One of the things that my mom taught me about having people over to dinner and especially for  having a party is to make sure that everything is planned out.  She never makes some new recipe for these occasions, but spends at least a week working out all the kinks before offering something to somebody else.

Me?  One of my qualifications for being able to teach children’s cooking is that I can improvise.  Forgot to buy an ingredient?  Don’t know what we’re making till I go to the market that morning?  Half the recipe spills out onto the floor, but we still need to feed 30?  Someone stuck a booger in the batter?  Let’s just see what we can do.

One of the ways that I made my way in the world of yoga teaching when I was a very young (21 years old!) teacher was to take any subbing gig I could get at first.  A lot of new teachers hate doing this since you have to get up in front of a group who wishes that, instead of you being there, their usual and beloved teacher was there.  Sometimes a substitute is met with palpable anger or, in the very least, irritation.  It was a specialized training, this coming in and having to find the opening into a class’s heart.  Sometimes it was relatively easy, and the class went with the new situation.  Sometimes, well, it was harrowing.  It felt like I imagine a stand-up comedian feels on stage, but after a few months of practicing it, the fear just dissipated for me.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” I thought.

Then, yesterday, we had our class party for the big cooking class, and one of my friends called me “sensible”.  I had to stop and think hard about that.  Really?  After the years of yoga teaching and afterward teaching kids and wrangling my own two, I have learned a lot of tricks: that you don’t reveal the dessert till the children have eaten at least a bite or two of the dinner or that there’s hardly anything in the kitchen that cannot be cleaned up with a bunch of dishrags and some soapy water (more formally known as: don’t cry over spilled milk), and that a little bribery (re: chocolate) never hurt anyone.

Sensible, though?  Hmmm.  I just thought I was improvising.

Other looks at being in the moment: