Frozen in Feburary

Valentine’s Day has come and gone and as a widow I thought I had gotten through it triumphantly without picking the scabs off from old wounds. I barely thought about the day in terms of what it used to mean when I had a man in my life. I didn’t cringe at the sight of red or avoid kissy-face movies on TV. I had another bee in my bonnet that kept me fired up and after that went out, I realized that I had spent Valentine’s Day playing Susie Homemaker. And not just any old kind of Susie Homemaker. I spent the afternoon in the kitchen making comfort foods. A roast beef dinner with carrots and potatoes was in my mini crock pot. I baked bread for the second time since my husband died and I made tapioca. Considering the fact that I’ve been living on two protein and fruit shakes and one colorful meal a day for a few months now, I was surprised that I did all this cooking on a whim.

Well, not exactly on a whim. I freeze single serving pieces of protein---salmon, chicken, beef and pork and at any one time I’ll have enough frozen packets to get me through two weeks. One of the last things I do each night before bedtime is to grab something to defrost in the refrigerator overnight. So the roast beef dinner was planned. But I pulled the ingredients and gear out for making bread without any more forethought than it would be a great way to warm up the kitchen. (It’s been brutally cold here and I haven’t even been out to the mailbox since it started.) The tapioca came about because I had some Silk almond milk in the refrigerator that was getting close to its expiration date and I thought making tapioca would be a good way to use it up. Hint: Don’t do this at home. It ends up to be an unnatural greyish tan, not the white stuff my mother used to make on Thursdays and every since has been one of my favorite comfort foods. Roast beef dinners earned that title, too, because it was her company-is-coming meal and when my husband was alive, it was one of my few claims to culinary fame along with baking bread. My yeast was outdated so my bread wasn’t exactly a success yesterday but the fact that I actually made it again was a widowhood accomplishment. When Don was alive I made bread once or twice a week.

Memo to myself: Even when I think I’m handling widowhood just fine, thank you very much, the signs of loss are still under the surface. The comfort foods come out of the cupboard, the sleepless nights creep back in and enjoying the present takes a back seat to worrying about the future and the legacy I’ll leave behind. I suppose those things could also just be a by-product of cabin fever which is common here in the frozen north this deep into the winter. If it’s not the snow keeping us inside, it’s the sub-zero wind chills. It’s the blowing snow and whiteouts on the roads. It’s the lack of human contact that comes with wanting nothing more than to stay warm. This week, even the dog isn’t staying outside any longer than it takes to do his business which is totally out of character for the little bugger. 

“He taught me the real importance of words properly used”---that’s a quote from a TV conversation going about the death of journalist, David Carr and it was said by Anthony Bourdain. The moderator of Reliable Sources---whose name escapes me--- closed the segment with words to the effect that he will carry a piece of David around with him for the rest of his life. And wouldn’t that be a great thing to say to widows at a funeral? “I will carry a piece of your husband with me for the rest of my life.” When you think about that statement, we can all say that about the people who have touched our lives. For good or bad, we are the sum total of the people who have influenced us along the way to becoming the unique people we become.  We gather nuggets from here and there and years later we find ourselves baking bread on a Valentine’s Day because it made your husband happy when he was alive. Sometimes we carry so many pieces of others around that it’s hard to know where we actually start and stop. Woo is me, I’m about to get philosophical and wish I drank beer so I could cry in it.

The temperature right now is six and tonight it’s supposed to go down to seven below. With weather like this it can’t help but remind me of how miserable it was to plow snow when it was this cold. That’s when plows and hoses always seem to break down and I’d be holding a flashlight while Don crawled around in the snow fixing them. It also reminds me of the time my husband had a drunk seagull tucked under his arm while he drove all around the mall, showing his plowers his feathered prize. But that was the topic of another essay, one I can’t find and may have to write again. Some memories are just too good not to document in black and white. ©