Dear , 

Greetings from the Sunset Inn, where I am holed up working on my memoir-in-process, How She Fed Us. (I let myself out of my room twice daily, for sunrise and sunset. Here's this morning's sunrise, which I braved 20-degree temperatures to view. So glad I have long underwear and a good winter jacket! And the coziest mittens ever.)

I'd like to say I'm having a wonderful time writing, but that would not be the whole truth. While I've had some great hours over the last few days, in some of them I've plodded along, spending more time than I want to debating the merits of one word versus another and whether each piece has too much or not enough in it. (In the interest of full disclosure, my fear is that the one I'm sharing with you today has too much.)

But that doesn't mean I'm not happy to my bones to be here. Writing a book doesn't feel good in every moment, but I'm so grateful, even in the moments of struggle, to have time and space to do it.

(There's still one spot left in this weekend's retreat if you want to join me, by the way. Community is one powerful tool to diminish struggle. Details below, or click here.)

Before I wrap up so that you can scroll down to the featured writing, "Green Bean Casserole," (which is about a lot more than cream of mushroom soup and canned French-fried onions), I just wanted to tell you the magical thing that happened upon my arrival here on Sunday (which is the reason I picked "Green Bean Casserole" as the piece to share today). 

You see, I've been working on getting this piece right for a few weeks now, off and on, so it's been on my mind. I keep tweaking words, adding and taking out sentences and paragraphs. I was beginning to wonder, Do I even like it? (Maybe you get in places like this with your writing?) I thought about it several times on the ride here.

I arrived after hours, and headed up to my room, where I knew the door would be unlocked and my key would be waiting. I expected the light to be on (it was), and the notebook with welcome information to be on the bed (it was). I tend to arrive after hours; I know the drill. What I didn't expect, because it's never happened before, was that music would be playing. Whoever prepared my room had set the TV on a music channel. A nice touch, I thought.

As I put my pocketbook down on the bed, an unfamiliar song ended. And the song that played next was, unbelievably, the song that I speak of in the very piece I've been working on. (Both have to do with someone who could be hard to handle; read the featured writing below to find out the name of the song and the "how.") 

What are the odds that, out of all the songs that could be playing, this would be the one? When, mind you, I didn't expect to hear any song at all?

I am, I admit, still gobsmacked about this. I'm taking this as a good omen: that I'll get this piece right soon, if I haven't yet. That I'll get the book finished. That the retreat this weekend will hold magic for the people coming. That, as I learned so many years ago when I read The Artist's Way, the Universe supports our creativity, and gives us signs of this if we are open to them, if we are paying attention.

Here's to that. And here's to handling our challenges, in and out of writing, with aplomb.

Love and light,

an excerpt from the in-process cookbook memoir

How She Fed Us
Reflections of the Recipes of a Perfectly Imperfect Mother

 

GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE

Found among Mother’s papers: a Dear Abby column entitled “Wife fishes for cooking compliments,” in which a wife complains that she has “yet to receive one word of appreciation for anything [she has] prepared since [their] marriage” and is “considering serving him dog food, scooped out of the can and garnished with a few steamed onions and a sprig of parsley just to see if [she gets] a reaction.”

Reading it reminded me of a story my father loved to tell: When he and Mother were newlyweds, she prepared a recipe of green beans in a tomato-based sauce for dinner one night. My dad, who had never eaten green beans any way but plain, asked the ill-fated question, “What did you do to these beans?”

Mother leapt to her feet, dumped his green beans into her tin colander, rinsed them vigorously in the sink, then clanged them, dripping and unadorned, back onto his plate.

After that, Dad said, whenever Mother served anything that was unfamiliar to him, he used the adjectives unusual and interesting. Though he never saw green beans in tomato sauce again—from then on, Mother’s most interesting green bean treatment was the ubiquitous casserole made with cream of mushroom soup and canned French-fried onion rings.

I wish I could remember if Mother ever laughed when Dad told this story. And just why did he enjoy it so much?

Back then, I thought my father could do no wrong. He was the calm one, the voice of reason. My mother was emotional, even, at times, irrational. (Not, despite my best efforts, unlike me.) While I never saw her rinse and re-serve vegetables, I sure remember the many times she asked me, when she was angry with Dad, “Whose side are you on?”

“My side,” I’d always say. But I think she knew the truth. 

It seems, looking back, that my father’s emphasis when telling the green bean story was not on the humor in the situation, but rather on his pride at the quickness with which he learned to “handle” his admittedly sensitive wife. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

How many times did he tell me that there were three kinds of people in the world: the smart ones who learned from other people’s mistakes, sparing them the ignominy of making their own; the average ones who learned from their own flops and failures; and the stupid ones, who never learned at all?

Now I see this hierarchy of intelligence can be as much a weapon as it is the teaching tool my father thought it was. One-upmanship at its most cunning. Would anyone share it so often if he didn’t believe he was in the top group—or secretly fear he was in the bottom one?

As for me, I was caught in the middle. It took years to see that there had been two valid sides to every story either of my parents told—and to wonder if Mother felt as unappreciated as the woman who wrote to complain to Dear Abby.

Would I feel appreciated if my husband called something I cooked him unusual or interesting? What is it we’re really yearning for when we seek appreciation? The song humming in my head as I ponder these questions is Camelot’s “How to Handle a Woman.” I can hear the tenderness in Richard Harris’s voice when he recalls Merlin’s advice to “Simply love her.”

There were times, over the course of their 51 years of marriage, when each of my parents doubted their love for each other. I know this, not only because of the pain I witnessed, but because they told me. I also saw the way they both kept working at their marriage, and, in the end, love did prevail. The tenderness between them even as my mother’s Lewy Body Dementia took its toll was palpable.

Maybe my father’s go-to words, unusual and interesting, didn’t hold the appreciation Mother yearned for. But I remember at least a few times, despite his being much more an “eat to live” than a “live to eat” kind of guy, when he was lavish with compliments about her cooking. Her Banana Cream Pie comes to mind. Also her Stuffed Baked Potatoes.

 And once, when I went to visit Dad some time after Mother passed away, he was showing the woman who came three times a week to cook for him the family cookbook I made during Mother’s last year with us. “Could you make some of the recipes in here?” he asked.

My mother so often took her heavy kitchen shears to items she found in the Erie Times-News, often to send to one of her children. This one about serving dog food with steamed onions and a sprig of parsley to a husband, she kept. And I can’t know why. But I can imagine her calling, “Paul, you have to see this.”

I can hear Dad saying: “Well, that’s an unusual recipe. How interesting.”

I can picture them sharing a laugh.