This year, I ate a lot of doughnuts during Carnival.
A lot.
With rosehip jam, as is proper. With blueberry filling. With vanilla cream. With nougat. Some dusted with powdered sugar, others rolled in crystal sugar, still others coated in chocolate glaze.
Colleagues brought some in, the bosses handed out trays. One doesn't want to be impolite.
Stefan also came home with a box. There was no escape.
There were days when I briefly thought I'd soon look like a doughnut myself.
The decision to fast came without drama. Quietly, rather. I had never done it before. Perhaps it would be good to consciously go without for once. Not for diet reasons. Not out of guilt. But to see how much of a habit sweetness had become for me.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts forty days until Easter. Originally it was a time of reflection and abstinence. Today people fast for very different reasons — some out of tradition, others to break habits. For me it is unremarkable: a piece of chocolate often helps me concentrate at work. After spicy food I reach for it almost automatically. And coffee without cake on the weekend feels incomplete.
When Stefan and I decided to fast, there was still half a bag of crisps and an open bar of chocolate in the cupboard.
"In six weeks the crisps will taste like cardboard," I said. And open chocolate won't be any better.
We're fasting. But first we're eating everything up.
So we finished off the leftovers that last weekend.
Directly opposite my workplace happens to be one of the best bakeries in town. When I open the office windows, the smell of freshly baked crumble cake and other treats drifts in. Sometimes a single breath of air is enough — and I notice how quickly I start negotiating with myself.
Three birthdays fell during this Lenten period. Including my own. Of course I ate cake. One needn't turn it into a test of character.
What remained is less the abstinence than the awareness. How clearly a habit reveals itself when you interrupt it.
It was no great change. Just a small shift.
And perhaps I'll step into spring feeling a little lighter.
Even my trousers seem to have noticed.
B.
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