Happiness and Charles Simic

“For starters, learn how to cook.” That’s the advice that poet laureate Charles Simic offered in last week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine (2/3/08) to those who are looking to be happy.

Being happy is a condition that is on many of writer’s minds. Maybe on the GP (General Public’s) mind, too. Today the Times “Style” section about “Modern Love” mused about the notion that only the very young (twenties) and the very old (seventy-plus) are happy, and that middle age is a time of unhappiness. That may be truer today when most people postpone having children and reach middle age with kids at home and aging parents and stale careers and big mortgages and all those worries. Marriage, if you can make it past twenty years, actually improves when the kids leave home. You can be a couple again. If you stayed married and are still speaking. Whatever.

What intrigued me was Simic’s statement that happy people cook. Or maybe are married to a cook. I have to confess that cooking makes me happy. Never thought of it before. Is it nurturing and nourishing others? Dunno. Cooking a lamb chop and some fresh asparagus for moi also makes me happy. Does eating decent food at home make us happy? The ancient idea of gathering around the warm hearth? Something to that effect.

My friend (who does not seem a terribly happy person) and I used to assume cooking duties every summer at an Easthampton house party. The non-cooks were always amazed that we were happy (sic) in the kitchen so many hours a day. We were very happy, almost delerious. Everyone, (almost) contributed. S.O. made his specialty drink, the host whipped up a key lime pie, others chipped in. And we were happy. The hostess was almost never happy and she didn’t cook. Strange, isn’t it. And the broth was never spoiled. Idyllic summer days, now gone.

My grandma sang old hymns in the kitchen while she cooked and did the dishes. She was, I think, happy.

This morning we had the Schaller and Weber bacon and eggs with cherry tomatoes, shallots, mushrooms and chives. Good bread and good jam. And I was happy.

Cooking is a creative act, with manual effort. It engages our mind, our imagination and our hands. Perhaps that makes us happy. “For starters, learn how to cook.”

My protagonist, Emma Lee Spence, likes to cook. Even at Burning Man when she has to deal with picky eaters and primitive facilities, she’s a happy cook. Instinctively.

Treat the cook well. There is an old saying, “she was a good cook, as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went.”

Food for thought.