Painting Chef - Cheaper Than Therapy

All my lovelies. In one boat.

I thought I saw you yesterday.

In my head I KNEW it wasn’t you. That would have been impossible. But I stood there, motionless, in the produce section yesterday and watched you. The way you looked over the tomatoes. Your delicate hand fluttering over every single one, never quite touching them, as you picked just what you were looking for. I stood there, transfixed by the way you stopped at the bakery and poured a cup of coffee. I watched you grasp it with both hands; your eyes closing as you drank and I knew, instinctively, that whether it was 9 degrees outside or 90, you would still be drinking coffee.

My feet were frozen as my eyes followed you. My heart was pounding and the lump in my throat made it difficult to breathe. I wanted so desperately to come up to you. Say hello. Touch your hand. I wanted to thank you for being there. For looking like her. For your delicate grace. I wanted to tell you about her. What she meant to me. How I hoped with all my heart that you had a granddaughter who loved you the same way.

Instead I left my cart and went to the ladies room, hid in a stall and cried.

Everyone says it gets easier. They say you don’t stop missing someone but you learn to live without them. When will that happen? My heart can only break into so many pieces before it just crumbles into dust and disappears. You’ve been gone more than a year but for a second, I thought I saw you yesterday. And it felt like losing you all over again.

Nobody chooses their family. And let’s be honest… the balance of the sucky vs. awesome family meter is probably cosmically way out of whack somewhere because it does seem that once the sucky family vibe invades your territory, you’re kind of screwed.

And if you are one of the people who got smacked by the sucky family stick or fell out of the shitty family tree and hit every branch on the way down, I am TRULY sorry but you probably just want to stop reading right now because… fair warning… I’m about to gush about TEH AWESOME of my family.

My younger sister, Betsy and I have had our rough patches. Two in particular, that I can remember and what’s amazing is that looking back on them, they can both be attributed much more to MY suckage than hers. Which is to say that she has no suckage. Because she is made of awesome and Care Bears and cotton candy and little tiny chocolate chips. But like everyone most people growing and learning and figuring out how to be adults, we came through that just fine.

Betsy is just cool. There is no other way to describe it. The kid personifies cool. She is laid back and fun and easy going and the smartest cat you will ever lay eyes on. She’s an ACTUAL rocket scientist. Are you impressed? You should be. She’s very important. She has many leather bound books. And her bathroom (she has no study) smells of… well she’s human. I’m assuming her bathroom smells like the rest of our bathrooms. But you get the idea. (Plus I think she keeps her cat’s litter box in the bathroom… so there’s that…)

Without a doubt, Betsy is the bravest person I’ve ever known. Her own personal comfort zones have no definition. The child knows how to follow an opportunity, regardless of how scary it may be. She moved to Atlanta, not knowing a soul (except some weirdly quiet yet stalkerish boy that my mom kind of accidentally set her up with which just turned into an awkward situation for EVERYONE) to go to Georgia Tech. She’d always been kind of the quiet one and suddenly we were moving her to the middle of this huge city. But she hit the ground running and hasn’t ever looked back.

Then about 6 years ago, she moved to Seattle. Again… the jaw-dropping bravery. But she saw an opportunity and she grabbed it and committed herself to it 110%. Without fear or hesitation. Because of the awesome… did I mention the awesome?

I know that as the older sibling, we are supposed to set examples. We are supposed to be a guide and someone to come to for advice and encouragement. But I think the only example I ever set for Betsy was what NOT to do. I admire everything about her. She is strong and fearless. She is good and kind. She is loving and honest. She is fierce and loyal. And if she was the only person in the world I ever had in my corner, I know I could scale giant buildings with one hand tied behind my back. On a bad hair day.

And this kick ass chick? Well… she’s turning 30 today. And there is nothing more I’d love to do than put on my party pants and knock on her door with a cake full of candles, several bottles of wine and a box full of Peeps. You know… because after cake and wine, there is nothing us Hall girls like better than blowing up marshmallow chickens in the microwave. Really. Try it sometime.

But she lives on the other side of the country. And while a visit that-a-ways IS long overdue, for today we will have to do with my first attempt at a celebration via skype. And while that webcam may not be flattering to me or the rest of the world for that matter… I DEFY you to try and find a camera that doesn’t love this pretty lady…

Happy birthday kid. I love you.

I had this whole idea in my head to talk about how difficult it can be during the holidays to bounce back and forth from family to family, all the while trying to keep everyone happy but barely underneath the surface you are CRACKING THE FUCK UP and I don’t mean in a laughing manner. So you smile and make nice and (attempt to) say the right things and then as soon as you get into the car to haul ass to the next person’s house you rip into each other pointing out all the wrong things said and the passive aggressiveness that was so OBVIOUSLY overlooked and why can we just run away to a tropical island for the holidays and oh look… we’re here… time to SMILE!

