A Souffle, or Something Like It
Proud Papa:
I'm always proud of my daughter Jennie. She's smart, beautiful, witty, a dandy cook, and makes great choices.
In addition, she has some traits she did not get from my wife Debbie. She can be hard-headed and obstinate. That she gets strictly from me.
Jen's a grad student at LSU. She's majoring in secondary math education with an emphasis on gifted and talented students. I'm especially proud that she is pursuing a career which is so critical to our nation's future.
She passed both of us up on the math front a long time ago. Once when she was in middle school and furrowing her brow over a math homework problem, I asked if I could help. She looked at me as if I had asked if she'd like to jump out of an airplane with an anvil strapped to her back instead of a parachute. Oh well.
Of the many things in which Deb and I take great pride in our daughter, two that we value the most are her sense of empathy and her emphasis on independent critical thinking. On the other hand, we have always sniffed at Jen's paucity of written words. We both love to paint pictures with words. Our Spawn the Math Major has always approached written words as if they were dollars to be spent on an electric bill. The fewer the better.
This weekend Jen and her boyfriend John (see above reference to making great choices) are here for Thanksgiving. Jen brought with her an essay she intends to submit to National Public Radio for consideration.
Wow. Maybe she's our kid after all. I thought she wrote a brilliant essay and asked if I could share her first draft with you as a "guest blog." This time, perhaps to make up for those missed math-help opportunities, she said yes. Since she had not yet titled it, I'm calling it "A Souffle, or Something Like It." -Jim
Annually, my father writes a list of things he “strongly suspects” as opposed to a list of beliefs. He feels that, although many of them stay the same, he can not necessarily call them beliefs because they change subtly year to year based on his experiences and own introspection. He’s pretty much leaving his options open.
I completely agree with him. My view on almost every issue, whether it be education, abortion, religion, or what to wear to that party on Friday, changes as I hear different perspectives or receive new information on the topic. Since there is not a series entitled “This I strongly suspect” I will present my list of strong suspicions to you here on This I Believe.
Fallen Souffle- For full disclosure, I am not a chef. I love cooking and have made souffles before, but in no way am an expert on the subject.
Everyone knows that souffles fall. If you don’t fold the egg white in perfectly, if you don’t cook it the right amount of time, if you look at it wrong, it might fall. That lovely dish over which you have so carefully toiled can, at any moment fall right in front of your eyes. But, all of the ingredients are still there. If you eat the fallen souffle, it may not be like eating a cloud, but it will still taste wonderful. You cannot pump air into it and make it what it was, but you can make it into something that is just as good if not better by changing it subtly or adding a couple new ingredients.
Living in South Louisiana over the past months has kind of been like living in a fallen souffle. I grew up in Rita-stricken Calcasieu Parish and now reside in Baton Rouge, an hour up the road from New Orleans. I know many people who have lost their houses, their belongings, their loved ones, and all of the ingredients that made up their pre-hurricane life. They worked for years to build up their lives only to see much of it destroyed in a matter of hours.
The once colorful bustling streets of New Orleans are now lined with boarded windows and unbelievably large piles of trash and debris. The coastal towns of Cameron Parish in Southwest Louisiana are now only distinguishable by the piers that once supported houses and now stick out of the ground like used candles on a half-eaten birthday cake. Although it is heartbreaking to see the physical and emotional toll these hurricanes have taken on everyone impacted, it is now, of course, time to move on and rebuild.
Your souffle has fallen, but your guests are eagerly awaiting a meal to satisfy their grumbling stomachs. So, you run around the kitchen awhile, see what tools and ingredients you have to work with, and in a relatively small amount of time you present a dish which resembles your original souffle. No, it’s not exactly what it was before, but it will be quite tasty and your guests will enjoy it.
Just because a souffle falls, it does not mean that the ingredients are gone. You may not be able to see the egg whites, but they are still there. Similarly, just because the hurricanes may have taken away a house or a loved one, it does not mean that they did not exist. The fall of a souffle cannot take away the flavor of the dish, and winds and water cannot chase away the memories of people and places.
There’s no denying it: The hurricane-affected areas will not be exactly what they were before. But the job now is to take what ingredients are still there, possibly add some more, and make something out of them.
