The Dessert Years

Guest Post by K. Cohen McFarlane

Digital art collage by Stella Kalaw

I have long thought that life and its stages were like a meal. Study and preparation for a career were the appetizers, children and work the main course, then dessert—the sweet time of life when responsibilities waned and accomplishments could be savoured. I have always had a sweet tooth.

Retirement was going to be our apple pie, our crème brulé, and maybe for Keith it would be a cheese plate. We would share it, as was usually our custom, and enjoy it more slowly than kids and careers would have ever allowed. Instead, I found myself alone at the table, learning to develop a taste for cake.

I had lost my husband suddenly, retired a few short years later, and was making sense of an empty nest. With so much more space, time and sorrow, I started casting about for a renewed identity and, a new taste for dessert. University courses seemed to be the place to start.

The one that caught my eye was a memoir writing course, catchy not so much because it was about memoir but because it was about food. You had to pause a minute or two to figure out what that meant. It was, though, exactly what you think: using food, its preparation and consumption as the lens through which to consider the important moments in your life. Being a memoir course, offered by a program of lifelong learning, all of us were older adults with the time and inclination to reflect on our life journeys.

I had never given much thought to memoir writing. I have lived a serviceable and enjoyable life, but no great adventures or drama that would make anyone reach for the next page. Yet, I have always written—as a child and teenager I filled notepads with poetry brimming with themes of social justice and personal insights and, of course, the certainty of youth. As a mother, I kept a journal for my daughters—well for a few years anyway—describing how they developed and trying to capture who they were becoming. In my professional life, I wrote clinical notes and reports, endeavouring to help my patients understand and manage their inner lives. Then I wrote to reshape public policy in mental health. Mountains of words, all of it factual and instrumental to help or explain or advocate, never simply to remember.

So here was my opportunity—to coax myself back into creative writing through a lens I’d looked through gladly all my life: food. I approached the first class with trepidation. Would the words come? Would they be any good? Would writing feel like pleasure or drive me to eat in frustration? Would the room be full of real writers whose words would put mine to shame? Could I learn from them? Did I have anything to offer in return?

From the first class, I discovered that the instructor and the students had loads to offer. But what surprised me was discovering what I like most about writing. I write best when I’m trying to understand something or someone. I’m not drawn to making events happen on the page. The other students could spin tales full of action and adventure, but my pieces kept circling back to moments of insight. Why did that dinner matter? How did that experience shape the people who shared it?

I realized I’d spent my whole life this way, focused on symbols rather than things and on destinations rather than journeys. The other writers in the class astounded me with their recall—the exact shade of their grandmother’s linen napkins, the price of milk in 1972, the way light fell across a table set for Sunday dinner. I had none of those details. I’d been too busy looking inside or looking ahead to notice what surrounded me. Note to self: sometimes the point of the destination is the journey; moments of napkins and light matter.

I have often used food metaphors in my personal and professional life. I have recognized that sometimes when faced with crisis, people are challenged to make changes they don’t want to make. Doing so successfully often means revisiting expectations. It is difficult to enjoy cake if only pie is on your menu.

As a cook, I have noticed that I taste my cooking more when it misses the mark than when it meets it—as if repeatedly tasting it will make it better. Another note to self: we cannot always will something into success. Sometimes, the better part of growth means starting over—and here I am, searching for a renewed identity and alternate dessert.

When I lost Keith suddenly, just as we approached retirement, I felt like I had lost dessert. At best, the dessert I had planned for—seizing new leisure and adventure with the man I loved by my side —was no longer on the menu.

Experiences like remembering through food helped me realize that I needed to figure out a different way of enjoying dessert. While there is no apple pie or cheese plate, there is cake and, cake can still be good.

So, thank you to the memoir writing class. Here is what you taught me —that the rituals of preparing and eating food are the backdrop of our significant moments, that a spoon or linen napkin holds years of love shared at the tables they graced, and most importantly, that as we face our dessert years, what matters most about life, and food, is who we have shared them with.

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Karen is a psychologist, mental health advocate, now retired, and still happily working to learn something, teach something and contribute something.