How Ann Voskamp Got Me A New Job

Last week, after a grand total of 20 resume submissions and 9 interviews (including one behavioral question involving a truckload of penguins and a request that I write someone a blog entry tying in Alexis de Toqueville with Tom's Shoes' expansion into sunglasses), I accepted a wonderful new job.  I'm submitting my resignation at my current job in two days.

On my job hunt, I had the opportunity to pick up new pointers from bloggers like Penelope Trunk and Privilege, and revisit some of my favorite classics of women in business: Mireille Guiliano's Women, Work & the Art of Savoir Faire and Letitia Baldrige's A Lady, First.  Mostly I started out haltingly and got smoother and stronger with each interview.  But what nailed the dream job for me was Ann Voskamp and her book, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.

At that last interview, my future boss asked me to show something I had on my person that defined who I am.  My mind raced over my body and through the contents of my purse.  Picture of kids?  Too mommy.  Fancy watch?  Too material.  I placed my hands over the red Moleskine notebook that I use for counting my blessings.

"This," I said.  I told him about my gratitude list.

"You actually number the entries?" he asked.

"Yes!"  I said.  "It's so powerful to see how many things we have to be thankful for.  I'm over three hundred since the beginning of the year."

"I do something like that with my kids," he said.  "We call them 'gratefuls.'"

Two weeks later, the recruiter called me with his offer.  "I was supposed to have a follow-up interview with somebody else there," I said.

"I know," she said.  "He hasn't done this before.  He said you don't have to meet anyone else.  He just wants to hire you."

The Voice in the Backseat

There's something about being in his car seat with its cow-print covering that emboldens Cody to tell me what he's really thinking.  After our playdate with their classmate, her sister, and her mom last Saturday, he said very softly, "You gave Manon (the mom) too much attention.  I wanted you to play with us."

This morning, after I had finally wrangled both kids into their seats and jumped into mine, I heard the voice from the back say: "You are being too mean this morning."

"What do you mean, honey?" I asked.

"Screaming at us."

I was busted.  I hadn't actually screamed, but I knew what he meant.  I had been impatient, I had raised my voice, and most importantly, I had unleashed my arsenal of manipulative techniques to keep them on schedule. 

Threats to take Liv to the hospital if she continued her two-day hunger strike.  Threats to make the kids wait for me downstairs if they couldn't stop swinging from the closet doorknobs while I put on my lipstick.  Even a little soupçon of guilt trip that their peers seemed to have no trouble at all hopping blithely into their seats without taking unapproved head-first detours into the "cuckooback" (Liv's word for the cargo area) of the minivan. 

The worst of it is that there was no rush to be on time today -- the one executive at my company who cares what time I show up is on vacation in France through the first week of August.

"I'm sorry, guys.  What could I do to be better?" I asked them.

"Not screaming at us when it's time to go to school," Cody said.

"Okay, thank you," I said.  "Do you forgive me?" I asked.

He kept staring out the window.  Finally, he grunted, "Yeah."

The Easiest and Best Dessert I've Ever Made

Yesterday, a book by former New York Times Paris bureau chief Elaine Sciolino inspired the single most delicious dessert I've ever made.  It also turned out to be the easiest.

The book was's La Seduction, about the different ways seduction shapes French life.  Yes, I'm still on my Parisophilia kick, and the passage was this excerpt from an interview she conducted with Le Monde food critic Jean-Claude Ribaud:

His dessert, fruits poached in wine, was foolproof.  "Nectarines, peaches, apricots -- fruits with pits -- it's enough to poach them in a Sauternes or a Barsac or a syrupy wine for ten minutes," he said.  "The wine has so much power!  It's sublime!  I add a little bit of sugar because the wine gets more acidic when it's boiled down, and you have to give them a little sweet emotion."

On my home, I picked up nectarines and a half bottle of muscat (no Sauternes).

I propped the book open on the counter while I brought the wine to a simmer, then slowly poached the nectarines with a tablespoon of sugar, turning over and over gently until the wine had reduced by half and become a syrup, and their skins had blistered and split. I served them in their syrup over vanilla ice cream.  Their flavor was more than the sum of nectarine + muscat + ice cream, as if a fourth element (bread pudding?) had sneaked in while my back was turned.

As Ribaud promised, they were sublime.

Image credit: David Lance Goines.

Which Basket Is God In?

I sat in on the kids' first Godly Play worship yesterday.  They are about three years younger than the next youngest kids there, and they were nervous about joining the circle, so I held them in my lap instead.

Godly Play is the Montessori approach to children's ministry.  According to the Godly Play Foundation, it "teaches children the art of using Christian language - parable, sacred story, silence and liturgical action - helping them become more fully aware of the mystery of God’s presence in their lives" and is "a non-coercive way to encourage people to move into larger dimensions of belief and faith through wondering questions and open-ended response time."

So.

It enchanted me, along with my fellow fringe-dwellers, the kids.  Here are the things I loved most about it.

• It grounds kids in the church year.   The lesson begins with the instructor taking out a big church calendar shaped like a clock to show where we are in the liturgical year and setting the context for what this means.

• It encourages questioning and wrestling with the text.  Our instructor, Robin, asked what about the reading the children found hard to believe.  

• It encourages engaging with and personalizing the text.  Robin also asked how the children felt that text was about them personally.

•  It allows room for the children's "innate spirituality" to flourish.   I was floored by the empathy, insight and depth of the kids' responses to Robin's questions.  

During silent "work time," each child chooses to do art or interact with one of the many stories represented in a series of baskets of wooden storytelling figures objects.  Cody picked Noah's Ark, then the Garden of Eden.  Toward the end of his play with the garden, his manner became urgent.  He turned to me and said, "Which basket is God in?"

I said what any good mother trying would say: "Why don't you ask Robin, sweetie?"

Robin didn't miss a beat.  She smiled and said "God was too big to put in a basket."

For Worriers

Lorenzo was at church last Sunday, wearing an OCC T-shirt that fit him perfectly.

My dad found a counselor, also a rabbi, who he likes and trusts.

Yesterday, my gospel reading from the daily office was Luke 12:22-34 and bore the heading Do Not Worry.

22 He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. ²³For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. ²⁴Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! ²⁵And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?^{* 26}If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? 

²⁷Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;^* yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ²⁸But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! ²⁹And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. ³⁰For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹Instead, strive for his^* kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
32 ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ³³Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Knowing it is one thing, but for me, living it -- even as I see it come true over and over again -- is quite another.