Category: Slice ‘o Life

Posted on

The Gift of a Cooked Meal

It’s 4:35 as I type this.  Most afternoons, this would be on the early side of me figuring out what should be for dinner.  Pffft.  Who am I kidding?  I don’t really start doing that until 5:30 or so.  (Alright, alright, 6 o’clock.  Sheesh.)

But tonight I’m not worried about dinner at all.  Nor was I last night.  Nor will I be tomorrow.  Don’t hate me because I know what’s for dinner.

Thanks to the generosity of a couple of friends, my family has eaten better in the past few days than we have in weeks.  After a series of frozen brown things (Tater Tots, fish sticks, breaded chicken filets, etc.), last night we ate a ham and cheese quiche with a crust that was out of this world.  Last week, we enjoyed a Shepard’s pie with cauliflower pureed into the mashed potatoes.

Um, yeah, I didn’t make either of those fine dishes.

Food

I don’t have time right now.  Or inclination.  Most of my free time is spent at my Dad’s bedside.  Two evenings a week I cut out at dinner to see my Dad when my husband gets home from work.  Three days I week I have a sitter so I can spend a few hours with him without having to worry about a toddler’s sniffles or need to be entertained.  That allows me time to just sit and be with my dying Dad.  Time that cannot be rescheduled or pushed off to a later date that might be more convenient.

Because of that, dinner has suffered.  In the big scheme of things, that’s not a huge deal, but food is an important part of family life.  It is a common, shared experience — pretty much our only one on weekdays, so a cooked dinner has been important to us. With my Dad in medical flux since last winter, the shared meals have gotten interrupted with either visiting or my distinct lack of motivation to cook after long and sad days.  My son would have probably preferred that homework go by the wayside, but NO FREAKING WAY.

Enter my friends with their cooked meals.  Hallelujah!

There is something so simple, yet so wonderful in the gesture of cooking for someone going through a tough time.  Food can be such an expression of love and caring, which is just how I have felt serving my friends meals these past few days — loved and cared for. Never ever underestimate the power of warm food to provide comfort.

These meals, too, remind me of my last stint as a caregiver, when our little Donna was in her cancer treatment, and even after she died.  She had gone to her pre-school just five weeks before the cancer took her from us.  Five weeks at the beginning of a busy school year is not a lot of time to connect to a whole new community.  But I will never forget how so many of the classroom parents took turns cooking for us in the weeks after her death.

Each weeknight for five or six weeks, Donna’s teacher arrived at our door about 4:30 holding a meal lovingly prepared by a stranger to provide us dinner.  What a true gift during what was absolutely some of the worst days of my life.  Not having to think about food at a time of deep grief was total relief.  I didn’t care about much of anything in those early days, so the warm food nourished me in many ways.

If you’ve ever gifted a friend or family member with a cooked meal during a tough time in their life, thank you.  You rock.  For real.  What you did was a big freaking deal and you should be proud of yourself.

And if you’ve ever gifted me and my family a meal, know that this post is written to you.  That’s right, you.  Yum.  It was delicious and very appreciated.  Thank you.  Oh! And I might still have your Tupperware in my pantry.  xox

Posted on

It’s 4/20! Time to Embrace My Inner Squirrel

April 20, or 4/20 as the cool kids like to call it, is that single day of the year when I am reminded, again and again, just what a squirrel I really am.  For the record, a squirrel, in my book, is a person who, while not sheltered, hasn’t really participated in the, um, well, milestones of most normal, red blooded Americans.  I am most definitively a squirrel.

I have never smoked pot, weed, marijuana.  I was about 40 years old before I realized that “Mary Jane” is just one of its many euphemisms.  I still mistake the smell of it for that cute little black and white stripped critter that roams in the woods and helps Snow White hang her laundry.

I made this meme I few years ago, yes, on April 20. The thing is, this gal looks a lot like me. I have a striped dress just like this, wear glasses, have long, dark hair, and think that clogs are the bomb diggity.
I made this meme I few years ago, yes, on April 20. The thing is, this gal looks a lot like me. I have a striped dress just like this, wear glasses, have long, dark hair, and think that clogs are the bomb diggity.

I am guileless. Without known guile.  Guile free, yo.

Like Tina Fey, I remained a virgin until my mid-20s.  And full disclosure, I can count the men I’ve slept with on one finger.

I was that kid in high school that when her friends were hanging out swigging berry flavored wine coolers with the cross country team, I was crying in the front seat of my car, alone, wondering why I didn’t find any of it fun.  Nothing.  Not a bit.  I didn’t get any of it.  It was all lost on me. Sigh.

For a long time I felt misplaced because of these things.  Different than, separated from my peers.  No one would ever mistake me for cool.  Some of the time, like when I sat in that car, alone in the dark in 1986, I felt pangs about that.  Most of the time, I didn’t.  I was more focused on the certainty that when I achieved the next milestone, be it junior high, high school, or college, life would get better.  I would find my people.

Eventually, I did find my people, but that didn’t happen until I stopped fighting my nature.  I’m a squirrel.  There is no shame in that particular game.  I embrace it now.  Fully.  Those folks who really know me and love me are charmed by it.  If they aren’t, pffft, their disdain no longer phases me.

