The Darling Files // An Introduction

When Callie emailed me about The Darling Files project, I thought of pomegranate molasses. 

I should back up for a minute. If Callie were editing this intro, she would leave me a comment here that reads something like “nice intro but who is Callie and what are the Darling Files.” I’ll save her the effort and correct that. But don’t forget about the pomegranate molasses, okay?

Callie is a writer and a teacher and an editor, all of which are roles she has fulfilled for me in my creative life. She reminds me to look at my ordinary life and find magic. Her stories are the kind that make me want to stop reading and go write.

In the email I mentioned above, Callie reminded me of a conversation we once shared about writing and stories. We were talking about the words without a home, the ones we cut from essays because they weren’t quite right but we still love. Stephen King calls this “Killing Your Darlings,” because of course he would talk about killing. 

But Callie didn’t want to talk about killing–she wanted to talk about living. And she knew I did, too.

In this conversation, I told Callie about my “Darling Files.” I don’t kill my darlings. I let them live in a little corner of my very dusty Google account. Sometimes I’m super organized and I tuck them into a designated file labeled “Darlings.” Other files have fancy labels like “Random Musings,” “Thoughts from April,” or my most favorite “Untitled Document.” Then there are the scraps in journals and notes apps and once I found something on the back of my child’s drawing that just says “is this what it means to…” and I’ll be thinking about that one for a while. 

Callie has these words, too. (Although I’m certain she’s more organized than I.) That’s why she emailed me. She was sorting through journals of lost words and wondered, is there something that can be done here? And would I like to come along for the ride?

That’s when I thought of the pomegranate molasses. You hadn’t forgotten about that, had you?

I first learned of said molasses when I stumbled upon it in an intriguing recipe by Samin Nosrat. It was one of those recipes with many steps that you only try for the people you know will appreciate the effort (i.e. NOT the children). Last fall, my parents came for a visit and this felt like the audience I was looking for. I don’t know about you, but inside this strong independent forty year old body is an eight year old girl standing in front of her parents with her report card of all As and “Pleasure to have in class”es with a beaming smile saying “look at me and this great thing I did!” I don’t want to serve them the same tacos from a packet or spaghetti and meatballs from the freezer that I do on normal nights. I want to impress. I want to make the recipe with the pomegranate molasses. 

The problem was, on the morning they arrived, I remembered I had not yet procured said molasses. No worries, I thought. There was a fancy grocery store just a couple miles down the road and yes we could drive but it was a lovely fall day so why not take a walk with three year old Leo in the stroller. A win win for all. Except as we started to leave we discovered the stroller tires were flat. Hiking backpack it was. Perhaps walking down the city streets with a child in a backpack gives off weird hitchhiking vibes but alas we were doing this. We were hiking to the store to purchase the one ingredient we needed so I could cook dinner and make my parents proud. 

What I didn’t take into consideration was that the walk would involve construction that blocked off the sidewalk for the last mile of the walk to the store, thus requiring us to scale a six inch space between orange fencing and speeding vehicles, and between that and the sounds of jack hammer to concrete, we couldn’t hear each other talk so much of the walk was done with all of us fearing for our lives while shouting “WHAT?” and also it took us much longer than I expected to walk all that way with a three year old on my back so by the time we got home I had sweat dripping down my neck and my back and the idea of cooking in a hot kitchen sounded absolutely miserable, like the absolute last thing I wanted to do but anyway, that’s how we got the pomegranate molasses.

And then I used the one tablespoon for which the recipe called. 

Yes, you read that correctly. One. Tablespoon. We traipsed four harried miles across town in the scorching sun to retrieve one rather expensive ingredient (left that part out) for an over the top recipe and come to find out all that was required was one f*&^%$g tablespoon?! I almost dumped the entire bottle into the chicken just so I could actually use it up, but then decided that would taste terrible and only defeat the purpose of impressing my diners. Instead, I put the bottle in my pantry and vowed to make use of it soon. 

That was a year ago. I have not used the molasses again since. And yet every time I open the pantry, that little bottle sits front and center, after which I always think “I should do something with this.” But then I grab the balsamic vinegar or the honey or the Worcestershire sauce, not the pomegranate molasses. And I know I could just dump the molasses in the garbage and forget about it. But I think about how much effort I put into getting it. And more than that, the molasses is quite tasty. It’s sweet and sour and savory all at once and it would make for a really delicious salad dressing or bread topping or something else I haven’t imagined yet. But that’s the point. I need to imagine the possibilities. And then I need to put those possibilities to work.

That’s why, when Callie asked me if I wanted to participate in her challenge to make use of the words she had stored away, I thought of the pomegranate molasses. And I immediately said yes.

Because like the molasses, there are words sitting behind doors of files and journals and notes waiting to be used, words that once took great effort to collect, words I think are still pretty good. I just haven’t yet found the best use for them. 

Or, in other words, to steal a line from Callie, “if we faithfully write, even when it's feeling hard or awful or whatever, we will have a body of work - a work of darlings - that we can return to after a bit.”

So that’s how the Darling Files Project came to be. Once a month Callie and I will dig deep into our pantries of words and find the ones ready for a home. We’ll share it on our blogs and give those Darlings a life. 

Do you have some Darlings that need a new life, too? Maybe it’s one line that you finally complete. Maybe it’s a poem you forgot about. Maybe it’s an essay that never found a publisher and you decide to be your own publisher. We would love for you to come alongside us on this journey.

Here are the weeks we plan for this project if you want to participate: October 10-14, November 14-18, December 12-16, January 16-20, February 13-17. Feel free to share links on our blog comments, tag us in your work (@rachelnevergall and @calliefeyen) on Instagram, and/or use the hashtag #thedarlingfiles so we can all connect. Let’s give new life to the pomegranate molasses in our word pantries!

Now about that pomegranate molasses…anybody have any recipes?