All I Want For Dinner Is...

My mother confesses to me one day, with only mild shame, that after dropping my father off at the airport, she headed straight to the local pie shop. Knowing that she would be home alone for the entire weekend, she purchased a fresh peach pie. She went home and had a piece for breakfast, a piece for lunch and a piece for dinner. This eating habit continued until the whole pie was gone, which happened to coincide with my father’s return.

I find my mother isn’t alone. In the coziness of a front porch on a summer’s eve, my aunt confesses similar eating habits. After years of cooking for a large family, she now lives alone and has the freedom to eat whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She doesn’t realize how envious I am and how I look forward to the time when I can eat cake for dinner and won’t have to hide the M&M’s I’m eating for breakfast. But, for now I must act like a mother, the Trojan horse responsible for my family’s well-being and health. I will continue spending endless hours washing lettuce, boiling brown rice, sautéing onions, garlic and garden tomatoes, when all I really want for dinner is cookie dough or Breyer’s Bing Cherry ice cream.

Some mother’s I learn, create a loophole that allows them to retain their healthy-eating-habits-mother status while indulging in forbidden foods. My friend complains to her mother how her own children eat all the “good food” and she never gets any. Her mother confesses to harboring a secret snack stash for years. She calls it her “cheap therapy.”

Perhaps this desire is passed from mother to daughter. One night I make a wonderful dinner of steamed broccoli, cauliflower, rice, and marinated chicken. I call the children to dinner and my youngest daughter arrives first. “What’s for dinner?” she asks with suspicious accusation. I repeat the menu of which I am quite proud. She puts her hands on her hips and declares, “But I wanted rice pudding!” Knowing just how she feels I answer, “Someday you can!”

Postscript: I know what all you health minded people are thinking-- the way I really want to eat will drastically affect my health and well being, and I will be prone to excessive lethargy; but then again-- no one will know how often I nap.

The Boomerang Principle

A long time ago, I was on a hike with a large group of young girls. There was a girl behind me, and no matter how hard I tried-- I could not get away from her. She was loud and a stream of obnoxious expressions raced from her mouth. At one point I almost said something; but I refrained. Four years later, I am teaching a class and the little girl on the hike has grown into a shy, respectful young woman. I remember her so well; thank goodness she doesn’t have a reason to remember me.

This is only one incident that illustrates a frequent occurrence in my life—what I have termed as the boomerang principle: “There is a universal rule that relationships with people, if they are amiss or awry in any way, will return to straighten themselves out.”

Another convincing case in point: I had a horrible dental experience, (the details are another story). Unfortunately, I spent too much time hating the dentist. I wanted to hang the equivalent of a Scarlet A on his office door.

A few years later we had a realtor appointment to see a home for sale because of a family split. As we walked through the house, I noticed a few family pictures and the father was sadly familiar—the dentist. After we bought the house, I learned things about the dentist’s life that allowed me to trade my anger for compassion.

Last night it happened again—but with a different twist. Two years ago, I took a friend’s English classes at the high school while she had a baby. I started the school year with what I considered my classes. There was a young man on my roll who never showed up. I wondered what to do but mostly I worried about him. I inquired into his whereabouts. One young woman explained that he wasn’t in a good place. Should I go to his house? Contact his parents? I was soon caught up with 180 students. Five short weeks later, my time was up. I didn’t have time to find the boy, but over the years I have wondered about him. Two nights ago, he showed up at my house. The name was familiar but it took me a day to realize this was the lost young man. The next time he came over, I sat him down and told him my concern for him over the last few years. No, he hadn’t been in a good place, but things had changed. And he told me, the incident meant a lot to him.

What was the message this time? Did I not follow my gut the first time? Would it have made a difference? I don’t know, will never know…but the boomerang principle brought him back, if for only a moment—to give me another chance to let the boy know that I cared.

Closing the Pool

Every spring, we open the pool: a phone call to the pool man, turn the heater on, scrub the deck and the pool cover; children so anxious for water play that they swim in Arctic temperatures.
Every fall we close the pool: call the pool man, stack the cushions and pool toys into the pool house, wash and store the beach towels. The children complain, but they are back in school and have tired of swimming.
This year the pool man came while I was gone. Later that day, I went to check if the pool was shut down for the year.
And I sat down and cried.
I remembered too clearly the past spring when we opened the pool. I remembered too clearly the children, years earlier, toddling through my life.
I grasped that if I blinked, it would be time to re-open the pool, or see another daughter's marriage, another child's high school graduation.
Matthew Arnold, the English critic/poet wrote in 1851, "Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sopphocles long ago Heard it on the AEgean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow..."
...of my life; only the ebb and flow (and passing) of my life is measured "by the closing of the pool."

When A Door Closes

Is it Why?

Today I stood before a class of high school sophomores teaching from author Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. We were discussing the elements of a timeless book and the reasons for reading a book written in 1953. "Could it be, in part, that Bradbury accurately saw the future?" I asked. Together we read this passage from page 73:

We've started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much?"

I then asked the students how many of them knew about Darfur Sudan? Three of the twenty-nine students raised their hand. Even I was surprised.

The Yin and Yang of Marriage or The Before and After

My phone is out, so I walk up the hill to borrow my neighbor’s phone. While I am there, she shows me the finishing touches of a twelve month remodel that left their home in chaos. But today she is putting it back together and it looks lovely. “Yes, she comments, I’m even ready to forgive my husband.” This is funny because I can relate. Less than a year ago we finished with our nine month kitchen remodel that should have taken two months. When it was all done and absolutely beautiful, my husband said, “Thank-you, I’m really glad we did this, it’s beautiful.” I should have said, “your welcome, but inside I seethed with resentment. From the beginning concept until the day we finished, he was the Thomas, the black cloud to creativity and vision. But he probably is the reason we finally finished; and the reason we are not tearing the wall out of the laundry room and redoing the master bath. My neighbor points out that she is like my husband and I am like hers; or he is the yin and I am the yang: the balance that brings some kind of normalcy to a house remodeling job, or a marriage.

Our conversation continues on the importance of this balance. “Because, “I point out, “you know the couple who don’t have the yin and yang and their house is in perpetual disarray. There is always a project, an improvement and there isn’t a partner who screams “stop.”

“And,” she adds, “you know the couple who never makes any changes, you can walk into their home and say, “1970’s.”

I walk back down the hill that day aware the yin and yang in marriage, and the need for balance, or the right balance. After all, balance is what makes a teeter-totter ride so fun and a tug of war that never ends.

Before: The brown and dark kitchen, After: The white and bright kitchen.

A Vivid Dream

This morning I was awoken by the gentle nudge of my daughter. It took a moment to realize my ride over the ocean had abruptly ended.

I exclaimed with joy when describing the magical dream to my daughter: "I was holding on to the end of a flying carpet with my parents and a sister sitting in front of me. The ocean and coastline were alive with people engaged in playful activity. We flew past an airplane structure with a man in old-fashioned flying goggles and scarf. A gust of wind took my cowboy hat made of stiff white lace. My sister chided me for not holding onto my hat. I watched the hat swirl with the wind until it landed perfectly on the head of a child walking in the surf." This is where the dream was interrupted.

"Everything was so vivid and real," I continued my explanation, "It was more real than the Flight of the Condor at California Adventure/Disneyland."

"Perhaps," my daughter suggested, "you had a glimpse of heaven."