So I'm freaking out a little...well alot.  I have spent the last, oh, 3 hours or so on a paper that is due tomorrow (and have netted about 1 1/2 pages of text) and this is going to be a long night.  I am at the point in time where I start debating if I need to get another macchiato or not - maybe with an extra shot of espresso for good measure - because I am going to be here a while.

It isn't like I procrastinated about this.  Yes, I knew about this paper since the beginning of the semester but I have just been swamped with so much other stuff since the beginning of the semester that also had to get done (and that I was more interested in doing) that this paper got pushed to the back burner - but it needs to be better than a back burner paper!  I practically failed the first exam for this class (and when I say failed I am not being coy or over dramatic about a disappointing B - I mean I got a D on the exam - yeah, that's bad - I don't do D's) and after two other minor projects, this sucker is the key to my success.  I did really well on the two little projects - probably put too much work into them in efforts to over compensate for a bad test, but they were worth peanuts compared to how many points this project is worth. 

AHHHH

So it is a paper about Jewish Immigration to the United States and Jewish migration within the United States - a harder topic than I thought.  But now that I am done complaining it is back to work.  Why do I do this to myself!

EDITED TO ADD SEVERAL HOURS LATER...

Time for that second macchiato...make it a double

This is my obsession and what is killing my grades in everything else.  Which is a problem I tried to fix today.  I just spent from 1:30 until 4:30 ON MATH.  GROSS.  Math sucks.  But it was a chance to really improve my grade and my grade could use some serious improving so I did it and I am proud of myself.  

Math aside (THANK GOODNESS!) now my priorities for this week are as follows...

Monday - Here's what's Due:  Math Take Home Exam, Math Practice Problems, Math Bookwork, The "What I have so far" of my Advanced Writing paper (YAY!), and an extra credit essay for my Historical Geography class

Tuesday - International Human Rights Exam #2  (all essay baby!)

Wednesday - Here's what's Due:  Major Research Paper for my Historical Geography class about Jewish Immigration to the United States (that I haven't started lol, lol, lol )

Thursday - Here's what's Due:  Rough Draft of my International Human Rights research paper about the potential implications of Shari'a Law in Britain and My Planned Cirriculum for my Teaching Methods Class (FINAL PROJECT WORTH BOOCKOO POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! - is that how you spell boockoo?  Bookoo?  Boochoo?  Boocoo? Buckoo?  I dunno - A LOT)

Friday - Here's what's Due:  Quiz in my Imperialism class and then I'm going to pass out.

Yes ladies and gents, it is a crazy life.  But here is what I've got for my Advanced Writing paper about Food so far...It is in pieces with few connections, but these are at least the pieces of the whole that will make a lot more sense when I put them together in an order that makes sense - but anyway - this is a glimpse into the writer's nest to see what I've come up with so far and as always suggestions and feedback are welcome...

For All the Things You Are:  A Tribute to Food 
By:  Amy Berry

 

 

When was the last time you ate something for purely nutritional reasons?  At breakfast did you carefully construct a meal of balanced nutrients?  A balanced meal looks like what, some fiber for extended fullness, some vitamin C and B12 for energy and quickness of mind, some carbohydrates for brain food and energy and protein to sustain that energy until lunch?  Would you rather toss in a blender some barley, carrot powder, raw eggs, a little splash of orange juice and milk, give her a whirl and bottoms up or sit down to a table, surrounded by friends, and enjoy half a butter-spread whole wheat bagel with half a cantaloupe brimming with a scoop of cottage cheese?    

If we were all out just to get some calories from protein, carbohydrates and lipids, we should just drink some supplement shakes and swallow some vitamins and forget everything else.  That sure would save a lot of trouble.  If we didn’t have to make choices or worry about eating the “wrong” thing, wouldn’t that make sense?  It would, except nutrition is not why people eat. 

Perhaps I put more thought into this than the average Joe because I am a special case.  First, I am a confessed food-addict coming from a home of the food obsessed.  Due in part to my chronic over-consumption, at the tender age of 18 I found myself weighing over 300 pounds with type two diabetes and drastic intervention was in order.  Despite spending over a third of my life on some diet or another, I was unsuccessful at losing any significant amount of weight, so in November of 2005 I hopped on the operating table and underwent gastric bypass.  Now the decision to take on such a huge, lifelong commitment wasn’t made as easily as all that, but I can say that now, sans diabetes and down 160 pounds, I am a lot happier and healthier and as an added bonus I have a completely enhanced relationship with food. 

