  At its best, it is a place - yes, an electronic place, but a place nonetheless - where I do get to spend smallish, unstructured, and unscheduled amounts of time sort of hanging out with my friends.  Other people stop by while we're hanging out, commenting on whatever it is we're talking about, and it is frequently really fun.  We make jokes, we riff off of each other's jokes.  We kvetch, we sympathize with each other's kvetching. 

I don't know exactly how people of other ages experience Facebook - I'm particularly mystified by the Facebooking habits of those who are still young enough to have little better to do than to hang out - but for me, this communal space - my own contemporary version of a quad or dorm lounge or friendly pot dealer's house - is really sweet and familiar. 

As this acquaintance of mine was dying, his brother posted very frequent and intimate updates on his condition, and, eventually, photos of the hospital gathering the day before his death, on Facebook.  As we followed these events and the experiences of his family, it was as if we were all getting to gather in the kitchen, or to get the important news from someone else about what was happening somewhere else.  We got to be there in some bizarre, modern way, and to simply witness, regardless of how busy and far away we were. 

Obviously none of this was a replacement for actually being there.  That was done by others - those closer in spirit and in body to the family and the events.  Plenty were bringing food and scheduling hospital shifts.  No doubt Facebook joined forces with its ancient ancestors - email and telephones - to help with scheduling and coordination.   I was not on the inner circle, not even close, so I did not go to the hospital or schedule meal deliveries or even bring food.  But my own need to know was satisfied, my need to watch over this family and to be there in some way.

I thought a lot about sitting shiva during that time, the time that we looked to notes and updates frequently as illness progressed and death came.    It was as if I was able to walk past the family's house, to be satisfied that it was full of loving bodies, to show my face at their door - however briefly - so that my love and support could be delivered.  I was thankful that Facebook gave me the means to be able to stop by, and to sit silently with them.