A little glass-blowing

That was when we lived in that cottage perched at the crest of a steep hill on the grounds of a small defunct summer camp, when we were biding time.

Halfway down the hill a rope swing dangled from the branch of a shagbark hickory. Three knots studded the waxen surface—the first in just the right spot for feet, the second placed for the hands of children of middling height, the third for boys nearly men.

The way it worked best was this: You ran down the incline, grabbed hold just above your knot as you passed down then hoisted yourself up, slamming your soles against the bottom knot as you swung out, the arc carrying you high enough to see the bay glittering by on the far side of the house at the bottom of the hill. Gravity pulled you back just when it seemed you’d go flying over the rooftop, past the seawall, alongside the wooden dock.

But as you were soaring up, just before the Earth forced you to be human again, you believed—almost—that you could perform a swan dive into that diamond-paved water.

Exercising

It’s taken me way too long to understand that, in order to have the stamina to write, I need to spend some part of my day moving. Which is why I’m grateful to my family for the gift of Wii, a device that makes “exercising” feel like play (another thing I’m beginning to understand is essential).

The details would be too boring to write about, much less read about, though I may decide to do just that the next time I need to stretch the writing a little. For now, however, it’s challenging enough to actually sit down to the assignments I’ve given myself. My body conspires against it, as does my mind. There are so many reasons to not write: laundry, a crossword to complete, some TV show, the swarf of everyday life. There are so many reasons to not write this specific thing: fear of exposure, fear of not getting it right, fear of not discovering the essential truth that will raise my memoir over the swamp of solipsism. Plus, who cares?

So many reasons not to write, and only one reason to write—I simply must.

Yet there are days when settling into the words is challenging and I must exercise that most flabby of muscles, my resolve.

My friend Jamie Cat Callan—whose books include the charming French Women Don’t Sleep Alone—developed a wonderful thing called The Writer’s Toolbox. It’s full of first line prompts, non sequesters and these cool little spinning wheels, all designed to help writers exercise the “write” side of their brains.

It makes me wish I were focusing on fiction right now. As I’m putting most of my energy into writing my memoir, I don’t have a lot of time left over for fiction but I’m warning you: it may happen and it may happen here. This is, after all, a thing I’m doing to help me get the words out—an exercise, much like the games I played with the Wii this morning.

Okay, I'm blogging

It's one of those blue-sky January days, designed for hope. Who can doubt that winter will pass, that spring will come? The days are already lasting longer, sunset hesitating before giving way to the gloaming, though the nights are just as sharply dark now as they were in December and will be until...oh, July?

Perhaps this environmental optimism explains why I've decided, at last, to create a blog with my very own name as its title? Though it's also possible that I've realized it's time to put some work out there and let people read that work in whatever form of "completion" it takes. I guess blogging is akin to thinking aloud on the page, to working in public like the glass-blowers practicing their art before the crucible at the Sandwich Glass Museum or that guy who makes those amazing 3-D sidewalk chalk drawings. Why not risk revealing the mistakes I make in my writing, and the just-right choices, too?

So, here I am. Blogging.

Just a little something

ALCHEMY
by Elizabeth Hilts

Okay, sit back. Get comfortable. I want to tell you a love story.

One pound sweet butter.

Two cups confectioner’s sugar.

One tablespoon vanilla extract—I use the double-strength for this.

Four cups all-purpose flour.

One teaspoon kosher salt. If you use table salt instead, cut it back to half a teaspoon.

Your grandmother taught you how to make shortbread. She did not use confectioner’s sugar, she used granulated. Granulated sugar has the texture of sand. If that is what you have on hand, go ahead and use it. The cookies will turn out a little sweeter, but they will be crisp. Shortbread made with confectioner’s sugar is a gentler thing, which you learned one day when forced to substitute—a happy accident of timing.

Preheat your oven to three hundred and twenty five degrees. Get out your large baking dish, the one made of Pyrex, the one you thought would be okay for lasagna. Which it is, but it’s not great for lasagna because you can only fit four thin layers of pasta, sauce, cheese and if you want a big meaty lasagna, that baking dish will accommodate, what, three layers at most? That baking dish turned out to be a mistake when it comes to lasagna, but it’s just right for shortbread.

Now grab that pottery bowl you bought at the Shaker village in New Hampshire where you and Bernie and Mike spent the day while your husband was at the racetrack. Of course, he wasn’t your husband then and you were uncertain if he ever would be. That was one of the things you and Bernie discussed when Mike wandered off to look at the barn or something. That was, in fact, something you and she talked about often. Practically her last words to you in that hospital room were “He’ll never give you what you want.” But that day, at the Shaker village, she urged patience. So you bought this bowl, with its two blue stripes.

Put the butter in the bowl and beat it with a wooden spoon, the way your grandmother taught you, until creamy. Of course you could do this in a stand mixer or even with a handheld mixer, but then you would miss the moment when the butter submits to your touch and begins to transform, going pale and lovely as you introduce it to air. Add in the sugar and vanilla, mix well, now add the flour and salt. The dough will be incredibly crumbly, so willfully crumbly that you may doubt that it will ever become anything more than this ragged, unmanageable mess of a thing. But believe me, your faith will be rewarded.

Turn the dough into the pan and press it firmly with your hands until it is evenly distributed. Now take a fork and poke the tines into the dough in as straight lines as you can manage. Place the pan in the oven and bake until the shortbread is firm and lightly browned, about 25 minutes. Your home will be filled with the aroma of happiness.

Remove the pan and let the shortbread cool for five minutes or so, slice it into small squares and let it cool completely in the pan. Trust me when I tell you that trying to remove the shortbread from the pan before it has set completely will break. Your. Heart.

This shortbread is best when it has aged for a few days. The cookies soften slightly and the butter, sugar and vanilla settle and merge, the sum of the parts transformed through the everyday alchemy of heat and time. When you pop one of those small squares into your mouth and bite, the cookie will resist for just a moment before it shatters over your tongue into velvet sweet.

And you will remember everything that went into its making.