As you may or may not know from popular talk-show misrepresentations of a controversial surgery, gastric bypass leaves a patient with a fraction of a stomach.  Over time that fraction “relaxes” and today, more than two years after my surgery, I can eat about six ounces of food at a sitting.   That means I pick every bite very carefully.  If it is going to take up some of the precious space in my little pouch, it had better be excellent.  Gastric bypass also means a person responds to foods in chemically different ways.  For one, I do not feel physically “hungry” anymore and for another, if I eat too much sugar, refined carbohydrates or fat I feel perfectly awful for a couple of hours.  It is a delicate balance, but life is much more interesting living on my toes anyway.        

When reclining on the couch in the psychiatrist’s office of my mind, going back to where it all began, another incident bubbles into my consciousness that undoubtedly helped to shape my special food obsession.  During several weeks in 2007 I got my nutrition through a feeding tube.  Long story short, I was very sick, a handful of times approaching death, and I was physically unable to keep any food down.  For the weeks that I was tube-fed, every two hours someone poured six to eight ounces of a meal replacement shake (that I am told was flavored to taste like vanilla, strawberry or chocolate, though you couldn’t have paid me enough to ingest the stuff through my mouth, so I can never be sure what they actually tasted like) chased with 8 ounces of warm water. 

As miserable as I was, it surprised me how convenient it was to inject all of my nutrition.  Since the bypass left me without a physical “hunger” and my condition left me constantly sick to my stomach anyway, those scientifically engineered, fake-food drinks really weren’t so bad.  No choices, no fuss, no mess, just fill up a syringe and presto, lunch is served.  Now I wouldn’t want to put the shakes in my mouth, but as far as shooting them directly into my stomach, well, I have never eaten so many balanced meals in a row in my entire life.  But I was barely alive.  One of my senses, really the sense that had mattered most to me until that point, was dead.  I had always tasted my world, fed my emotions, and food was the common bond I shared with my loved ones.  Without it I was unable to fully experience my world.  “Absence makes the heart grow fonder…” you might say or “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. 

So I find myself in a turbulent relationship with an indescribable substance that is vital to my existence.  And I know I am not alone.  We need food for more than just fuel.  Food is comfort, reward, punishment, connection to the outside world, adventure, status and so much more.  Food is, and can be whether it should be or not, everything.  Welcome to my love letter to food.

I divide my life into two distinct categories:  pre-bypass and post-bypass.  Pre-bypass food life for me was all about quantities.  I couldn’t just have a couple bites of ice cream and get any pleasure out of it; I had to eat a half a gallon.  It wasn’t satisfying to have one chip; I needed to eat the whole bag.  Now that eating huge quantities isn’t an option anymore I have learned to slow down and savor every morsel, one carefully constructed bite at a time.  And the funny thing about slowing down is that all of a sudden that low-quality, high-calorie, high-sugar stuff doesn’t taste quite as good.  And it doesn’t feel very good either.  Eating in the closet to hide shameful food from the world may be somewhat exciting, but while listening for footsteps and trying to control breathing, how much time is there left for a person to really enjoy and appreciate the subtle marriage and contrast of the smooth chocolate ice cream, the crunch of the toasted almonds and gooey marshmallows in the rocky road?  Which brings me to the post-bypass story of when I made this revelation…

 

I’m sitting on my couch this cool February evening, in my jammies, watching the Food Network.  I am a Food Network regular, usually tuning in for such culinary entertainment as Iron Chef America, Food Network Challenges and any of the shows Elton Brown is featured in.  Other than that I try to steer clear of the all day, every day “Pudge Porn” channel.  Remember that earlier I told you about my gastric bypass to reduce the size of my stomach and re-route about four to six feet of small intestine.  This surgery helped me lose weight in a couple of ways.  It restricts the amount of food an individual can eat at one time.  Also, since a portion of small intestine is bypassed not all calories an individual consumes are absorbed.  Finally, it induces something called “dumping syndrome” when an individual eats something with a lot of refined sugar, fat or simple carbohydrates, in a sense conditioning the individual to choose healthy things.  Dumping syndrome manifests itself several ways, all of which leave the individual feeling, in a word, “icky”.  Vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, sweats and other unpleasant side effects are usually involved to one extent or another, so it is easy to see how dumping syndrome is a powerful learning tool.  Think Pavlov’s dog in reverse, eat a cookie, get a swift kick in the gut, eat a French fry, get a kick in the gut, until finally just the sight of fatty or sugary foods makes one’s gut hurt.

