This morning
Facebook presented me with a memory from six years ago but didn’t show a
picture and wouldn’t let me share it. It was a post about watching a chef roast
a turkey and then, 24 hours before serving, put it in the fridge “to dry out.”
What’s with that? I thought the whole point was to keep turkey meat moist. Apparently,
refrigeration made the skin crisp and the meat even more moist. Could have
fooled me. But the post went on to describe a successful book signing at Barnes
& Noble and then dinner with Jacob. I’d fixed a version of the Scottish
“bangers and mash,”—sausage and mashed potatoes—and he loved it, so I taught
him to say bangers and mash. As he toddled off, close to bedtime, to watch just
a few minutes of TV, he said, without my asking, “I love you, Juju.” He was
five at the time.
The whole post
made me think how many things have changed. The best I get from Jacob, now
eleven, is a sort of mechanical, “Love you too,” when I hug him at night and
tell him I love him. He sounds exactly like one of his uncles. And I no longer
cook turkey, so I have no chance to try that turkey theory. My daughters do all
the holiday cooking these days. Nor do I go trotting lightheartedly off to book
signings, conferences and the like—missing the latter is a bitter blow,
magnified by the surgeon’s suggestions I’ll never abandon the walker.
When I saw the
surgeon Friday, he asked the usual questions: Was I getting out and about? Did
I feel life was getting back to normal? At that point, my voice got a little
shaky, I’m sure, as I told him life would never get back to what had been
normal for me. These days my life is circumscribed—I’m in the cottage alone
with Sophie I’d say 65% of the time; I get out some to lunch and dinner with
friends, and I occasionally eat in the house with the family. I don’t have the
drop-in visitors that I did when the cottage was new and a novelty, and I miss
them.
I have so much to
be thankful for, and so many people are in much worse straits than I am, but occasionally,
I have a little pity party. And the flashback post this morning triggered one.
My pity party has disappeared
quickly, not because I contemplated the people with disabling illnesses and
chronic pain and financial straits, all those dire circumstances, but because I
contemplated my own daughter. I had dinner in the house tonight. Christian
fixed a dish that was sort of like a Mexican version of spaghetti mac—hamburger,
pasta, corn, taco seasonings, and I don’t know what else, but it was so good.
He put cheese on top and put it in the broiler—and left it too long. But the
result was not what he feared—crisp and good, like the cheese that drips out of
a grilled cheese sandwich and solidifies on the pan.
Jordan was
cheerful and talkative, but clearly, she does not feel well. Her back is
better, though there are still movement that hurt her. But she’s had a heavy
cold now for a week, and she feels rotten, as we all do when we have a cold. I realized
she has not been herself for two weeks—first the back and then the cold. And
while she has not come out to chat and giggle, it’s because she feels lousy. So
color me more tolerant and less self-absorbed.
This will be a
good week. Let us all now give thanks for all our blessings.
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