One Step at a Time

I may not have been a straight-A student, but I was a good student.

I just "got" most of the lessons my teachers taught. But when I didn't, I felt extremely stressed and disappointed with myself. I'd get so worked up when I had a big project and a looming deadline. Or a concept that was just difficult to grasp, the grasping of which became most urgent with an upcoming test.

In those instances, crisp & clear logic gave way to foggy emotion. I feared failure, but felt overwhelmed and couldn't see a way to success.

My dad would come to the rescue. Always the patient and logical man, he simply talked me through the problem so I could see a solution. One of the most important problem-solving lessons he taught me was to take it one step at a time.

Such a simple lesson. Yet difficult to remember in moments of stress. He'd work with me to break down a multi-faceted project into achievable tasks. Or the steps of a calculus problem into logical parts. We'd write them down. Then he'd point to the first task, and tell me to work on that, and only that, and to not even consider the subsequent tasks until the first was completed.

Well, once broken down into discrete, achieveable components, any project becomes possible. That lesson has gotten me through many sticky moments in life.

Item #8 on the Top Ten list I created just over a year ago is to cook a Thanksgiving turkey dinner without help from my mother or mother-in-law. When I wrote that goal, I didn't realize my opportunity to achieve it would present itself so soon.

I put it on my list in the first place because I still fear failure and, to a non-intuitive cook like me, Thanksgiving dinner presents a myriad of opportunities for failure. Yet so many other people do it with ease. So I really wanted to overcome this fear in my lifetime. I just didn't realize I'd do it so soon.

You see, about two months ago, I offered to my mother that we could host Thanksgiving dinner this year. I know that she has trouble standing for long periods of time in the kitchen, and I also know from Thanksgivings past that she doesn't delegate much to me when we congregate at their house. So I figured the only way to give her a break was to host the meal at our house.

To my great surprise - and delight - she accepted!

(Except for the pies. After all, she is the family's best - albeit only - piemaker. From scratch. They're really delish. With such a supreme piemaker in the family, I really have no incentive, or desire, to embark on piemaking myself. So she agreed to do dessert.)

I was on the hook for everything else.

Yet I was not without help altogether. My husband really was the turkey master. He partially deep-fried one turkey in the morning, then I stuffed it and put it in the oven for the remainder of its cooking time. With a half-and-half cooking method, we kind of had to "wing it" (no pun intended) on the timing. Then he fully deep-fried a second turkey. The first turkey, plus all the side dishes, needed to be ready to serve when the second turkey was done.

I didn't want to blow it - not with so many of us depending on my timing & cooking skills in order to eat the most important meal of the year. So Thanksgiving became a two-day affair for me. I made a list of what I needed to do, and set about completing it - one item at a time. On Wednesday, I spent 12 hours preparing all the appetizers and side dishes, as well as setting the table. On Thursday, after running the Thanksgiving Day 10k Race with my brother, I came home to one already-deep-fried turkey and the assembling/heating tasks.

As my brilliant husband and I coordinated our cooking responsibilities so that everything would be hot and ready to serve at the same time, I thought of Dad.

(Yes, he was actually present in person at that moment. But I thought back to the Dad of my youth who taught me how to complete a complex project: one step at a time.)

Because of what he taught me, I was able to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for our extended family with almost no stress. {OK, there was that one moment around 6:00 pm Wednesday, but my husband forgives me and it lasted only about 5 minutes anyway...}

As I cross off #8, I reflect on what I'm teaching my kids. I hope I'm teaching them the kind of lessons my dad taught me. The kind they'll remember when they're older.

And kids, here's your first lesson: Don't forget the gravy! You're in for a lot of teasing if you forget to serve gravy at Thanksgiving. Don't say I didn't warn you.