Author’s Note: Self Portrait in Cookies

Read “Self Portrait in Cookies” in issue 17 of the Young Ravens Literary Review.

This essay started, as many of my recent essays have, as an attempt to have something to submit to the BYU Studies Essay Contest (not linked because the BYU Studies site has been down for months; I hope they fix it soon!) on January 31st. It’s one of the few places that pays really well for LDS themed writing so I always try to enter, plus deadlines are a good motivator for me to finish things. Obviously, I didn’t win the contest, but when I was ready to start sending this piece around to other places, the Young Ravens Literary Review had just announced their special issue on womanhood. I knew instantly that this piece was a natural fit. Happily, the editors agreed!

This essay is an example of the odd thing about creative nonfiction where you have to figure out how to draw the line between faithfully representing reality and making something that flows well in a literary sense. In this case, I fudged the timeline a bit which may not be apparent in the essay. The second to last incident in the essay, the Christmas baking “competition,” occurred after the last event in the essay, the conversation with my sisters-in-law about meal planning. (I ended up trying meal kits after that conversation and it turned out to be a disaster: missed deliveries and not enough food for a family of six right in the middle of trying to move. Yet another way in which this essay is fudged. I am still struggling in ambivalence about the value of homemade cooking versus simpler options, while the essay is a bit more definitive in its ending.)

I had initially ended with the Christmas baking story, but it felt wrong to me to leave the reader with a commentary about my attitude towards my mother’s attitude towards cooking, so I brought that earlier experience around to the end. It’s uncomfortable enough writing what could be construed as negative comments about my mom. Writing about conflicts with living people is a constant ethical balance for an essayist. I don’t want to exploit the people closest to me or villainize them in public. But on the other hand, the biggest source of conflict in most people’s lives comes from their family, so if you want to write about your reality as a human, it’s almost inevitable that they will be dragged into it. I hope this essay strikes the right balance in portraying my family as unique humans and yet offering them grace for their foibles (as well as for myself).

I did still make several types of cookies for Christmas this year. But I tried to let go of my perfectionism a bit. I let my kids have more say in picking the cookies we tried, though I still vetoed chocolate chip cookies as “not special enough,” and tried to make it more about the experience of spending time with my kids than about showing off to anyone. I confess that sharing this essay with the world makes me feel very vulnerable. I still battle my own issues with the cultural standards of Mormon womanhood, both resisting and trying to fulfill its pull. (This piece also calls back to an essay I wrote as part of my BYU Honors thesis called “Being Mary” after the awkward sister in Pride and Prejudice. You’ll have to check that one out from the HBLL to read it as it was never published elsewhere.) But writing pieces like this is part of the wrestle with my role in the world and my own individuality. I hope that this exploration of the tangle of emotions surrounding baking, motherhood, and virtue is helpful to others along their own journeys.