The Parable of the Pinecone

What if we embraced our imperfections, and cut ourselves a break?

Now, I don’t usually go on Instagram very much (as would surprise probably nobody on this list, given that I wrote a book called How to Break Up With Your Phone — or, for that matter, any of my Instagram followers, since to this day I do not fully understand how to use it, and refuse to learn).

HOWEVER, I did venture on there at some point in the past month, and its algorithm showed me a picture that demonstrated that, while it appears to not know that I have Type 1 diabetes, it does know that I like a whimsical project.

The photo was of brownies that had been decorated with sliced almonds and dipped in chocolate in a way that made them look like pinecones. Here is a photo I just found that looks pretty much like the one that was served up to me.

Pretty cute, right?

This seemed like a fortuitous baking project to have stumbled upon, because not only is my father’s birthday Christmas Eve, but my husband’s birthday is the day after Christmas. (No pressure.) In other words, I could use some ideas for some celebratory baking. And also, speaking of pressure, I feel a lot of pressure (from myself) to manufacture some holiday spirit for my 8-year-old daughter, too.

And so I decided to make the pinecone brownies.

First, my daughter and I made the brownies themselves. (The pinecone brownie recipe I found was gluten-, dairy-, egg- and refined-sugar free, which seemed pointless, so I used a traditional recipe instead.)

Then, after allowing them to cool a bit, I dragged my daughter away from what she was doing (forced fun = always a great idea!) and had her come into the kitchen with me to mold the brownies into pinecone-shaped mounds that we could decorate with sliced almonds.

This actually was going pretty well—both of us laughing at our attempts to replicate a good pinecone pattern with the almonds, with her trying to sneak bites of the crusty parts of the brownie when I wasn’t looking (you only use the soft innards, because they’re easier to shape and stick almonds into), et cetera. General merriment was being had.

And then my husband walked into the kitchen to join in the fun and announced, cheerfully, “It looks like you’re decorating turds!”

Now. Lest that sound rude, he said this playfully and I immediately started laughing. However, if you are holding a warm, moist brownie in the palm of your hand, smushing it into the shape of a pinecone, and someone suggests that you are sticking almonds into a turd, it’s kind of a hard statement to un-hear.

Or, for that matter, to un-see. For example, here is a photo of our final product (I didn’t feel like coating them in chocolate).

If you know they’re supposed to be pinecones (and that half of them were made by an 8-year-old), then they’re not half-bad!

However, if you do not know that they are supposed to be pinecones, and you have my husband’s words ringing in your ears, well, maybe don’t look too hard at the one on the bottom left.

Actual text message exchange with my friend Vanessa:

Me: [sends above photo] Do you understand what these are supposed to be?

Vanessa: Reindeer poop?

Me: Dammit.

Why is this a parable?

Great question. Here’s what I’m thinking: there have been many, many times in my life where if my brownie pinecones (literally or metaphorically) were mistaken for turds, I would have been upset. I would have felt like I had failed, or that I had not done “enough” to make them perfect. Like, Why didn’t you go the extra step and coat them in chocolate, Catherine? THAT’S WHAT THE GLUTEN-FREE, DAIRY-FREE, EGG-FREE, SUGAR-FREE, FLAVOR-FREE RECIPE SAID TO DO!!

But this time, I didn’t beat myself up. Instead, I am happy to tell you that I actually love the turdy pinecones. I think they’re hilarious.

And (here’s the parable part), I’m trying to use this as a reminder to be easier on myself about the holidays in general — and I hope you will, too.

I say that because it’s been a really stressful couple months around here (as I suspect it may have been for you, too). I’m personally exhausted, as is my husband. We didn’t send out holiday cards. I barely bought gifts. I tried to do a special mother-daughter holiday staycation earlier this week and, as I’ll explain further in my next newsletter, it did not end well. I feel like I didn’t do enough for Christmas, or for my dad’s birthday, or for my husband’s. I feel like I’m doing a bad job at “fun,” which makes me feel especially bad because I literally wrote a book about how important fun is. I feel like I haven’t been writing enough newsletters, and I feel like I haven’t done enough for that book’s paperback release. (Speaking of which, here’s a link. Is that me doing enough? I don’t know!)

In other words, it’s been fun times in my head—and again, I kind of suspect that I’m not the only one feeling like no matter how much we do, it’s never enough, and, maybe even worse, like we’ve screwed up what we did do.

Which brings me to the message of my would-be parable: what if, instead of beating ourselves up, we all embraced our metaphorical shitty pinecones?

By which I mean, what if we were to accept that we are doing enough—even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not everything we might have hoped for?

After all, if you celebrate Christmas, then guess what? It’s basically here. What are you going to do? Personally conjure up a reindeer between now and midnight?

And if you don’t celebrate Christmas and are regretting what you didn’t do in 2023, same thing: there’s like a week left. What you did this year was enough, because there’s basically nothing more that you could do.

In other words, what would it feel like to celebrate our accomplishments and efforts for what they are, and have some grace, compassion, and acceptance for the parts of our lives (and perhaps our selves) that look like turds?

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Granted, I don’t know what the general answer to that question would look like, because I’m not there yet. But I’m happy to say that, in the case of these particular brownies, I’m enjoying myself quite a bit.

To scrolling less and living more (and with sincere apologies to anyone who did not want to come on this visual journey with me),

Catherine

PS: I was going to sign this email, “May all your poops be pinecones,” but that’s just wrong on SO many levels.

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