Knowing that, there are some really obvious reasons it is not a good idea for a gastric bypass patient to watch Food Network, the least of which being trying to avoid drool stains on the remote.  But here I am, watching an episode of “Throw Down with Bobby Flay” as Bobby is taking on the “Donut King”.  For every one reason there is for a bypass post-op not to watch regular programming on Food Network there are about 12 for just this particular show.  The biggest being the word “donut” in the title.  That should be enough said right there.  I mean what am I not supposed to have again?  Oh yeah, white flour, refined sugar, lots of fat and anything deep fried.  What are donuts made of?  Donuts are clouds of white floury goodness glazed in sugar until they glisten in the morning sun that spills through the window on sleepy Sunday mornings, coated in a blanket of shimmering sweetness that brings joy to the hearts of our men in blue around the good old U.S. of A., and deep fried to create that slightly crisp on the outside but melt-in-your-mouth heaven on the inside.  In other words, if I had to sum up what I, as gastric bypass post-op should absolutely not have I would say “If you use it to make a Krispy Kreme, I shouldn’t have it.”  Not only are these ingredients threatening to my waistline, but now that I have had my innards re-routed these ingredients could cause a rave in my intestines, with me footing the bill.

But still, I can’t look away.  I am like the 30 year old, lives in his parent’s basement, sleeps in footy pajamas, doesn’t have a real job but manages to wake up early on Saturday mornings where you will find him in his Wonder Woman PJ’s eating frosted cheerio’s and watching Sponge Bob – but at night watches HBO specials with names too crude to mention, quivering with desire but with no girlfriend or wife to use up all the pent up sexual energy with.  Instead of that kind of porn I watch, lips slightly parted, eyes glazed over, speechlessly groaning as Paula Deen sprinkles peanut butter cup chunks on that creamy, fat filled, smooth as her southern accent cheesecake.  And I drool.  I drool at the recollection.  Cheeeeesscaaaakke.  And then on nights like tonight, alone in my apartment, snow delicately falling outside my window turning my flower box into frozen tundra, I snuggle in on the love seat with my water and 100 calorie pack of popcorn and think about putting trash bags on the windows to hide my a pudge porn habit from the neighbors.  Oh to have a donut!

Don’t let me fool you I have had a donut since my surgery.  They come in bites here and there from someone else’s donut, but I actually did go so far as to buy two a couple weekends ago.  I was in a bad mood listening to the “poor me” soundtrack in my head and I thought to myself, “You know what would make me happy?  Glazed donuts and a large vanilla latte would make me very happy.  So by George I have a car and three bucks so I’m getting what would make me happy.”  I got in my car and drove to the gas station (and trust me, it would have been a charming café instead, but unfortunately the only source of donuts and coffee-like substances in my small town are gas stations), not the one I used to work at during high school summers mind you, I went to the other one, where no one would know me and I could buy my donuts in anonymity, like a porn seeking suburban father of three who goes to the next suburb to pick up his Penthouse. When I got there I circled the donut case a couple of times trying to look like I was admiring the case next to it with fresh fruits and salads (just like when I go to Wal-Mart to get condoms and little old ladies come by to get their blood pressure medicine I flip around and pretend to be earnestly looking for medicated foot cream) until finally mustering up the courage to pull two little tissue papers out and fast as you can say “a bakers dozen” I had my glazed donuts in the bag and I was shuffling to the currently devoid of customers checkout line.  Before my glazed pillow of sweetness hit the counter there were at least three people, people who seemed to materialize out of thin air (or maybe out of the decade old pot of coffee gas stations are obliged to keep out), and they got in line behind me, listening with keen interest to how many donuts I had in the bag and judging me like they would someone talking through a port in their neck buying a carton of Marlboros.  “Leave me alone!  Stop judging me!” I wanted to shout as I handed money to the clerk whose critical eye scrutinized me and my purchase long after the security camera followed me out (putting my height at about five feet, three inches) and the glass door closed behind me. 

I stealthily slipped into my mother’s empty house (did I mention I skipped church to go on this excursion?) and once in the safety of the lazy boy I pulled out my poison and flipped on the television.  If I was going to do this I was going to do it right.  I started in on the gas-station-version of a latte.  I sipped on it savoring the richness and warmth of the coffee drink.  I breathed it in deeply and swished it around in my mouth like someone would a fine wine, feeling the smooth cream and the acidic quality of the dark roasted coffee.  With about half of my latte gone I looked at the foreboding plastic donut bag.  From inside it, “Come and get me” the twin donuts whispered in soothing yet guttural tones.  I could feel them over there.  Teasing me; calling to me; flooding my subconscious with desire. 

The next thing I remember is pulling the first one out of the bag.  The crinkle of the wax paper and the stickiness of the sugary glaze tickled all of my senses as the smell of deep fried, sugar coated goodness wafted up to greet my nostrils.   I opened my mouth, the anticipation causing puddles of drool to form under my tongue, and when the glaze hit my tongue it was sweeter than I remembered from my pre-bypass donut-eating days.  One bite then two and a third…and then the nausea, sweats and gut wrenching cramps came on in waves, with the familiar feeling of defeat and shame that once again food was the victor.

