{"id":151609,"date":"2016-06-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gracious-khorana.45-76-20-142.plesk.page\/localmex12016x106x1london-fog-french-toast-sugared-blueberries-htmlx1\/"},"modified":"2024-02-07T13:18:56","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T13:18:56","slug":"london-fog-french-toast-sugared-blueberries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/localmilkblog.com\/2016\/06\/london-fog-french-toast-sugared-blueberries.html","title":{"rendered":"London Fog French Toast + Sugared Blueberries"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is a post about morning chasing the shadows away, about nightmares\u00a0and milk tea flavored French toast. I\u2019ve noticed a curious thing about myself in contrast to my husband. I wake up nervous, almost in a panic, nearly every morning.<\/p>\n

Many mornings the\u00a0first words off my lips to him\u00a0are a bleary \u201cIs everything ok?\u201d I need to hear that everything is okay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While he dreams of singing lullabies to our daughter the day she\u2019s born, I thrash through\u00a0drownings, fighting tooth & claw, and a writhing sort of pain in my heart that\u2019s almost limb rending.<\/p>\n

I love to rest, to sleep, but waking each morning to this\u00a0glorious and still yet new world of placid waters, mundane worries, and a husband that I love and loves me in return is more like a dream than any sleep I\u2019ve known as an adult.<\/p>\n

Morning is sweet. He brings me coffee, we make breakfast or take it out, and the black water recedes again into my subconscious. Living is a good remedy.<\/p>\n

So here are my thoughts on the fear & a recipe for chasing it away, namely a recipe for an earl grey\u00a0& lavender\u00a0scented French toast topped with sweet summer blueberries.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s no great mystery as to why my\u00a0sleep is disturbed. I amassed a decade of disturbing during my twenties, enough to fuel a lifetime of nightmares.<\/p>\n

I was a master of compartmentalizing, a common survival skill amongst the\u00a0compulsively ill advised. Now I\u2019m likely up to the same psychological tricks.<\/p>\n

But there are only two compartments: then<\/em> and now<\/em>. Then<\/em> is in a shoebox on a dim, cobwebbed shelf. Now<\/em> is out on my dresser, the first thing I see when I sit up in bed.<\/p>\n

But in some somnambulant state of self torture, I take then<\/em> off the shelf and rifle through it\u2019s contents. Maniacs are\u00a0in there, and the maniacs tormenting me, if dream interpreters are to be believed, are all\u2014no matter the face\u2014myself.<\/p>\n

My husband doesn\u2019t seem to have this fear. I\u2019m sure he has a fair human amount of fear; we all do. But not this dark mass\u00a0I carry around. It makes sense that he doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The bags I carry, the skeletons\u2014whatever clich\u00e9 you want to assign to my distasteful (to put it lightly) memories and experience\u2014he simply doesn\u2019t have them or at the very least not the sheer volume or degree.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m tempted to fall into a narrative of seeing myself as the \u201cdark one\u201d. I laugh less & worry more than he does, it\u2019s true. I\u2019m less friendly, less optimistic. Not to say I\u2019m not those things, I\u2019m a reasonable amount in my estimation. I just don\u2019t possess that same effervescence & light. I\u2019m an introverted, internal sort.<\/p>\n

Over the past few days, I\u2019ve made\u00a0a\u00a0little down time since we returned home from 5 weeks abroad, and\u00a0in that time I\u2019ve found stillness.<\/p>\n

Stillness leads to thought. And my thoughts have turned to wondering whether my daughter will grow up and see us the way I see us.<\/p>\n

Whether she\u2019ll see him as the light one and me as the dark one. Whether she\u2019ll see sadness and fear in me. Or whether she\u2019ll see me like he sees me, introverted & sensitive, but not dark.<\/p>\n

My hope is the latter. And my hope is that the rays of the morning, of our family & the daily moments we share from breakfasts to afternoon swims, of good work & real friends will, over a lifetime, chase away those shadows, and that I will consistently see myself the way the people who love me see me: as different but not worse.<\/p>\n

Without further introspective rambling, here\u2019s a recipe to beautify your waking world: thick brioche French toast infused with earl grey and topped with the sapphire jewels of the season, plump blueberries tossed in a homemade lavender sugar & lemon zest.<\/p>\n

Add a cloud of powdered sugar and syrup if you must (I skip the latter, personally) and you have a meal\u00a0that will make you smile no matter what the night brought.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/p>\n

\"Prop<\/p>\n

\"Fluffy<\/p>\n

\"Food<\/p>\n

\"Brioche<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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