-Jennifer Serra
November 2005
I'm always proud of my daughter Jennie. She's smart, beautiful, witty, a dandy cook, and makes great choices.
In addition, she has some traits she did not get from my wife Debbie. She can be hard-headed and obstinate. That she gets strictly from me.
Jen's a grad student at LSU. She's majoring in secondary math education with an emphasis on gifted and talented students. I'm especially proud that she is pursuing a career which is so critical to our nation's future.
She passed both of us up on the math front a long time ago. Once when she was in middle school and furrowing her brow over a math homework problem, I asked if I could help. She looked at me as if I had asked if she'd like to jump out of an airplane with an anvil strapped to her back instead of a parachute. Oh well.
Of the many things in which Deb and I take great pride in our daughter, two that we value the most are her sense of empathy and her emphasis on independent critical thinking. On the other hand, we have always sniffed at Jen's paucity of written words. We both love to paint pictures with words. Our Spawn the Math Major has always approached written words as if they were dollars to be spent on an electric bill. The fewer the better.
This weekend Jen and her boyfriend John (see above reference to making great choices) are here for Thanksgiving. Jen brought with her an essay she intends to submit to National Public Radio for consideration.
Wow. Maybe she's our kid after all. I thought she wrote a brilliant essay and asked if I could share her first draft with you as a "guest blog." This time, perhaps to make up for those missed math-help opportunities, she said yes. Since she had not yet titled it, I'm calling it "A Souffle, or Something Like It." -Jim
Annually, my father writes a list of things he “strongly suspects” as opposed to a list of beliefs. He feels that, although many of them stay the same, he can not necessarily call them beliefs because they change subtly year to year based on his experiences and own introspection. He’s pretty much leaving his options open.
I completely agree with him. My view on almost every issue, whether it be education, abortion, religion, or what to wear to that party on Friday, changes as I hear different perspectives or receive new information on the topic. Since there is not a series entitled “This I strongly suspect” I will present my list of strong suspicions to you here on This I Believe.
Fallen Souffle- For full disclosure, I am not a chef. I love cooking and have made souffles before, but in no way am an expert on the subject.
Everyone knows that souffles fall. If you don’t fold the egg white in perfectly, if you don’t cook it the right amount of time, if you look at it wrong, it might fall. That lovely dish over which you have so carefully toiled can, at any moment fall right in front of your eyes. But, all of the ingredients are still there. If you eat the fallen souffle, it may not be like eating a cloud, but it will still taste wonderful. You cannot pump air into it and make it what it was, but you can make it into something that is just as good if not better by changing it subtly or adding a couple new ingredients.
Living in South Louisiana over the past months has kind of been like living in a fallen souffle. I grew up in Rita-stricken Calcasieu Parish and now reside in Baton Rouge, an hour up the road from New Orleans. I know many people who have lost their houses, their belongings, their loved ones, and all of the ingredients that made up their pre-hurricane life. They worked for years to build up their lives only to see much of it destroyed in a matter of hours.
The once colorful bustling streets of New Orleans are now lined with boarded windows and unbelievably large piles of trash and debris. The coastal towns of Cameron Parish in Southwest Louisiana are now only distinguishable by the piers that once supported houses and now stick out of the ground like used candles on a half-eaten birthday cake. Although it is heartbreaking to see the physical and emotional toll these hurricanes have taken on everyone impacted, it is now, of course, time to move on and rebuild.
Your souffle has fallen, but your guests are eagerly awaiting a meal to satisfy their grumbling stomachs. So, you run around the kitchen awhile, see what tools and ingredients you have to work with, and in a relatively small amount of time you present a dish which resembles your original souffle. No, it’s not exactly what it was before, but it will be quite tasty and your guests will enjoy it.
Just because a souffle falls, it does not mean that the ingredients are gone. You may not be able to see the egg whites, but they are still there. Similarly, just because the hurricanes may have taken away a house or a loved one, it does not mean that they did not exist. The fall of a souffle cannot take away the flavor of the dish, and winds and water cannot chase away the memories of people and places.
There’s no denying it: The hurricane-affected areas will not be exactly what they were before. But the job now is to take what ingredients are still there, possibly add some more, and make something out of them.
-Jennifer Serra
November 2005
posted by Jim Serra at 11/28/2005 11:58:00 AM
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