I paused long enough to ask myself, “Does feeling like this make me happy?”  Absolutely not.  I would say one of the most valuable attributes I have gained as a result of my bypass is a sense of control.  I feel like I am somewhat in control and am capable of making positive changes when necessary to better my circumstances.  So I tossed the remainder of the first donut in the bag on top of the other one and settled in to ride out the dumping syndrome.  I had not failed.  In another life I would have polished off both donuts and then hated myself for hours over my weakness.  In this life I just made a mental note to post on the refrigerator of my mind.  No more donuts and until a healthy cooking show comes on, with a title like "How to make 100 calorie packs of popcorn taste like a Cinnabon", – no more Food Network.  In the meantime I wonder what is on HBO…

 

Food brings out the neurosis in us all.  A seemingly normal and well adjusted adult can suddenly turn into an obsessive compulsive when presented with a plate where the mashed potatoes touch the green beans and other adults (my husband among them) would be just as satisfied if all components of the meal were slopped into a bowl and swished around so green beans were indistinguishable from other gravy covered lumps of meat and stuffing.  I’ve already given a glimpse into my food psychosis, but lest anyone think I am alone or even the most extreme in my love-hate relationship with food, let me introduce a couple of my most beloved friends who also find themselves conflicted over the matter of food and eating. 

 

How I ever made friends with the prom queen is beyond me, but somehow it happened one day in the third grade.  I was a newcomer to our small Midwestern elementary school, and with my heavy southern accent I was an easy target for the cruelness of children who are very adept at picking out even the slightest differences.  It also didn’t help that I was overweight and awkward socially in a less than endearing way.  I spent the first few days at my new school trying to mimic the longer vowels of my classmates and getting used to the concept of recess, which had not been part of my North Carolinian education.  As I wandered through the cement jungle that was our school’s playground, past the slides, past the swings, past the balance beam, I was lost in third grade worrisome thoughts about bungled attempts at joining a well established kickball game and the faux pas of talking to one of my classmates who had been banished to the wall for disciplinary purposes.  How was I supposed to know that they were standing there by any other reason than choice?  I was just glad they didn’t walk away or mock me for my funny clothes and out-of-style Paige boy haircut as I approached, and then I came to find out that despite the absence of physical restraints attaching them to the brick wall, the students standing against the wall were tied there just as surely as if they had been chained and until the bell rang they were as stigmatized as convicted criminals.  After an admonishment from the whistle-wielding recess monitor, I scurried away, my cheeks hot with embarrassment.

It was then that she approached me.  Her hair was also short, but in a sculpted, intentional way.  Being that third grade was also well before the customary donning of braces and other dental correctional devices, her front teeth also bucked out a little like mine, but despite the childish gaps in her teeth, her smile was warm and inviting.  She made a non-threatening bee-line for me, and all I could think was “Is she coming over to me?” as I waited for the punch line.  But indeed she was intentionally coming up to me!  Oh rapture!  After a simple greeting, me trying to stifle any words that would give away my identity as an out-of-place southerner, she slipped me a note written on dazzling, neon colored Lisa Frank stationary (an item much coveted by third grade girls) with a simple message “You seem like a fun girl.  Would you like to be friends?”  I still have that bright note tucked away in a chocolate box where I keep the love letters my husband wrote me over the course of our six year courtship.  To a child desperate for a friendly face, that stationary acted as a warm embrace in an unfamiliar place.  And thus our friendship began.

We were not inseparable, and I wouldn’t even say we were best friends.  But she was a positive force in my life and represented something I wanted to be.  She was beautiful.  Slim, with a wide smile (eventually straightened through dental hardware); she simply lit up a room with her warmth and easy manner.  She was endlessly amusing to be around, with wit and charm to spare, but at the same time she was grounded and friendly to everyone.  Schools are a breeding ground for cliques and exclusion, and though she easily fit with several of the cliques at our school, she was proactively friendly to all of our classmates, regardless of social status.  In the unwritten rules of middle and high school this is a blaring violation of the social order, but that never stopped her.  In conversation she asked about you and your life, usually opting to keep talk about herself to a minimum, which was another contradiction to the typical way of pre-teens and teenagers, who are self-centered to a fault.  But not her.  It only makes sense that she would win the coveted position of Junior Prom Queen.  With all the Barbie-doll-perfect, but less than friendly competition, she was the obvious choice.  And in typical of her fashion, she was the most surprised when the tiara was ceremoniously placed atop her head. 

Considering how seemingly flawless her relationship with the outside world was, it is surprising, that in discussion of individuals who have a strange and somewhat unhealthy relationship with food that I can think of no better example than her.  She was always slim, with long, awkward limbs on a small frame in youth that turned into enviably long legs supporting a well shaped body in her teens, so I just assumed she had a combination of favorable genes and good habits regarding food and exercise.  It wasn’t until a school-sponsored trip, during which we and many of our classmates spent a week together in very close contact that I would learn any differently. 

