Essays

It’s Never Been About Anything But Food

Someone is talking to me about something. The person is either a co-worker, my husband, one of my kids, a friend, or another relative. I listen for what seems like a reasonable amount of time until—my thoughts turn to my next meal. What am I going to have? What can I have? What should I have? If it’s a weekday, it should be something within a certain calorie range so that I can maintain (and not exceed) my 10-pound weight gain during the pandemic. If it’s the weekend, it can be more of a splurge.

Either way, I have lost the thread of whatever the person who is talking to me is saying. Is what they are saying more important than where my next meal is coming from and what it will consist of? I would like to say yes but, alas, unless said person is telling me about an emergency situation, I am now ready to admit that it probably isn’t.

Eventually, said person asks me a question. This is where I get into trouble, as I only listened to what they’ve said up to the point where an egg salad sandwich, buffalo chicken pizza slice or pasta Bolognese entered my mind rendering it useless for engaging in conversation. Then I have to say, “I’m so sorry, can you just say that again?” If I am lucky, they rewind to where I’ll have some semblance of what has transpired during my food dreaming. But just as often, they’ll repeat just the very last thing they said. Then I have to admit that I wasn’t listening. I used to make up something about why I wasn’t listening, but now I am ready to admit it: It’s always been about the food.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I think of isn’t “What do I need to do today” but “What can I eat for breakfast?” It is literally what gets me out of bed, especially on the weekend. I mean, if there’s nothing good in the kitchen, what incentive do I have to go down there?

I have been obsessed with eating (or not eating) my entire life. Like most women, and nowadays many men, I have lived my life either enjoying or denying myself food. It makes me feel incredibly guilty to be lucky enough to have enough food when so many throughout our world don’t, but also like most people who do have enough food, having the ability to eat or not to eat has made me a little crazy.

I center my life around food opportunities. When my daughter arrives home from college, I think to myself, What time is her flight getting in? Will it land in time for us to all go to our (my) favorite restaurant? Or will it be so late that I’ll have to eat whatever we have at home before we pick her up? Either option is fine—I mean I will get to eat either way— but I need to know the logistics. Now.

During the work week, I toil away, happy to have something to take my mind off the fact that I am not eating until lunch. Then lunchtime comes around—oh, bliss!—but then it is over, and I toil some more, until the dinner bell metaphorically rings.

On the weekend, things are a little more dicey. I don’t necessarily have work to do. I mean, I could always clean out our closets and organize the house, but that’s no fun. But I do need to occupy my time between breakfast and lunch; lunch and dinner. It’s a bit trickier when there is nothing else that I absolutely have to do.

When friends invite us to dinner, or when they used to pre-pandemic, I would think “I wonder what time we’ll actually eat?” Ever since we had kids, my husband and I have gotten used to early dinners. Even though we’re empty nesters now, my food obsession has made eating early still fine with me. But lots of people—most normal people, in fact—don’t eat dinner as early as we do.

Sometimes certain friends of ours act all European on us and don’t serve dinner until 9 o’clock. This creates a great deal of anxiety for me. I don’t want to be impolite, but WHEN ARE WE GOING TO EAT?

Our adult son has been home during the pandemic, and I think he is ready to fly the coop (again) solely based on my early-eating habits. One night, shortly after he came home from work, we were about to go out to dinner, when he begged, “Can we PLEASE not eat at 5 pm?”

“But it’s great,” I said, “because the restaurant won’t be crowded.” He retorted, “Restaurants are at 25 percent capacity. Can we eat at a time when normal people eat?”

I reluctantly agreed to 6:30, but I had to find something to do with myself to take my mind off what should have been my dinner hour.

You would think that because I love food so much that I would love to cook. This is a fallacy. Cooking and eating are two entirely different things. I love to eat, but I have no love for creating good food. I cook, but not well, a fact my children will willingly attest to.

I have felt bad that unlike so many other people during the pandemic I haven’t really developed any hobbies or passions. Thankfully, our family has so far been well. So there has been time, which would have been used up by commuting to work or hanging out with friends, to spare. Some folks have taken up the guitar, knitting, learning a new language. I did try knitting, because I thought it might help take my mind off food. Instead it just taught me that I have absolutely no ability to knit.

So, finally, I have accepted the fact that I do, in fact, have a hobby. And it is food. Not making it, but eating it. And thinking about it. Constantly. Does that count?

On Losing a Parent Before They’ve Actually Passed

My mom died on May 1, 2020. It was during the pandemic, and we could have only 10 people at her graveside. We snuck in two more—her nurse of 10 years, who was family to us, and our son’s girlfriend, also family. While it was sad to say goodbye, the fact that she had dementia made it feel like I had lost her years ago.

She had the type of dementia where she always knew us, our names, her grandkids. So it wasn’t as bad as I know it could have been. But what she lost was her ability to converse. In the years before she became bedridden, I would take her out to lunch, and the conversation would consist of me asking her questions, commenting on the weather, and, after her one-word answers, we would be silent.

The heartbreaking thing about this is that my mother was a talker. One hundred percent Irish, she loved to talk about people, the news, her family—everything. She never went to college, but she had me bested by a long shot on her knowledge of history, geography and current events. “Don’t you ever read the news?” she would ask me, exasperated at the fact that I had no idea what was going on in the world. Unlike my mom, I had mostly given up reading the paper when I had young kids, because I didn’t want to read about terrible things like crime, kidnappings, and the like. But she always kept me up to date, whether I wanted her to or not.

