I’d like to pretend that my blog title comes from an ancient, secret bit of family wisdom and that I grew up surrounded by people who believed in rolling pin rituals and kitchen rites of passage, that this was just something we said and accepted as Truth along with other Southernisms (“That boy is Satan in a Sunday hat.” “He has molasses in his pants.” “He lets his mouth overload his butt.”), that I was a precocious little 8-year-old, picking dough out from underneath my fingernails as I listened to the womenfolk talk about their lives, that I waited impatiently to become a woman even though I had no idea how to get there or what it would actually entail, just that I really wanted to wear pearls and sip mimosas and talk knowingly about all those things they promised to explain when I was older.
But it’s not. I made it up.
You see, it started out as a book idea for a romance novel I’ll never write because, well, I’m a grad student studying Renaissance literature and I was never much more than a sub-par dilettante when it came to fiction. I love it; I just don’t write it. I’m okay with that.
And I’m okay with my childhood. I don’t mean to suggest that the upbringing I described before is in any way preferable to my real life experience. My childhood didn’t lead to a proper Southern woman with pearls and mimosas, but it did lead to this awkwardly improper woman without any accessories except a wedding ring she sometimes wears and beer. (It also led to someone who apparently considers beer an accessory.) I find this more interesting. My childhood, my family, all of my memories somehow created this me, this woman who invents old-fashioned maxims and pretends they’re common knowledge.
So, despite the fact that this little phrase of mine will never become a book—unless you write it, and, in that case, I demand royalties—I find myself returning to it, not as a novel but as a blog. Why? Because I don’t know anything about being a good woman and my biscuits are about as half-baked as my fiction, and despite the fact that I KNOW this is not some God-given, immutable, unquestionable truth, I really do believe it. The day I can make decent biscuits is the day I have officially become a good woman. Until then, I give you this blog.
***Disclaimer: I've started this blog about a thousand times. It may or may not disappear in a few weeks.***