We were in a big city seeing big things and hearing big sounds, previously unknown to our small town minds.  But for this confessed food-a-holic, I was equally impressed and excited over the monstrous servings of cheesecake and Chinese food, as I was over the towering buildings and city streets teaming with exotic people.  So when my dear friend barely even picked at her plate during our first meal in the big city (at an iconic restaurant no less!) I couldn’t understand how she passed up all that awesome food and I was a little concerned.  When that untouched meal turned into two, three, four full plates (of various types of food, from burgers to fresh salads to gigantic desserts) sent back to the kitchen with nary a bite missing, my concern turned to fear for her health and I began to debate with myself how to broach the subject with her. 

She spared me the trouble of deciding.  When she asked me to accompany her to the ladies room that night at dinner, I assumed it was for a short pow-wow about such pressing concerns as her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend making sidelong glares at her or if a particular pair of jeans made someone’s butt look big, so when I saw the tears welling up in her clear blue eyes, they indicated something much more sinister was at play than typical boy troubles.  For the first time since I had known her, that confidence I had always assumed was a permanent fixture, melted away and uncontrollable insecurity brought my idealized titan of a friend to her emotional knees.  There, in the dirty bathroom of a big city restaurant, her food demon came to the surface from a deep, scared place in her heart that she had successfully kept hidden in plain sight for so long.

She wasn’t anorexic or bulimic as I had suspected; she just couldn’t bring herself to eat in front of other people.  Food was her secret lover, who slipped in the back gate after dark and left without leaving a clue to testify to them having been there at all.  Not eating in front of others is slightly problematic for high school cafeterias, but if one doesn’t mind forgoing a midday meal, it isn’t impossible.  If someone looks busy socializing or reading or just moving from table to table, their non-eating would go unnoticed.  However when one is with a group of people every waking hour of everyday for several days on end, that leaves no private moment to break fast and one cannot live if one does not eventually break fast.  It was day three of our trip and she was starving, but whenever she tried to eat at the communal table, surrounded by her peers her throat closed up and her stomach soured at even the suggestion of food.  At this point it was just as much her physical body as her emotional turmoil that kept her from eating in public.  She physically could not do it. 

It didn’t make sense to me.  She was pretty, she was slim, and so no one was going to think for a minute about her eating.  She could down a chocolate cake and no one was going to judge her the way they might a morbidly obese person going through the McDonald’s drive-thru.  But it didn’t matter.  Food was private and that was that.  So I wrapped my arms around my by then sobbing friend in an effort to fill her loneliness the way she had filled mine all those years ago.  I didn’t know how to fix it.  I wasn’t sure she was asking me to, and she was my dear friend no matter what.  So I told her of the secret stash of food my mom had insisted I bring and was waiting for us back at our hotel.  There was a loaf of fluffy white bread (packed smartly in a loaf-shaped Tupperware container) and crunchy peanut butter and strawberry jam from a squeeze bottle to top it with.  There were also fruit juice boxes, nuts, a couple golden delicious apples and M&M’s (as if my mom was afraid the big city would be utterly emptied of food by the time I got there) and I was more than willing to share.

That night in our hotel room we shut tight the door and ate in the privacy that the act of eating required for her.  No one would be able to know that my dear friend did indeed eat, though I think they safely assumed she did, and that knowledge didn’t make them think one way or the other about her as a person.  After all, everybody eats, and everyone has different reasons for eating (or in the case of my friend, not eating).

 

 

 

If ever food is consistently something other than nourishment for the body, it is comfort for the soul.  This illustrative essay will appear in the section of my exploratory essay about food as comfort. 

 

In times of personal tragedy, when there are no words to say or things to do to make it right, we eat our way to peace of mind.  As small children with scraped knees and broken dreams our parents soothed us with ice cream fudge sundaes from the corner stand and oatmeal spiked with strawberry jam served in that special porcelain bowl to be eaten with the wide, silver soup spoon reserved for such times.  So it is little wonder that as adults we cry into pints of Ben and Jerry’s and drink our sorrows away with long island iced teas and dry martinis.

I have had a special relationship with Culver’s chili cheese dogs since I was about 10 or 11 years old (by now you’ve not doubt noticed that I am no gourmet – I like finer foods, but especially before my bypass, I not only couldn’t afford them and lacked exposure to them, but I also simply preferred nutritionally devoid food).  They suit a need I didn’t know I had and they touch a part of my tasting experience that no other food has ever satisfied.  And one night when I was around seventeen years old, my admittedly small world collapsing around me, I found myself in familiar arms. 

Within a weeks time too many things went very wrong.  Each would have been difficult to deal with had they occurred separately, but as they came one after another in rapid fire succession I resorted to my lesser instincts to deal with my pain.  

