I am grateful tonight for comic relief. About an hour ago I was struggling with this evening’s blog. I had started to write something, but it wasn’t flowing and coming together easily. Interestingly I was going to write about ease and how we often complicate life way more than it needs to be…and there I was hiccuping my way through the blog. And then, comic relief.
This evening I had an early dinner with my son. We’d sort of both skipped lunch and were hungry, so dinner was served at around 5 p.m. After eating a bowl of chili for dinner, he treated himself to a bowl of ice cream for dessert. We sat and watched a movie while we ate. Toward the end of the film, he ambled into the kitchen and came out with a bowl of cereal. When the movie ended, I felt a bit restless and unaccomplished so I decided to come write my gratitude blog so that I could redeem myself for not having gotten much done today (the blog was about how we measure ourselves by what we do or don’t manage to get done.) As I sat stumbling my way through my blog, I noticed the smell of food cooking. For a moment I ignored it. In the condo where we live it isn’t unusual for me to smell the neighbors cooking their meals. Then I realized it was coming from our house–my son was cooking bacon.
I briefly registered the fact that he was cooking bacon at 8:30 after having had chili and ice cream and cereal, but quickly plunged myself back into my blog. Finally I came downstairs and admitted to him that I was struggling a bit. He suggested chamomile tea, which he produced from his own personal stash. As I was in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, he announced that he was hungry and proceeded to ponder what he would have as a snack. Ultimately, he decided on toast. (Toast?) First we discussed the condition of a loaf of bread that had been in the fridge for two and a half months (it was really hard) and I warned him that the other loaf on the counter had a wee bit of mold on one piece, but that I was sure it was fine. Then, we moved on to wondering just how long we’d had the peach preserves that were in the fridge. We determined that this was in fact its third home–that he’d purchased them about two years ago while he was up at school. We reminisced about how various foodstuffs at our house became science projects–he accused me of scraping mold off of things and declaring them “fine.” In the end, he found two good pieces of the counter bread and we mutually decided that the peach preserves were fine. He had his toast and I had tonight’s blog.
Given some of the challenges that I’ve been up against the past few months, the wonderful ridiculousness of my son’s food foraging and our subsequent conversation about aging food, and the silly antics of our dog running up and down the stairs carrying her bone was simply too, too delicious. Life can be way too serious–or maybe it’s me taking life way too seriously. Blessed, wonderful, comic relief was right there allowing me to laugh and share good moments with my son. So now as I sit finishing my chamomile tea I am savoring the humor right along with it. I expect to rest well tonight.