At this stage in my life, I embrace those odd traits that make me me.  I no longer feel less than or apart from others that are different than myself.  I don’t mind never having traveled in the fast lane, as the slow lane has always been more my speed.

It’s cool here, in the slow lane.  I get to stop when I want and look at the clouds or admire a tulip on a spring day.  I belt out really bad pop songs when I’m in the car, alone or with my kiddos.  I don’t worry about being judged anymore.  Who’s got time to be judged anyway?

I’ve claimed my inner squirrel and am proud of that.  Squirrels of the world unite!  And if you’re not a squirrel, embrace whomever you might be — even if you’re a skunk (see what I did there?)

Me circa 1986, 1998, 2004, and present day.
Me circa 1986, 1998, 2004, and present day.

 

Posted on

Lost and Found in Paradise

If you take out the religious overlay of the concept of paradise, it is defined as, “an ideal or idyllic place or state.”  So it is both a location, geography, and a feeling, or our internal geography, if you will.

Last December I had the privilege of joining three other families in the geographical paradise of Culebra, a small island off the larger island of Puerto Rico.  Dang, this little corner of the world is beautiful.  Warm sunshine, palm trees, aqua waters, fine sand beaches — a text book definition of paradise to so many.

See, it totally looks like a post card, but I snapped this photo off the porch of our vacation spot in Culebra.
See, it totally looks like a post card, but I snapped this photo off the porch of our vacation spot in Culebra.

Except it didn’t feel like paradise at the time.  I remember looking out from the porch, feeling as if I had been transported into a post card.  The beauty of this place we found ourselves in was astounding.  So there I was, surrounded by people I love, in this pristine, exotic locale, but as far away from paradise as I had felt in quite a while.

My person was there, on that porch, feeling a warm breeze on a December day, but my heart was at home in Chicago, fielding frantic phone calls from my sisters and worrying about my Dad in the midst of a medical crisis.  I was in Culebra, but I was not in paradise.

What I learned, quickly, was that if your internal geography does not match your external geography, well, all bets are off.  The paradise factor I was surrounded by didn’t matter much at all to me.

So when we ran out of milk for the baby and didn’t have a car to drive the four miles to the market that may or may not have any milk in stock, well, palm trees didn’t really help.  And when a friend kindly drove my son and I to the emergency room, such as it was on a small island off a larger island, the warm sun didn’t really make a dent in my worry for the wailing and moaning boy in my arms, writhing in pain from an ear infection.  And that elevated porch that afforded me tropical breezes and stunning views too often felt like a death trap for the 15 month old fearless child who would not be contained by the three screen doors leading to said porch.

Sigh.  Paradise was exhausting.

I was frustrated with myself for six solid days, there in the midst of paradise.  Why wasn’t I enjoying myself?  What was wrong with me?  How could I think of snorkeling or hiking or basking in the sun when who knew what was happening to one of the people I love most in the world in a hospital room in Chicago?

When our vacation was over, I was grateful.  Paradise was overrated.  And, of course, the trip ended with a nine hour delay in the San Juan Airport.  Having two young boys to entertain, one with an untreated ear infection and one a busy, busy bee, is not easy in a crowded airport in paradise the week after Christmas.

I know I sound like an ungrateful jerk, but stick with me, folks.

My point is this.  When I got home, I realized I had found paradise, right there on the kitchen floor.  It was a few weeks after our return from Culebra, and we were having a moment, my young boys and I.  Clad in pajamas on a weekend morning we all found ourselves on the kitchen floor, a pile of boys in my lap.  “Take a picture!” I asked of my husband, wanting to remember the moment I found paradise.

For me, right now, paradise is not a place I can get to on an airplane.  It doesn’t involve TSA agents or bad food or tiny bottles of liquor.  Paradise is that elusive “state” from the definition I referenced earlier.  A state of being and of feeling, that, for now, comes in drips and moments.  It is not a place I travel to, but instead, find myself in.  I can’t plan to be there, but must recognize it when it happens.

Paradise is that kiss my youngest just gave me, that I will accept despite his slight fever, because his kisses are gifts and still new enough to be novel.  Paradise is turning out the light and the screen to cuddle with my older son as he drifts off to sleep. Paradise is walking across the parking lot to get to the Noodle & Co. and realizing you just saw the first sprout of spring.  Paradise is the smell of Irish soda bread in the oven, knowing it will be eaten by your very favorite Irishman, your father.  Paradise is hugging your sister at the airport, so grateful for her kind and generous heart. Paradise is the laughter of your husband after 14 years of marriage.

I sometimes hate the realization that the tough things in life — the loss and the sorrow and the pain — are what lead you to see and recognize the most profound gifts of your life — the love and the simplicity and the abundance of ordinary days.  That is paradise, my friends, when you can fully appreciate the moments you find yourself in as masterpieces of wonder and joy and privilege and life and love.

My paradise is on the kitchen floor and in the front seat of our Ford with the kids chattering in the back and right now, reclined on the futon my husband owned before we even met, typing these words.  It’s not exotic and there is no warm breeze and I see the laundry pile in my periphery, but it’s clean laundry, dammit, and I appreciate it.