First, my dad, several states away, was arrested for violating the terms of his probation so he would not be able to attend my high school graduation after all.  I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone at the time, but I had been looking forward to him being at my high school graduation so he could see me accept awards for academic and extra curricular achievements for months.  I had lived, in my head, over and over the moment he would feel sorry for not being there all along.  I wanted to see the regret in his eyes when I walked across that stage and the announcer said my name “Amy Lynn Frailey, daughter of Lori Frailey”, purposefully leaving out his name because I asked them to, because he hadn’t been there.  But no, when that moment came I would accept my diploma and he would be back in the clink.  He even managed to wreck my shot at justice and maybe, deep in the childhood part of my heart, it killed me that this would be another milestone I would have to reach without my daddy.

Then, after antsy weeks waiting for try-out results I rushed to the music department’s bulletin board only to learn I didn’t get the part in the play or the solo in the choir (after four years of not getting them) and my dreams that somehow my senior year would be different died.  In an act very much not like me, my disappointment came out in a burst of frustration in a not very gracious way in front of a couple of my friends (and fellow performers) and my choir director, and my friendships and reputation were damaged as a result.  It was a small thing, truly, in the scope of a lifetime who sings lead in the group and who fills out the choir in high school doesn’t matter, but on top of the dad thing it was a lot. 

Finally came the phone call that put me over the edge.  My long term boyfriend, who I had not seen in over six months because he was attending college six hours away, phoned to confess a series of sexual encounters he had behind my back with a couple of his fellow female undergrads.  Right after his confession the excuses piled up like dirty dishes in a bachelor pad and they stank as if they’d been there a while.  He was far away, we had been separated for a long time, he got caught up in the excitement of college, and my all time favorite - he had been very drunk.  And he was very sorry.

Are you kidding?  It was only Tuesday for crying out loud, couldn’t he have held off until at least Thursday or Friday?  I stared stupidly at the receiver of the phone, unable to shout, unable to cry, unable to form a thought.  He kept talking, asking me what I was going to do, imploring me to say something, anything, but it was all gibberish to me.  Dumbfounded I hung up the phone, my boyfriend still pleading for a response.

That is when the dam broke and the thread keeping me knit together finally unraveled.  In the blinding grief I forgot how to think. My mind needed to reel and my heart needed to lay in pieces on the floor for just a little while, so for the time being my legs, arms and the rest of me were on their own.  Until that point I had been holding up pretty well all things considered, but the fragile pane of glass separating my sense of well-being from a hopeless abyss was shattered with his call and I now found myself teetering on the brink of despair.

I coasted to the car on auto pilot, barely able to breathe, but somehow able to drive.  As the weight settled over me I drove into the night, not thinking about where I was going or why, just that I needed to go.  I needed to be somewhere familiar, somewhere safe.  Somewhere everybody knows my name, I guess.  I needed someone comforting, someone who wouldn’t ask questions, but instead would sit with me in heavy silence patiently until the flood of words were ready to come out.  And there was only one source of such comfort that I knew of, and without being asked my body took me where I could find it.

The Culver’s drive-thru was pretty slow by eight on a weekday evening, and that is probably fortunate since in my stupor I cannot say whether or not I could have avoided traffic.  I pulled up to the squawker box and ordered my equivalent of a double.  Two chili cheese dogs, a large order of French fries and a strawberry shake – oh, and please put a few ketchup packets in the bag – thanks.  At a bar they would have had to turn me away because of my already unsteady walk and my blood shot eyes, but no one asks you to walk a straight line or checks your dilated pupils before selling you fast food.  Instead they were happy to take my $6.84 in exchange for a stuffed white paper bag and a lidded plastic cup that would be my salvation. 

The small Wisconsin town I lived in sat right on the Mississippi River and there was a grassy knoll and a parking lot where my little blue Ford Tempo could sit without drawing unwanted attention while I got myself together.  So I drove with my precious package to the riverfront, where darkness and spring mosquitoes would be the only witnesses to my grief and the only distractions from my source of comfort that was currently sitting in the passenger seat next to me. 

Once I parked facing the river, I didn’t bother to get out of the car; I just shut the engine off and started in on my poison, my drug, my most faithful friend.  The white paper bag rustled as I fished around for the first Styrofoam box. “Hello friend.” I whispered when I lifted the lid, the white Styrofoam squeaking, to reveal the deliciously greasy chili cheese dog.  “We’re here again.”  The car soon filled with the smell of tomato-ey chili, with a hint of mild shredded cheddar cheese, old beef frank and salty, deep-fried-ness.  I relaxed, knowing that relief was on the way.

