Soul Comfort

I hadn't even started my coffee when I was hit in the face. My borgle and I were sitting on the couch. I was trying to wake up. He was passing gas. I turned on the computer to check the headlines and WAM! There, at the top of the Opinion page of the New York Times online edition, was the byline of a girl I went to college with. Another 26 year-old with the same useless degree from the same obscure college... except she has pieces in the Times and I have a flatulent dog. Hours later, my bitterness has only grown.

I have accepted some of the successes of my former peers. My college roommates are all married with children. I have accepted the fact that Sophie, a girl from high school with perfect skin and a Pen Faulkner-awarded father is a Yale alum and in grad school at the University of Chicago. I have accepted that the girl who bullied me from kindergarten to eighth grade is now making a name for herself in the science world (in animal husbandry, but STILL). Or that other girl from high school, with the career in publishing who married into Old Money. These are all things that I wish had happened to me, but none of them were actual aspirations.

But the Times. The Freakin' New York Times. Since I was in middle school, and starting to learn what was what in the world, I wanted to be a reporter for the Times. As I got older, I lowered the bar: first to being a copy editor, then to a fact-checker. Now I would be happy if I could just get the damn thing delivered to my house every morning.

Her piece, I have to say, is thoughtful and appropriately sad. She's writing about the ludicrous state of education for poor children and how she's trying to fight the crushing wave of parental laxity, administrative confusion, and all of the other thousands of factors that are ruining the furture for so many students. I can see her there, standing in the middle of her classroom, overwhelmed and exhausted. She's trying to climb a mountain of pebbles, or heard cats as my former colleague would say.

I remember this desperate feeling. I felt it when I was teaching in Baltimore. I feel for this former classmate and the soul-numbing struggle she is facing, but most of all, I felt jealous. Of her success and her impact on the world. And, you know, of the whole piece-of-writing-in-the-Times thing. I know that this makes me a self-absorbed, terrible person, but there you are.

After work, I picked up the stinky dog from Doggie Day Care, then came home to a cold house. Since I felt sorry for myself and was slated to spend the whole evening alone (meeting cancelled, the mans with a government customer to please), I needed comfort food. And the quintessential comfort food is, of course, polenta. But not the cheesy kind. I didn't want savory. I needed sweet.

40 minutes later, after eating a big bowl of this and watching my dog roll in a pile of leaves in the yard, I am feeling much better about myself.

Sweet-n-Creamy Polenta
adapted from A Year in the Vegetarian Kitchen, by Jack Bishop

4 c water
1 c coarse ground corn meal
salt
1 1/2 c frozen corn kernels
2 tbsp butter
1/4 c sugar

In a medium sauce pan, bring the water to a boil. Add the salt, then reduce heat to low. Slowly pour in the cornmeal, stirring with a whisk as you pour. Stir for about a minute total, add the corn, then cover with a tight-fitting lid. Let cook for 30-45 minutes stirring when you think about it. Finished polenta is thick like porridge. Stir in the butter and the the sugar. Dump into a big bowl and enjoy.