My paternal and maternal grandparents lived in Mexico and I rarely got to see them but My grandma and grandpa were near by and not only welcomed my brother and I into their family when my mother married their son but they loved us as one of their own. The love that they freely gave was actually very overwhelming for me to handle as a child and I almost did not know how to deal with it at first.
Just so we understand, I love my paternal and maternal grandparents. They went through a lot to provide for their families. They are my flesh and blood and I owe them everything. They provided for their children so they could have a better life and those children provided for their future families, my generation, and we have been blessed and have had amazing opportunities from all the sacrifices they made. So I do not want to make it seem like I favor one family over the other. There actually is a reason why I picked "Clara Beth's Kitchen" for my blog.
Socioeconomically speaking my life improved almost immediately when we became a family. I went from having to move several times in my childhood to having roots in a safe neighborhood free of gang violence and having access to great schools. I grew up and live in a beautiful beach town with a laid back and diverse atmosphere. I have been blessed but unhappy because of some lies that I was buying into.
I kept buying into this lie that life would equal happiness when I was skinny, when I was married, and when I had my own family. That made for some painful wrestling matches in my mind and misery because I'm 30, single, never married, and do not have children. My life is not even close to what I was expecting. Right before 2013 I realized enough was enough, I needed a serious change of perspective because I was tired of not being happy. Naturally the children leave the nest but in this family it has been backwards. My mother remarried and moved out and us kids are still here.The past six months or so I have had the power to make this house over however I wanted to and decided that I needed to stop waiting for happiness to be a future event or within another person; it needs to come from within myself and it is an act that happens in the present to set you up for your happy tomorrows but it has only been a couple of months where I have actively been pursing happiness in the moment.
It is like the movie Under The Tuscan Sun, a personal favorite, where Frances is crying to her handsome realtor and friend about how she is so stupid for buying her big house and what if she never has anybody to cook for or nobody to live in her house. He asks her why she did it and she said because she still wants things. She wants a wedding at her house, she wants a family, she wants all of these things. She is afraid it will never happen. As the film progresses she begins to find inner happiness and she attracts all her wants. The movie ends with her house being filled with family, hosting the wedding of close friends, she has become this great cook, and she realized she got every single wish. Maybe not in a way she had expected but it made her incredibly happy.
I have realized how loved I am and how much I love my close knit family and friends. It is fulfilling. There is no other way to explain it. I still live in the house I grew up in but it is also the house that Clara Beth raised her large family in along with her husband. She was a wonderful baker and he is a great cook, they have a reputation for these things. So I may not have that husband and a litter of ankle biters but I have this kitchen that belonged to Clara Beth and I cook and bake in it and sometimes other people cook but gathered at the kitchen table are my family and friends where we eat, talk, play games, listen and sing along to music, we laugh late into the night sometimes, and it is a beautiful thing.
This blog is not going to be solely about cooking in fact I never intended it to be about recipes and tutorials on how to make this dish or that dessert; it will happen though. It will be about whatever makes me extremely happy in that moment and lately it has been moments in Clara Beth's Kitchen. I want to share everything that I am striving towards, things that make me...me and at my very core is this woman that I miss a lot. Without the influence of my grandparents I do not know who I would have become and I am thankful for all they have given me and I am realizing that I love my beautiful life.
