It is a truth universally acknowledged (or universally among parents, anyway) that the “terrible twos” is a misnomer, and that the real adventure starts when kids turn three—or, as this Reddit discussion puts it, when they become threenagers. I love the three-year-old stage, actually, because that’s when our kids start to change from babies into the unique and special people they are—and to assert their independent personalities in amusingly mischievous ways.
For example, when our kids were three (Casey) and six (Noah), we were at a party, and on the buffet table there was a heaping plate of cookies perched tantalizingly close to the edge. Noah politely asked us if he could have a cookie. We told him he could have a small one, and he duly complied. Casey, meanwhile, was hovering around the periphery of the crowd, waiting to seize her opportunity. The moment our attention was diverted, she darted over to the table, thrust both hands deep into the cookie pile, and made off with two tremendous handfuls. My husband chased after her, which just prompted her to shove all the cookies in her mouth at once and chomp them down. Years later, we still laugh at this story.1
The Happy Wanderer turns three this week. I can’t promise the kind of delightful chaos of your average three-year-old, but this Substack will continue to assert its independent personality, and there will also be one big change. My literary hero Samuel Johnson has provided the headers below2 to help us look back over the past year and forward to the future.
Pleasure Always Secures Attention
Writers will sometimes lament that their favorite pieces garner the least attention, and I am no exception. I tell myself that readers must have been away on spring break or Up North to the Lake when a couple of neglected posts dropped this year—it couldn’t possibly be that you weren’t interested, could it? Anyway, here they are again, just in case they somehow got stuck in your spam filters or you were otherwise occupied when they first came out.
Lifting Up What We See Outside Our Windows tells four inspiring stories of ordinary kindness and encourages us to reflect with pride on our good deeds:
We have such a strong taboo against saying we like ourselves or are proud of our achievements. To me this is a shame. I mean, no one likes a braggart, but I think we have overcorrected. When we talk about times we did what was right, even if it was difficult, … we feed the good wolf, we fortify ourselves for the next challenge, and, best of all, we encourage other people to do the difficult but right thing too.
Crowds and a Crash includes photos of mountain scenery, travel advice, a recipe, and some hard-won wisdom:
Movies are pretend. Obviously we all know this intellectually, but fights in movies inculcate the subliminal message that getting hurt doesn’t, well, hurt. Think back to literally any movie fight you have ever seen in your entire life. The heroes are always indestructible, impervious to bullets, encased in invisible armor, infinitely fast and clever. … I don’t care how badass the hero is, or how much adrenaline is coursing through his system. If he takes a vicious kick to the ribs, he will not bounce right back and rejoin the fray. He will take a minute to sit and whimper, the same as I did.
No [One] but a Blockhead Ever Wrote, Except for Money
With all due respect to Johnson, I have vowed never to charge for the Happy Wanderer. One reason is humility—blockhead that I am, I doubt I could attract enough paying subscribers to compensate for the additional hassle at tax time.
I also have a philosophical reason for keeping this Substack free. Small-timers like me face the temptation to build a paying audience through a couple of non-ideal measures: Either to deliver precisely what our audience wants, or to identify a previously undiscovered niche and occupy it. I can’t help noticing that the posts that get the most engagement are about politics and the culture wars. Enjoyable as discussing politics may be, it isn’t good for us to get angry because someone is wrong on the internet, or to read only pieces that cater to our opinions. As for finding a niche, I could confine myself to sharing my expertise on, say, basset hounds and grow an audience that way.
But I’d rather write about any topic that strikes my fancy, be it books, movies, education, travel, or the occasional cranky rant. Heck, some of my favorite posts have been on totally random topics like adverbs, asparagus, and yodeling. (Look for another such post, on ginkgos, in a couple of weeks.) Keeping the Happy Wanderer free frees us up to keep wandering and discovering.
None Ever Wished It Longer
Having read Paradise Lost in its entirety twice as a student (and about half of it an additional several times as a teacher), I agree with Dr. Johnson. No one has ever wished for more Paradise Lost. Perhaps even a bit less would not have gone amiss.