But I erased most of it. And started over.

Because here’s the thing… I used to have a huge family. A big group of loud people who congregated in the kitchen with big voices and even bigger glasses of wine. We were all throwing ingredients into each other’s dishes and telling stories at the same time and stepping over dogs camped out on the floor hoping for a bite of whatever was making that delicious smell. It was the kind of relaxed and loving atmosphere that only a family that honestly enjoys each other’s company can produce.

Three years ago, my family and Patrick’s family all came down to Augusta for Thanksgiving. Patrick was going to be on call and there was no getting out of it, we just had to stay down there. Thanksgiving is, traditionally, my very favorite holiday. Because it’s just about family. And being together and lots of good food. You can’t go wrong…

While everyone was in Augusta, a new plan was formed. Thanksgiving would stay as an all together holiday! (For the record, I will remind you that my parents and Patrick’s parents live about 5 minutes apart but that up until this point we had kept our holiday celebrations decidedly separate. I’m sure this was somehow my idea… the good ones usually are.) But from this point on, Thanksgiving would simply rotate houses. And at that time, nobody had a clue the heartache that would be in store for us over the next few years.

Cut to this year; the full circle has been made and Patrick and I are once again on deck to host Thanksgiving. I sat down and started counting and menu planning for this most festive occasion and had a bit of a panic attack when I realized we were looking at a mere SIX PEOPLE and for some reason, I found that… depressing. After the year we’ve had and losing people so central to our family, I’m not prepared for a small and quiet Thanksgiving. I think that this year, more than ever, we need a crowd and a boisterous environment. I crave the confusion of too many people in the kitchen and everyone talking over each other.

So I brought in ringers. I badgered Patrick until he caved and invited a whole slew of cousins. Loud ones. With lots of new stories. Hopefully next year there will be a baby for everyone to fuss over but for this year? I just wanted there to be noise. None of us are ready to accept a holiday without it. It’s too soon.

And maybe this can be our new Thanksgiving normal. Because I genuinely like these people too.

Friday was Patrick’s birthday. It was the day he finally worked his way out of “Mexican 30” limbo (at the ripe age of 453) and, even more tragically, the day I once again became his older woman by nine whole months. An amount of time that would be significant in the baby-incubating realm were I to ever get my Busted Uterus and Punk-Ass Ovaries to properly incubate said fetus.

None of which is the point of this entry.

I have taken on the role of official Birthday Cake maker in my family. Something that I think would make my grandmother very proud because every ounce of baking knowledge that I possess came directly from her with two exceptions (the secret to chocolate chip cookies and the perfect pound cake; two things that I will NOT be sharing. You are welcome…)

I think my mother is secretly grateful for my choosing this role because she confided in me that baking just makes her sad now. But I think we all mourn and grieve in different ways because whenever I open my pantry to gather ingredients I feel my grandmother in my heart. As I gather flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla beans and butter, I feel like she is standing next to me, reminding me not to overmix brownie batter or teaching me the perfect way to temper egg yolks. I can close my eyes and see her perched on a stool, pushing aside a looming deadline for half an hour without a second thought to place her tiny hands over mine and gently guiding me as I practiced the lacy designs that she could do in her sleep.

And so I’m not sure what happened Saturday evening as I was assembling my husband’s birthday cake. Two layers of vanilla bean cake with a strawberry filling. I know something went wrong as I was making the strawberry-almond filling. Somehow I just didn’t have the touch to thicken the filling. Perhaps a forgotten ingredient. Maybe just a lack of patience. I don’t know. But I do know that as I watched that filling ooze out from between those two cake layers I just wanted my grandmother. I just wanted to hear her voice tell me not to worry, that it would be easy to fix and then we would just “cover our sins with icing”.

As I stood in the middle of my kitchen, tears streaming down my cheeks, I just whispered softly to her, asking her to help me. Not because it was a big deal that the cake wasn’t turning out. Not because I was afraid of not having a perfect cake for Patrick to blow out candles on (we are YEARS from that!!). But because this was the part of her that I was carrying on. This was how I was honoring her. And I didn’t have all the answers which meant I still needed her. And that’s tough shit because she’s gone.

But as I stood there quietly crying, praying that Patrick wouldn’t stand up and see me, I started to feel calm. I started to feel… not so helpless. And I started to just get a little damn creative. As I stood in front of my pantry reasoning out what would fix what had turned into something that can only be described as a bleeding cake. A few deep breaths and I remembered the cans of pastry filling I’d bought on a whim a few weeks ago. Almond, raspberry, blueberry! And as I “patched things up” and “covered my sins” it dawned on me that maybe she really had taught me everything she knew. Because sometimes the secret is just stepping back, taking a few calming breaths and making it work.

I still miss her everyday. People say that it gets easier. So far that hasn’t happened. But for the first time since she died, I finally feel like I’m going to be okay.