It’s pretty commonly accepted that March is the month to catch our breath here in New Orleans.
There’s hurricane season, back-to-school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other winter holidays, New Year’s, and then of course the full-on sensory assault of Carnival season. Then, starting in April, we’re in the thick of festival season, followed by Easter, Mother’s Day, graduation, crawfish boils and other spring festivities.
March isn’t truly quiet either — there’s Super Sunday, St. Patrick’s Day and the Irish-Italian parade — but compared to the months before and the months to come, it’s at least a slight respite.
And here in the quieter month of March, I find myself in a quieter stage of life. I’m still firmly in the “sandwich phase” — taking care of both my kids and my 88-year-old father… and, incidentally, making a lot of sandwiches for both of them — but with one kid at college and the other starting high school, they don’t demand as much of my attention as they did a decade ago. One doesn’t even live with me anymore; the other one mostly needs my services as a chauffeur. They’re both capable of making snacks, doing laundry, attending to basic hygiene needs, and putting themselves to bed.
So I suddenly find myself, for the first time since my daughter was born 19 years ago, with time on my hands.
What am I doing with this time?
Well, reading a lot, for sure. I frequent the library at least once a week, stocking up on books ranging from non-fiction to mysteries to trashy romance.
I’m catching up on the shows that everyone without young kids at the time watched years ago — “30 Rock,” “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “Downton Abbey.”
And lately, I’m cooking and baking constantly — I’ve retrieved my pandemic-era sourdough starter from the back of my fridge and revived it; I’m getting creative with meals for my dad, who struggles with the dexterity needed to get food into his mouth and having enough teeth to chew it once it’s there; I’m making various viral TikTok recipes with my 13-year-old; and I’m cooking for the community fridges.
Although I’ve made some great loaves of bread, learned how to create easy-to-eat quiche filling in the blender, and enjoyed my share of feta pasta and pizza fries, it’s the last one that is really fulfilling me right now.
Once a week, I work with Community Cooks of the Irish Channel to make a massive batch of red beans, and in the meantime, I also try to stock the fridge near me with simple, inexpensive, and healthy meals: turkey chili, broccoli-cheese casserole, lentil soup.
There’s something about this particular moment, this quieter month, this in-between stage of life, that has made cooking feel less like a chore and more like a way of showing up and showing love. Maybe it’s because so much of what I’ve spent the last two decades doing has been urgent and nonstop: packing lunches, meeting deadlines, driving carpool routes, juggling doctor and dentist and optometrist appointments. Now, the urgency has softened just a little, and in its place is the chance to be deliberate.
I do acknowledge my limitations, of course. I can’t fix the systems that leave so many people hungry or vulnerable. I can’t reverse aging or keep my father from slipping further away from me as he retreats more and more into memories of his past. I can’t slow down time or keep my kids from moving farther away from me into their futures. But I can make a pot of beans. I can portion out soup. I can label containers and slide them into a refrigerator to help make sure fewer people go to bed hungry.
March and midlife are both offering me a pause, a chance to reassess, to take stock (and make stock), and to decide what matters to me right now. As much as I love dumb novels and mindless TV, I’ve realized that at my core, I need to be doing something. Cooking, for myself and for others, keeps my hands busy, my mind active, my heart full and my kitchen messy.
And in a city where people are already talking about their next meal while eating their current one, it is an honor to have the chance to feed my friends, my family and my neighbors.