The tears started.  Slowly at first, one escaping down the inside of my left cheek followed several seconds later by another on the right side.  I pulled out the blue plastic utensils and cut into my first frank.  “He told me it would never happen again.”  I told the chili dog, not sure about which “He” in my life the first bite I stuffed in my mouth was for.   I chewed, the cheese mixing with the chunk of stewed and reheated tomato and the half inch portion of hot dog, and a familiar calm settled over me, something like a mother’s hug from the inside of my mouth spreading throughout my whole body as I swallowed the wad of empty calories.  “He promised me he wouldn’t…” I began but my words were choked off by another bite.   There, there now.  It will all work out.  And for the time I spent locked in my car with my food, I was certain that it would. 

Soon my salty tears mixed with the carefully constructed bites of equal parts hot dog, bun, chili, cheese and sometimes fries were thrown in for texture.  The way the fry outsides were crisp but their insides were soft and starchy was a subtle gentleness I needed and they struck me as a metaphor for my own person.  Suddenly I felt vulnerable, the starchy mush of my heart lain bare and betrayed cruelly once again.  I would never do that to you.  I will always be true.

 

With eyes closed gently I savored each bite, and like sweet connecting touches from a loved one they released the endorphins that would sooth and calm my tears.  But unlike friends or family, with this food I didn’t have to worry about what it would think of me in the morning.  Chili cheese dogs and strawberry shakes don’t judge.  They are indiscriminate in their heartburn and indigestion inducing tactile pleasure and comfort.  My Culver’s meal was a friend that would be whatever I needed, whenever I needed it with no need for me to return the favor. 

Memories of happier times chili cheese dog and I shared played in my mind, provoked by the almost rubbery, but none-the-less delightful hot dog, the soft pillowey bun’s bland odor and the sensation of the whole familiar glob sliding down my throat.  By the time I started in on the shake my tears were slowing and the corners of my mouth curled subtly upward as I remembered hurried family dinners with spilt fruit punch and the nights me and my friends spent making nuisances of ourselves to the staff when we all crowded into the corner booths at Culver’s after basketball games and stayed long after closing time. 

I didn’t feel the over-stuffed, sick feeling as I slurped up the last of my shake.  I only felt the fullness, the satiety, which came from having a full stomach propping up my broken heart.  For the first time since the sky started falling in my Chicken Little world, I knew I would survive.  I looked past the hood of my car at the Mississippi River lazily slipping on down south away from all this, and breathed in deeply the smell of restaurant grease and ketchup.  Yes, as long as there were chili cheese dogs and French fries, nothing could be too terrible.  As long as there were chili cheese dogs and French fries, I could be okay.        

 

My dad left my two sisters, my mom and I three days before I turned eight.  Leaving was the best thing my dad ever did for his children, but at the time it was hard.  The day he made up his mind to finally leave, he pulled my older sister and I out of our elementary school classes (my younger sister wasn’t even in kindergarten yet) and told us he was leaving.  I remember being concerned about whether or not he would make it to my big birthday party on the coming weekend (he didn’t), but otherwise it was hard for a nearly-eight year old to understand the concept of a parent leaving with no intention of ever coming home.  He gave us both a hug and walked out of our school and out of our lives without looking back.

When we got home from school it was unlike any other weekday.  My mom ran a day care out of our home so there were usually lots of playmates for company after school, but not that day.  The house was eerily quiet, with just my mom and my little sister, Cathy, who was about to turn five.  My mom had spread a red and white checkered table cloth on the living room floor, and she was hard at work hand-crafting the perfect peanut butter and jelly (or in the case of my older sister, Debbie, just plain old peanut butter) sandwiches with hearts and butterflies sketched in the strawberry jelly.  We were going to have a picnic in the living room, she announced.  This was very strange because normally we weren’t allowed to eat in the living room, but tonight, my mom explained, was special. 

I didn’t know it at the time because my mom is the master of her emotions, but my mom was broken inside.  Her husband of almost ten years was leaving her to go live with his mistress.  And this wasn’t his first mistress.  Several weeks earlier she had discovered the affair and confronted him about it.  He played dumb for a while but eventually confessed.  She gave him an ultimatum, end it or leave for good.  He agreed to seek counseling and to get out of the relationship with the other woman, but it was just an act. 

My dad has always been selfish and whatever he does you can count on it to be completely self serving to him.  When he didn’t get his way he was known to go into rages that were unpredictable and violent.  Being that I was pretty young, I just have snapshot memories of what it was like to live in the house with him, but most of those snapshots involve being hit or screamed at or tossed around.  For example, on a Sunday morning the whole house was in an upset trying to get ready for church and trying to help, I couldn’t have been more than five, I pulled open a drawer looking for a hair brush, but the bottom of the drawer fell out, spilling the contents of the drawer all over the living room floor.  My dad went off.  He grabbed me by the back of my Sunday dress, lifted me into the air and hurled my small body at the wall.  I remember hearing a loud “smack” before crumpling to the floor.  The next time I opened my eyes he was gone and my mom was kneeling over me speaking softly as she bit back tears of relief.  There are a lot of snapshots like that, which is why I say my dad leaving us was the best thing he ever could have done.   