She also had the best sense of humor and would routinely make fun of herself in the most irreverent ways. She always told my brother and me, “When I die, do NOT have an open casket! People always say, ‘Oh, doesn’t she looks so great,’ at open caskets. I mean I’m DEAD. How great could I look.’”

When she lost her breast to a non-cancerous but enormous tumor 45 years ago, she was devastated, but not enough to lose her sense of humor. “Help the boobless,” I remember her calling out in the living room, with a cup in her hand pretending she was begging. Even at 11 years old, I thought she was hilarious.

We started noticing things were not quite right about 10 years ago when we would go to her house. The kitchen cupboards were bare, which was unlike my mother. I was having lunch with her one day and she was making tuna salad. She was planning to split an individual can of tuna with me. “Mom,” I said, “They’re INDIVIDUAL cans. We each need one,” I said, foodie that I am. “Oh, this is plenty,” my mom responded. This from my mother, who loved to eat and always fed us tons.

I took her to the store several times, and she would buy one or two things. “Mom, you need way more food than this,” I would say, panicked because she didn’t drive and I wanted to make sure she filled up until my aunt could take her again. “This is plenty!” she would say, as I would toss random foodstuffs in to make sure she had enough.

One of the saddest memories I have is of my mom telling me that she knew something was wrong. “I’m forgetting so many things,” she said to me, about seven years ago on the phone. “Mom, I forget things all the time,” I said, which was completely true. I had 3 kids and a job and I didn’t know whether I was coming or going half the time, but my mother knew her situation was different, even if I was in denial.

“It’s really frightening,” she said, after I mentioned that my middle son had had his tonsils out a few years before. “I don’t remember that at all.”

My mom was fiercely religious, but in a way that often highlighted her sense of humor.

“I’m following all of the rules,” she said of her Catholic faith, “just in case it’s all true. They’ll have to let me into heaven then,” she added with a laugh. But she also used her conscience to guide her. She wouldn’t sign a pro-life petition that a neighbor waved in front of her. “I may not be for it myself,” she told him, “but I don’t think I have the right to choose for anyone else.” In her day-to-day dealings with people, she was kind, compassionate and understanding. She taught my brother and me to give gifts when a neighbor or a teacher had a baby and be compassionate and generous to the poor. “We are so lucky—we have so much,” she would say.

The thing I missed most when she started the long road to losing her ability to converse was being able to call her up and tell her what was going on. I used to call her with a problem, or if one of the kids was sick, to ask her advice. Or we would just talk for an hour about nothing and everything.

In the past couple of years, when she was mostly confined to bed, she would always say, as I was leaving, “Come over soon!” I would come, but our visits consisted of me sitting by her bedside as she watched TV. She always smiled and gave me a big hug when I came in, but aside from a comment about the weather or the news of the day, conversation eluded her.

When she passed four months ago, I felt sad but also relieved for her that she was free. I still often think, as I used to before she died, “I’ll have to call mom up and talk to her about this or that,” but I can’t do that now, as I couldn’t for the past 10 years.

I do know, though, that her life, so well lived, continues. Through my brother, Brian, and me, and through her grandchildren, Conall, Mae, Nolan, Declan and Charlotte. All of whom are kind, thoughtful, compassionate people. Just as Irene was— and still is.

September 19, 2020

My Novella Comes True…Sort Of

I wrote a novella, “The More Things Change,” mostly because I couldn’t commit to a full novel. It is loosely based on my feelings about how I wished my soon-to-be-college-aged kids were young again. The book, which is in the Literature section of this website in installments, is a fantasy story in which Kate—the protagonist—gets her wish, and she, her husband, friends, and all their children are magically transformed into the 10-years-younger versions of themselves.

 I wrote the book several years ago, as my oldest was about to go off to college. My husband, Jeff, and I have three “real” children, ages 24, 22 and 19. All three of them had been out of the house, and Jeff and I had been empty nesters until…Corona came! 

Ironically, I got my protagonist’s wish…sort of. My kids have all been home for the past several months, since the pandemic hit. We even gained a fourth child in our middle son’s girlfriend, who also lived with us for a few months. The two of them have since gotten an apartment of their own, but our oldest and youngest are still home. It is truly the best of times…and the worst of times.

The pandemic has taken so many lives and destroyed so many jobs. I lost my mother, Irene, on May 1 (not from Corona), and we saw firsthand what a funeral with only 10 people wearing masks at the cemetery was like. Then Jeff’s father, Mel, died on May 30 (also not from the virus), and we experienced a second pandemic-style funeral, only more people were allowed by then. Businesses closed, we all worked from home, schools shut down and gradually all of our kids came home.

 The good part of this, for our family, has been getting to know our adult children better. Normally we see them at Christmas and during the summers, so this time together has been unique. I discovered that our oldest is extremely helpful around the house without being asked, and when he’s not working he’s writing a screenplay or making a beat. Our middle child is creating his own clothing line while handling social media accounts for work, and our youngest creates and sells her own crafts while managing her schoolwork. There’s a lot more laundry, I’m hearing complaints about cooking again, and the house is always a mess. And we’re always all arguing about the above. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

September 11, 2020