Things I Do: Cook Dinner

Tags

chicken, cook, dinner, enjoyment, food, garlic chicken, life, love, marriage, New York City, NYC, relationships, things i do

Someone should tell me that myspace isn’t a trendy social network anymore (see below).

It’s not even that I’m oh-so-totally-obsessed with taking pictures of myself. I have no emo photos with sultry eyes at the camera, thick gray eyeliner drawn to my ears, bangs in my face, bathroom mirror in the back, bra strap curling off my shoulder. Eyw, gross. It’s just that there’s only two of us and I want life to be frozen and framed like only photographs can.

I hate “welcome back” posts in the blogosphere. I just realized that I actually hate the word blogosphere, too. Eyw. We shall focus on the positive. I do, apparently, enjoy the blog more than I recognized. Catharsis, practice, brainstorm—something about it just works.

I like to do a lot of things. Herein begins a list of things I do, which is really just acting as a footbridge to cross to the more important list of Things I Don’t Do. A Shauna Neitquist book that I’m reading piecemeal, leisurely, has me talking all this inside out list-making nonsense.

And thus, I cook. We cook. We eat dinner (obviously…like you). Fish and chicken, beef stew, tofu. We let the crockpot simmer all day, we cook dessert before dinner, we eat while we heat, do dishes and play, grind vegetables and fruits to a glass full of of juice (and do dishes again).

The night we made garlic chicken and sweet potatoes from an internet recipe, I bought a whole chicken because I’m usually pretty great at following directions. The recipe never said anything about a head. It said whole, but it didn’t say head.

After defrosting the chicken, the visible breasts, thighs, drumstick legs, and wings, I lifted it from the sink and the head flopped down from it’s neat little place tucked under the chicky. The chicken hit the sink with a splat when I let it loose from my hands. I ran from it (in case?) like a tiny little girl.

I guess I’m not great in high pressure situations. When the smoke alarm went off a few weeks ago, I ran around the apartment, flapping a towel furiously overhead and shrieking “What do we do?” in what was once a whisper. You can imagine how helpful that was for clearing the smoke. Much like opening a window would have been.

Chicken heads and smoke alarms included, we shall continue to cook. Beware. (…or come over?)

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the celebration [5/5]

Tags

community, engagement story, journey, lifetime, love, marriage, party, proposal, relationship, series, storytelling, wedding

Previous posts in this series include:

the waiting

the clues

the ring

the cowboy

And today, to complete the series: the celebration

At the Post Office, thrilled to have just mailed our WANTED poster invitations

the cowboy [4/5]

Tags

adventure, cowboy, engagement, history, love, marriage, relationship, restaurant, story

the waiting                    the clues[2/5]                    the ring[3/5]

I met him in a bar. Neither of us were there looking for phone numbers. I wasn’t just one young lady with a cocktail, in a bar where he was buying drinks for women until he took one home. That kind of beginning isn’t our kind of beginning. Still, he wasn’t mine for a long time.

I met him in a bar. He was the bartender. I, the waitress. He thought me too loud, dare I say obnoxious. I thought him haughty, conceited even. But then I caught a better glimpse. A striking young man tossing limes in the air, spinning while they slide onto the lip of the glass in his hand. He laughs with his whole body, his smile stays on his face a while after what was funny. When he speaks to customers, he crouches down at the table or leans comfortably over the bar rail; it makes everyone feel like they’ve known him for years. Like he’s charming and he loves them more than as a customer. He says he gets it from his dad.

And not only that from dad.  His middle name, too, which I took to using frequently, months into our slow-paced, casual courtship years ago. His full name is not Bradley, as I once imagined or expected it to be, but just Brad. Brad Alan, like on the disc covers I printed for him once, before studio days, and like he uses on posters for his solo shows in New York City.

When I wasn’t sure how to proceed, I learned most about how he would treat me, the way he was falling in love with me so tenderly. Bursting at every seam, cheeks aching from laughter, we filled sunrise to sunset with adventure and jokes, exploring our Midwestern city creatively. I pretended we were only friends, pretended no one knew I’d fallen for him. He never stepped where I didn’t let him go.

