Comfort Food

Last night I hosted an evening visit with my friend Char.  We were going to have wine and some grilled cheese sandwiches—something simple. She brought a loaf of my favorite bread and two types of cheese for us to try (an herbed goat cheese and some sort of fig-honey cheese that was surprisingly good). She also brought two potatoes for baking, some organic carrots and a homemade meatloaf (her mother's recipe with mustard and horseradish; unbelievably good). And, she brought a bottle of my new favorite wine (Pennywise Petite-Syrah; tastes a little bit like bacon—wine and bacon, that's all I have to say). And, believe it or not, she also brought two types of dessert.

What did I bring to the table? My tired self in my dad's old jeans, my unwashed hair and a literal ton of gratitude. That's it. Not my usual standard for hosting, but that's the kind of week I'm having.

In the course of our conversation, Char told me more about her recent yoga retreat at Kripalu. I told her about the two yoga classes I had wedged into our schedule this week…and I say our because for the first time in my post living-with-my-parents life I have to base my schedule on the schedules of two other people (more about them later). Then I told her about having to cancel those two yoga classes. The backstory here is the explanation for why I brought nothing but my dad's old jeans and my messy hair to the table, but it's not a backstory worth telling because the telling would be whining and I don't really have anything to whine about. Anyway, I heard about Char's yoga retreat and exhaled. Then I said out loud, mostly to myself, "Someday, when this breastfeeding experiment is over, and Sam's shoulder is healed, and life feels a bit more manageable, I'd like to do something like that. It would be a nice reward. A good way to regroup."

Some people might wonder why I feel I need a reward. A healthy baby is the reward. A healthy husband is the reward. I know these things. But I also know that I'm junk if I'm not healthy and well rested too. And I have some feelings about this whole cult of motherhood and being a wife, and I'll try to share those feelings gently, over multiple entries, so as not to alienate my friends and family members who are good at self-sacrifice and better at these things than I am.

Anyway, when Char left, she put some envelopes on my dining room table where the meatloaf had been, and I put two packages in her bag. This is how we exchange Christmas gifts: sometime after the chaos of the holiday has subsided, handed over with love, meant to be opened leisurely sometime later. The only instructions were that I should open mine when Sam opens his. I'm not good at savoring unopened presents; maybe later I'll tell you my theories about waiting, about patience and about surprises. For now, I'll tell you that before I poured my coffee, I handed Sam his envelope and told him to hurry up because I was opening mine and we had to do it together. Here's what the card said: "A joy that is shared is a joy made double." That's also what Char wrote on the gift certificates for our own Kripalu yoga retreats…to be used sometime later.

So, this morning, I'm back in my dad's old jeans, and my hair still hasn't been washed, and I'm still carrying around that ton of gratitude. And I'm drinking some coffee now, watching the snow fall, and savoring the promise of a yoga retreat, and savoring the Chinese proverb about the joy that is shared because it brings to mind a hundred other stories I want to tell. And I'm wishing that everyone in the world could have a Char.