butter tart squares

 Sun!!!! Sitting here on the sofa for an afternoon break I am reminded of one reason to celebrate the cloudy days… the windows don’t look so dirty!

I just took a baking tray of butter tart squares out of the oven… at that moment I was whisked back in time to 2004… happily it was only a wobble in the time/space continuum… Today the smell of cooked butter and brown sugar is heavy in the air and I feel happy and competent. 

I’ve made them once before, years ago when I was first sick off work. They were a disaster. What isn’t talked about as much as it should be is that acute mental illness affects cognitive ability. My mind was destroyed for several months, in fact it took a few years to get back to where I am now. At times I railed against this decline more than I did my depression and the fact that I was now labeled bipolar. I was used to being ‘with it’ and capable of anything, but this decay... it was demoralizing… I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I’ll never forget the moment that I brought that tray of butter tart squares out of the oven and realized that I’d messed up badly, that I couldn’t even follow simple instructions. It was a low point in my recovery.

It took a fair amount of effort, but it is possible to return to normal, just don’t give up even when it seems impossible (and trust me, there were times when I wondered if I’d ever get back.) It still surprises me when I remember some obscure fact!

Maybe part of my mental recovery was writing this blog. When I first started writing (over 10 years ago!), every sentence, no make that every word, was a struggle. The undertaking seemed overwhelming, but I wanted to succeed so I practiced and read books about how to write. After a few years I felt that I was getting better and now, sometimes, I can sit down and it all just blurps out of me. Some days my brain doesn’t function as well so I have to work at it more. I usually don’t seem to have trouble finding words (poor you, I do tend to go on and on!), and somehow they seem to fit together reasonably well.

The day flew by, but not before I unearthed my treasured copy of Chatelaine's Canadian Living from 1980. The magazine opened automatically to the recipe for ‘Christmas Morning Wife Saver’, a perennial favorite with my whole family. Flipping thru the rest of the mag I did have a laugh at the cigarette ad - we’ve come a long way baby.

Tonight’s beer was another IPA. Fresh and slightly acidic, we both agreed that it would be a first rate summer beer and imagined ourselves sitting down with one after setting up our campsite. And who can resist a can with revolting mutants!

“She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days.”

~Alice Munro