We’ve had a wet and cold spring. I have been just as gloomy and gray. My world is mud and wet dog smell.
The sky gives no bright light— offering only the chilling rain—now goading termites and demanding the creeks flood.
I am restless, but inert. Swaddled in a down comforter— The dachshund nestled against me.
The older dog prefers the cool floor next to my bed. Both will follow me if I get up.
Their tales wag and they lift their heads when they feel my gaze on them.
The dachshund rolls over exposing her most vulnerable self to me.
Her love is deep and true. I give her belly rubs and she writhes with pleasure.
The older dog, more polite, stands and puts both her paws on the bed.
She is waiting her turn but staying close lest I forget her. I don’t. I wouldn’t.
We are now all awake at midnight on a Thursday. I am hungry. They always are. I listen to feet and paws make the old wood floor sing in the creaky voice of an old woman.
The cat joins our parade. The three of them jockey for position around me.
Bent over, I peer into the refrigerator, looking for something easy and warm.
Something comforting. There is cheese. There is bread. There is butter.
It is the kind of cheese most people reject as inferior and uncouth.
It’s my favorite for grilled cheese. I use equally maligned bread. But the butter is Irish.
It tastes of emerald grass and sunny meadows. Yellow like daffodils.
The old cast iron pan will hold two sandwiches—three slices of cheese each is required.
Dog tails thump on the faux stone of the kitchen floor. They know that smell.
The old dog tries to put her paws on the edge of the stove to see and smell better.
“Phoebe. No,” I say. A soft whisper as if we might wake someone. The older dog sits, her tail thumps.
When the sandwiches are done—golden brown, melted cheese dripping— the nutty smell of browned butter,
I lift them with the red spatula— the small one that looks like a child’s toy—and lay one per napkin.
I cut them diagonally. The forehead-kiss triangles oozing cheese.
Two for me and one for each dog who are both done eating before I even sit.
Two sets of brown pleading puppy eyes stare up at me from the floor. The yearning summons Oliver Twist.
Please, Ma’am, may I have some more. “No,” I say. I eat both halves. Yet they still love me.
The gloom and gray are smaller now. I know the rain will end and the sun will lighten us.
Having now planted both feet firmly in the land of the post-menopause crones, I’ve noticed some changes I didn’t at first attribute to what the old women used to call The Change.
The chief one, the one that still has me shaking my head, is that chocolate is no longer always the answer.
Yeah, I know. I can’t believe I just wrote that either.
I liked chocolate as a kid. Almond Joys and Hershey’s with Almonds were favorites. Chocolate ice cream, chocolate milk. However, I equally enjoyed rainbow sherbet, lemon drops, lemon pie, and cherry turnovers. Japanese rice paper candy was a go-to for a few years.
And then — puberty. For approximately 45 years of my life, chocolate was always the answer if I wanted something sweet. More than that, I craved it. Like precision Swiss clockworks, the approach of my period found me in line at the drugstore next to my office buying the big 2 lb. bag of M&Ms with peanuts.
I imagine I needed the magnesium.
This was not a mere craving or a self-indulgent habit. No, it was a full-on medical crisis.
I would devour that entire bag before I left to go home for the day. My period would start within 12 hours of the bag’s opening and the popping of the first handful into my mouth. Yes. Handful.
Years later, when we finally hired a contractor and had the kitchen installed, I declared one of the pristine white cabinets reserved for chocolate. Reserved for my chocolate. Chocolate I wasn’t going to be sharing. My son and husband were forbidden to even peek inside, because by then, chocolate was a need much more often than just one week out of the month.
One time, my son had a friend over for a sleepover. The master bedroom is up in the loft, and the acoustics are such that I can hear from my bed a conversation happening in the kitchen better than I could hear if I were standing in the kitchen.
That night, cabinet doors were opening and closing. The refrigerator, the freezer. All to the soundtrack of pre-teen banter.
I hear the friend say, “Wow! Can we have these?”
I don’t know what the “these” were that he might have been holding up for my son’s approval. The cabinet was stuffed with everything from Belgian truffles to Oreos. An all-chocolate roll of Necco wafers, a tin of chocolate-covered pretzels, and elaborately decorated chocolate-dipped plastic spoons to stir coffee or hot chocolate.
There’s a pause.
I hear my son say,
“Not if. You. Value. Your testicles.” Heavy emphasis on the you.
I had to roll over and muffle my laughter in the duvet.
Teach your children well, people.
About a decade later, the chocolate cabinet was moved to another wall when I took advantage of the installation of new flooring to tweak the kitchen design. By then, I was living alone. I didn’t need a designated chocolate cabinet. My stash was safe from predators. The little-bit-less-than-pristine white cabinet now holds cobalt blue barware – tiny ornate gems for Chambord, margarita glasses, martini glasses, handblown Mexican shot glasses for tequila, champagne flutes, and, of course, two styles of wine goblets. Many of the glasses have never been used to hold anything but dessert – often a chocolate mousse.
The red wine goblets traditionally got the most action.
This is another of the changes The Change wrought. I no longer NEED the red wine. In fact, it’s a problem now. Ditto coffee. My more than a pot a day is down to about three cups. Both libations do nasty things to my stomach. But the dazzling blue martini glasses get used for vodka martinis with two strips of lemon peel. Not one. Two. And I have plans to serve crème puffs filled with lemon curd and swathed in whipped cream in the oversized margarita coupes.
I am craving lemon. I’m buying lemonade – I haven’t drunk lemonade with any regularity since I was a kid. Starburst or Life-Saver gummies with all the citrus flavors find their way into my grocery buggy. The jar of lemon curd is already in my Amazon cart. Brach’s lemon drops when I can find them. Any old brand when I can’t.
I have even purchased a yellow blouse. I look dreadful in yellow, and I always have. I think it must be the association with lemon. I don’t think I have scurvy, so I’m not sure why my body is craving lemon, but I learned during The Change that arguing with it was fruitless.1
A few years ago, my mother asked what I wanted for my birthday dinner. I promptly answered fried chicken and lemon pie. The chicken was strategic. My mother is a competent cook, but her food is under-seasoned and often just not quite right in one way or another. She makes a few really good dishes, one of them being fried chicken. It is astonishing. I have tried and tried to duplicate it without success.
Lemon pie? Box pudding and frozen pie crusts. Forget the meringue, I want real whipped cream. That stuff in a can is fine. This was my childhood favorite in the pie category. I enjoyed standing at the stove stirring the pudding until the perfectly round gelatin capsule melted and released the lemon flavoring. Lemon pie was my birthday choice anytime we weren’t going out for dinner.
Even as I was eating my natal day celebratory meal of fried chicken and lemon pie, I marveled that my birthday treat did not involve chocolate nor was I washing it down with a robust Malbec.
I am now all about fruit desserts, candies, and other treats, with chocolate only sometimes being the answer.
Please! I am begging. I am. We are writers. Our words are or should be chosen with precision.
Stop for just a moment and consider the term dumpster fire. Define it.
Dumpster: large metal container used to hold garbage.
Fire: combustion or burning producing heat, light and smoke.
In other words: a dumpster fire is the burning of garbage within a metal container that may or may not produce noxious or poisonous smoke. They are generally easy to put out and not likely to spread.
Dumpster fire is in no way a metaphor for the current events the term is often applied to.
What is burning is not garbage. The fire is not easily put out. The harm is not minimal.