For too long my mom, my sisters and I had been living on eggshells and finally, with my dad’s departure, we could exhale.  And through her broken heart, to reassure her daughters that we would not be abandoned and that our lives were stable, she made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  That night the four of us sat on the checkered cloth on the floor, munching on sandwiches, veggie sticks and fresh fruit, giggling long past bedtime.  The buffer between the heartache caused by a parent’s departure and the fragile hearts of little girls was Wonder Bread, Jiffy peanut butter and Smucker’s strawberry jelly, all masterfully put together by my selfless mother.   

 

 

At the time of my dad’s leaving we lived in North Carolina , but with the sudden blow of being turned into a single parent a long way from any support system, my mom made the decision to move us to southwestern Wisconsin , so we could be near her parents.  We finished out the school year, then bade our friends goodbye and headed north.

When my dad left he deprived us of a major part of my family’s income and before he walked out he made sure to empty the bank account my parents shared so we had no recourse over our transition period.  By the time we got to Wisconsin we were running on fumes.  All of our worldly possessions were transported to our new government-subsidized apartment via cheese truck (and I am totally serious) that was charitable enough to fill its holds with our things for a very small sum on its return trip to Wisconsin.  Of course my sisters and I were blissfully unaware that we had no money, although we did notice that we had generic Hamburger Helper (often without the hamburger) a lot, and on very lucky days we also got to have day-old donuts from the local bakery. 

The whole point of moving to Wisconsin was to be closer to my grandparents, who lived on the outskirts of the town we now inhabited.  They made sure that we never went without.  And twice a week we went out on the town with them for a meal, one of the few luxuries we were afforded.  Almost every Thursday night and Sunday afternoon from the time I was in third grade until I graduated high school, I shared a meal with my mom, my sisters and my grandparents.  Most Thursday’s and Sunday’s we went out to one of the few sit-down restaurants in our small town, and there were a few when we made dinner at my mom’s home.  But mostly we went to Huckleberry’s, Coaches, Hungry House, Pizza Hut or the New Panda.  When I was younger we went to a place called Yorgi’s, but Yorgi’s went through a couple managerial changes, and now it is a Chinese buffet, called New Panda.  We made the rounds to different sit down restaurants in town, usually going to the same place time after time until we were all sick of getting the offerings, so we would move on to the next place until the options there were just as exhausted.  Meals shared with family became one of the constants in my life, which at times was rather turbulent, but no matter what chaos was going on in the world twice a week I could count on a meal with people I loved and who loved me.

We started at Pizza Hut.  My sisters and I were all under the age of 10, so getting to have Pizza Hut pizza for dinner was an amazing treat (not to mention pretty cheap).  In our home in North Carolina we had a similar ritual, except the pizza was ordered in, from Papa John’s and the reason we had it once a week for dinner was because on that particular weeknight (which weeknight it was I cannot remember) large single topping pies were only three bucks (remember this was the early 1990’s).  The pizza would normally come as the last of my mom’s charges were being picked up from day care, and with the arrival of the pizza and the departure of the other children we settled in for family time.  And it was the same at Pizza Hut with my mom, Debbie (my older sister), Cathy (my younger sister) and my grandparents.  Stresses of the day were merely conversation fodder.  Life was hard, but the food was decent and the company grand. 

Grandpa insisted on ordering buffalo wings for the adults and bread sticks for the kids, and it was a mark of our maturity when he started just ordering the wings.  He believed we were ready to handle the mild heat of the wings.  Little did Grandpa know that we had been practicing to handle the wings.  Visiting my dad at his various homes in Pennsylvania over the summers we often accompanied him to a sports bar that specialized in wings.  I know that we were really there for the purpose of attracting women but for those nights out it was a little easier to pretend that he really wanted us to be there simply because he wanted to spend time with his offspring.  He had us pull stools right up to the bar and we watched baseball with him as the pretty waitress with a short skirt and bad teeth kept refilling our wing baskets and giving my dad come-hither looks, which he returned with sexually suggestive and overly charming wisecracks. I remember watching Mark McGuire hit his record breaking home run in that bar.  Dad was very impressed when my sisters and I happily ate more than the sticky and sweet BBQ wings and even went so far as to try one of the “Firehouse” wings (and one was all it took to sear your taste buds for the rest of the night, like licking the end of a habanero pepper, no matter how many celery sticks with ranch and blue cheese you chased it with) that weren