When I was a TA for a college humanities class, a student dropped by my office to turn in a late paper. I immediately flipped to the back to see how many pages it was. “Oh, you’re checking that it’s long enough?” he asked. I laughed. “I’m checking that it’s SHORT enough!” As a teacher I always had a tremendous pile of papers to grade—to the tune of several hundred pages a quarter—and I preferred short papers to long ones. Who wouldn’t? Sadly, as any writer knows, it is much tougher to be concise than to ramble on.
I am aware that my Happy Wanderers err on the long side. Believe it or not, nearly everything I write starts out still longer, and I have to ruthlessly edit the posts to get them down to nine to twelve minutes’ reading time. So here’s the big change: Starting today, I will strive for shorter posts—ideally no more than eight minutes. I think we all will appreciate tighter, quicker pieces. Consider it my anniversary gift to you, dear readers!
How about you, readers? Do you have a cute story about a favorite three-year-old? What are you celebrating this time of year? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
I wanted to include a recipe for birthday cake, but alas I have already shared all my best cake recipes with you. My friend Anastasia to the rescue! Readers who have made Anastasia’s lemon tart will know how wonderful her creations are. At our craft club last week, she served a moist and flavorful apple cake, and she has kindly allowed me to share her recipe here. (She gave me her list of ingredients, and I provided the details and wrote up the steps.) This cake is perfect for autumn, when we are enjoying an abundance of apples.
Anastasia’s Apple Cake
Ingredients
For the cake:
5 tart, juicy apples (for example Honeycrisp or Granny Smith), peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1/2c sugar, scant
3 eggs
1c flour (Anastasia uses “halbweiß,” which is half white and half whole wheat, but if this flour isn’t available, unbleached white flour is fine)
1T baking powder
1/4c candied orange peel, finely minced
zest from one orange
vegetable oil for the pan
For the icing:
1-10oz container (300gms) crème fraîche (this is an approximate amount; just use whatever size container of crème fraîche your store sells)
about 1T powdered sugar
edible flowers or extra candied orange peel to decorate the cake (optional)
Method
Beat the eggs and sugar together and then add the flour and baking powder. Don’t over-beat.
Fold in the apple slices, orange peel, and orange zest. You will feel as though you are just coating the apple slices with goo. That’s ok—it’s supposed to be like that. The apples will shrink down and the batter will rise up during baking to restore normal proportions. Your “batter” should look like this:
Line a springform pan with parchment paper3 and lightly brush with oil.
Scrape the batter into the pan and bake at 350F/180C for about 45 minutes, until the cake is set in the middle (this is an approximate time because ovens vary widely, so keep an eye on the cake the first time you make it).
While the cake is baking, mix the crème fraîche with just enough powdered sugar to make it slightly thick. Refrigerate.
Cool the cake about 15 minutes and then remove from the pan, peel off the parchment paper, and cool completely on a rack. Spread the icing over the top, allowing it to drip down the sides. If desired, decorate the cake with edible flowers or some more candied orange peel.
You may be wondering why we were so stingy about the cookies. I’m actually wondering that too. Why did we not just tell Noah to go ahead and help himself? It was a party! In retrospect, Casey had the right idea. Noah, I owe you two handfuls of cookies!
The quote in the first header comes from Samuel Johnson, the Idler 74 (15 September, 1759), which I found here. The quote in the second header comes from James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1791), which I found here. The quote in the third header comes from the chapter on Milton in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1779–81), which I found here. If you enjoy witty quips, I highly recommend clicking on these links to find many more Johnson bon mots.
Anastasia showed me a nifty trick for dealing with parchment paper. Tear off a piece big enough for your cake pan, and then crumple it up. Get the paper wet and squeeze out the water. The paper will now be flexible, so that you can shape it into your pan. No need to trace the pan and cut a precise circle.
For what it's worth, I, for one, enjoy your longer formats. I've enjoyed how your train of thought wanders through the writing, taking us along for the ride.
We were kids brought up in a military family, and later in years my father would remind us that he was always proud of how "well behaved" we all were out in public. I think we understood that otherwise there would have been consequences. :~)
I am totally going to make that cake.
That cake looks so beautiful!