Haycocking it up

I have a confession to make: I tend to do things the hard way. Like, the really hard way. It’s a genetic defect in my family, passed down from mother to daughter for generations and manifesting itself mainly when food is involved. We even have a term for it: “Haycocking it up” (“Haycock” being my maternal grandmother’s married name) describes any time you go way overboard, whether it be for a Sunday meal, family outing, or birthday party for a three-year-old.  

“We’re really Haycocking it up” is a phrase commonly used by my mom and me when we try to plan a simple family dinner, and before we realize it, an easy menu of chicken and mashed potatoes has morphed into three times the amount of chicken we’ll actually need; a double batch of homemade rolls served with individual pats of butter that have been delicately rolled into tiny spheres; enough mashed potatoes to feed the entire neighborhood; two types of salad, one drizzled with freshly made ranch dressing and the other a delightful mix of seasonal berries that one of us drove to a farmer’s market across town to find; and three pies—one lemon meringue, one apple, and one pecan, just because someone had a hankerin’ for it. 

Just like Luke Skywalker and the Force, the Haycock gene is strong with me. For example: one busy weekday about a year ago, I checked the calendar and realized that my evening would be spent shuttling kids back and forth to various activities that were all happening right at dinnertime. “How am I going to feed my kids dinner with such a hectic schedule tonight?” I wondered earlier in the day, before the after-school chaos had erupted. A normal person, one without the Haycock defect, would just decide to careen through the McDonald’s drive through and grab a Big Mac for everyone in between events.

But not me. I decided to Haycock it up big time. Before the kids got home from school, I made a batch of French bread dough from scratch, filled it with various toppings and baked the whole thing into a delicious, melty hoagie sandwich, which I then covered with a dishtowel and stashed in the back of our Suburban while we drove to the first event of the evening: back-to-school night. An hour later, I herded my gaggle of children out to the car in the school parking lot so we wouldn’t be late to whatever event was next. As they clambered into their seats, I walked around to the back of the Suburban, popped open the trunk, pulled out the knife and cutting board that I had packed before we left, and cut slices of the now-cooled-to-perfection stuffed sandwich, all while confused parents and children looked on.

“Why is that woman doing this?” I could imagine them thinking. “Why is she making this so hard? Why isn’t she just driving through McDonald’s?” 

It’s because I’m a Haycock. Please send back up.

The family bloodline has its perks, don’t get me wrong. For one thing, it comes with some seriously hardy genes: my Great-Grandpa George lived to be 105, and his daughter, my Grandma Donna, is currently 96. 

I hope if I make it to 96, I will have as big a heart and as much energy for doing good as Grandma Donna does. She’s living with family now, but until recently rented her own apartment in an assisted-living facility. Not one to sit idly in her cushy recliner, her Haycock-ness made her a force (for good) to be reckoned with. From the lobby of her building, she organized drives to collect shoes for children in Haiti; warm socks for the homeless; and prescription eyeglasses for those who couldn’t afford their own. She also set up a table to register voters in advance of an upcoming election, sometimes complaining about “those old people” who would fill out their paperwork at her table and then forget to sign their signatures.

The way I see it, if I can learn to harness my Haycock tendencies in less of a hot-sandwich-from-the-back-of-a-Suburban way and more of a doing-good-for-mankind way, then my penchant for overdoing can be transformed into a habit of just doing; of just jumping in and helping where it’s needed, whatever it might be. And there’s nothing defective about that.