“One Neighbour Calls Me the Muffin Man”—Finding Joy in Baking After Retirement and in Times of Critical Change


Meaghan Elizabeth Collins (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

What does it mean to be uprooted from a professional career of over twenty years? How does rootlessness coincide with the inevitability of ageing and how can the act of baking provide a sense of comfort to the transition of getting older? In this paper, I talk to my father who started baking muffins as a coping mechanism to retiring and the changes he has experienced in his older years. I discovered that baking provides stability in a time when he has felt uprooted from a lifelong routine.

Part of 03-15 Folklore and the Individual, Thursday, November 02, 2:30 pm–4:30 pm