Dear Emi,
We found out yesterday that you're getting into the birth position. Dr. Chan told us at our bi-weekly check-up that you're hanging out in my uterus upside down, with your hands and legs scrunched up on my left side, your butt firmly planted on the right. I laughed out loud when he told us that. Auntie Noriko and I had been rubbing the hard, round shape just last weekend, deciding it must be your head.
Your heartbeat was strong and steady. Just six more weeks to go...
It's been a crazy few weeks at work. The rise of the Internet coupled with the struggling economy has created a dismal outlook for the newspaper industry. Papers all over the country have been slashing their budgets and laying off employees. My company is no exception. After one round of layoffs earlier this year, we learned in August that due to the closure of some major advertisers our company was forced to make further cuts. I came back from vacation to find a packet on my desk. The company was offering buyouts to many of its employees, including a majority of the newsroom. While I looked through the offer carefully, I never really, seriously considered taking it.
I discovered journalism the summer I turned sixteen. That year I spent two weeks at a high school J-Camp sponsored by the local newspaper and the California Chicano News Media Association. While I was there, something clicked inside me and I realized I could evoke change, reach out to people and have a voice in this world through my writing, something I'd always loved. With the exception of my last quarter at UCLA, I worked for the school paper all through college and spent my summers interning at small, daily newspapers accumulating clips I could eventually parlay into a job.
I was luckier than many young reporters of my generation. I never had to leave the state for work, and within four years I was at a major, metropolitan newspaper in my hometown. Not that it wasn't hard work getting there. I put in plenty of 12-hour days, often fielding calls from sources at home, working weekends and holidays, not to mention the endless hours at mind-numbing school board and city council meetings. But I never regretted my career choice, and couldn't imagine what I'd do if I wasn't a journalist.
So I wasn't going to trade in my career for a lump-sum check after only a dozen years in the business.
I decided to hang on for as long as possible, until the business decided it was done with me. Then I'd regroup and figure out what to do next. Of course, that could be sooner rather than later. The corporate head honchos made it clear that another round of layoffs could be on the horizon if the buyouts weren't enough. After he talked me away from the ledge, your daddy and I discussed what would happen if I lost my job. Things would be tight, but we could manage, although there'd be little disposable income for vacations or dinner out, let alone your college fund. Still, I would have the luxury of time to spend with you before figuring out my next direction in life.
But it saddened me to think that you might never know me as a journalist. I've always hoped that my children would find something they loved to do and pursue it, not only as a way to earn a living, but as a means of fulfillment. I wanted to be an example for you, someone who could show you how to follow your dreams. Not someone who works in an office at a boring state job.
It was a great relief to find out a couple weeks ago that enough people took the buyout and the company wouldn't need to lay off anymore employees. Although they were closing my particular section of the newspaper, the reporters would be shuffled around to different positions within the newsroom. Then today, I received an email from one of the editors that I would be moving downtown to the Business section covering general assignment stories and the retail beat. While I wasn't certain about the new beat, I was ecstatic to be working so close to home, right across the street from your daycare. As an added bonus, I wouldn't have to cover the election so I was free to go on maternity leave any time. I was ecstatic.
I managed to gain half a pound in two weeks, probably because I've been eating like a horse. I've long been snacking on cereal or toast with apple butter when I wake up in the middle of the night to help me go back to sleep. But I recently graduated to full, midnight meals. One night, we were watching TV and the characters were eating spaghetti. I woke up at 2 a.m. craving - spaghetti. I had just made spaghetti and meatballs the week before. After a few days eating the leftovers, it was a little low on sauce, so I chopped some garlic, mixed the meatballs with some crushed tomatoes and had a lovely second dinner. The next day it was pasties. One trip to the Pasty Shack for dinner and the problem was solved. Then it was Chinese food, which provided enough leftovers for a satisfying midnight snack.
My sweet tooth was also spiraling out of control. Ordinarily, I don't care for too many sweets, but since I got pregnant, I've been craving everything from cake to Popsicles. I was actually starting to worry you'd be born with cavities. One day at the office, Carlos, a columnist, stopped by my cubicle to chat about his visit to a gelateria that had recently opened. When Daddy and I were in Italy, I tasted my way through the gelaterias of Rome, Florence and Venice, frequently ordering lemon, mango and coconut sorbeto as a way to stay cool during the warm, sunny afternoons. A few hours after my talk with Carlos I was happily savoring spoonfuls of cold, creamy tiramisu gelato.
The next craving - Jewish rugelachs - required a little more work. When I was a little girl in New York City, Auntie Sharon used to come over with a white box wrapped in red string that was filled with rugelach - a rich and creamy cookie with plenty of walnuts and dusted in fine, powdered sugar. We'd sit around the kitchen table, the adults sipping their coffee, while we devoured the baked delights.
A few years ago, Daddy found a recipe for rugelach in our newspaper, which he clipped for me. I'm no baker - chocolate chip cookies and fruit cobbler are about as complicated as I can manage - so I'd never attempted to try the recipe. But those pregnancy hormones proved stronger than my baking trepidations, and they turned out to be fairly easy to make. One day, I'll teach you how to make them, Emi, so we can sit at the kitchen island eating cookies together.
Rugelach
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup, or 2 sticks, unsalted butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup apricot preserves or raspberry jam
1 cup loosely packed golden raisins, chopped
1 1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped
milk for brushing cookies
Whisk together flour and salt in a bowl. Beat together butter and cream cheese in a large bowl with an electric mixer until combined well. Add flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until a soft dough forms
Gather dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap, then flatten into a roughly 7 by 5-inch rectangle. Chill until firm, 8 to 24 hours.
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line bottom of a large, shallow baking pan with parchment paper. Cut dough into 4 pieces. Chill 3 pieces, wrapped in plastic wrap, and roll out remaining piece into a 12 by 8-inch rectangle on a well-floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Transfer dough to a sheet of parchment paper, then to a tray and chill while rolling out remaining dough in same manner, transferring each to another sheet of parchment paper and stacking on tray.
Whisk 1/2 cup sugar with cinnamon.
Arrange 1 dough rectangle onto work surface with a long side nearest you. Spread 1/2 cup preserves evenly over dough with offset spatula. Sprinkle 1/4 cup raisins and a rounded 1/4 cup of walnuts over jam, then sprinkle with 2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar. Using parchment as aid, roll up dough tightly into a log. Place, seam side down, in lined baking pan, then pinch ends closed and tuck underneath. Make 3 more logs in same manner and arrange 1 inch apart in pan. Brush logs with milk. With a sharp knife, make 3/4 -inch-deep cuts crosswise in dough, but don't cut all the way through, at 1-inch intervals. (If dough is too soft, chill until firmer, 20 to 30 minutes.)
Bake until golden., 45 to 50 minutes. Cool to warm on pan or rack, about 30 minutes, then transfer logs to a cutting board and slice cookies all the way through.