We didn’t make every decision with perfect precision. I could’ve drawn some of our lines with invisible pen, I reckon. But the history of us is something I’ve come to love. For years, I’ve been adventuring and exploring with this cowboy. We’ve dreamed so many dreams together. For years, figuring what makes him tick, dissecting the world together, asking questions, loving the mystery of life.  Only the very beginning of these next forty years. 

the ring [3/5]

Tags

Chicago, engagement, family, frugality, grandma, heirloom, history, love, marriage, money, proposal, relationship, summer, symbols, tradition, value, wedding ring

the waiting [1/5]          the clues [2/5]

While on the phone, approaching the border of Michigan and Indiana the other day, I learned the possible difference between cheap and frugal.

It was suggested to me that frugality is interested in a good deal, in the best value for the product purchased. Frugality likes to own nice things, things that don’t break because they’re mass-produced or put together with soft plastic pieces, things made with durable fabric, things that will last and look beautiful. Things that will flatter. Things that have worth but are also on sale. Cheapness has interest only in the price tag. When the price tag is as low as possible, cheap wants in. If there is a chance ice might melt in the Arctic and the price could drop a few quarters, cheap would prefer to wait.

I would like to be frugal, I said. But I fear I fall into the trap of being cheap. I could dance around the semantics of the issue, but the truth is, I’m cheap.  And I’d prefer not to be.  This lesson in definitions flipped a switch for me. I have to tweak my price tag obsession some days.

On the tail end of this DNA malfunction inside of me is the idea of value. In our early conversations, I didn’t value wedding rings at all. Wasn’t interested; wouldn’t even window shop if it were up to me. But there are two of us in this conversation, and I was open to talking about it, exploring my aversion to what I perceived as an empty tradition. Open, yes; but remaining uninterested, true.

I researched a number of hours. Found unique designs, sought after the origin of the ring, the meaning behind the ring finger and the circular shape, browsed photos of thousands of precious metals, even wooden rings to get ideas. Visited discussion boards as an unassuming guest, extracting the opinions of strangers.

As I chewed on the idea of value months ago, I mentioned as an example, passing down fine jewelry from someone like my grandmother. My grandma and I were very close; she died about five years ago from breast cancer that she’d been battling my entire lifetime. I hadn’t seen grandma’s ring since I sat on her daybed, making mountains of her wrinkled skin, twisting her ring around her emaciated finger. The thought left my head after being said and I moved on to wooden rings, which were becoming my favorite. I was actually taking to the idea of rings. Everything I was learning was lodging in my heart, finding a way to actualize the tradition.

My husband-to-be must have known since the moment I mentioned it that he would seek Grandma’s ring. I’m ashamed, for such an intuitive person, at my ignorance. He’d called Mom, she’s contacted my aunt, they’d gone over to Grandpa’s to find the ring in an old jewelry box, where it had been sitting for years. Now I, naive and never wanting to wear a ring at all, am wearing my Grandmother’s wedding ring during my engagement. A ring she wore for over 50 years of marriage to my now-sick grandpa.

In that, there is value. In this ring there is history and storytelling. There are two little rubies and a single-cut diamond framing the main stone. There is an illusion setting, popular decades ago to make a smaller diamond look bigger than it actually is. The diamond was important to Grandma. Without Grandpa even knowing, she had her ring reset years into their marriage with the diamond from her mother’s wedding ring because that diamond was bigger! That story, told to me in a joint format by my mother and aunt, makes me laugh. That’s my Gram. She would.

All of this life is on my finger. It tells the world how Brad asked me to be his wife. And how in history there is value. Life is so much more than frugality. And symbols aren’t empty if you fill them.

the clues [2/5]

Tags

Berghoff, Buckingham Fountain, Chicago, clues, downtown, engagement, friends, future, Grant Park, Lake Michigan, love, marriage, new york, proposal, relationship, scavenger hunt, surprise, the Loop, travel

the waiting [1/5]

Steve dropped me off at the zoo and handed me a letter from Brad. I recognized his penmanship on the envelope. And the way he spells my name, with two e’s. The zoo was one of our places in the years we shared in Chicago. Steve sent me to the bench, and though he didn’t know where that was, I did. The bench is on Fullerton, west of Cannon, next to a bike path. Unassuming, actually crumbling, splintering at each end. It’s where I waited for Brad to meet me the day we split up, well over two years ago. It’s where Brad sat long after I walked away, unwillingly, thinking it best. I sat on the bench this time, waiting, as my letter instructed me to do, for the next clue.

Would a jogger drop a package with a tag screaming my name? Would a bus pull up with signs affixed to all the windows? I started to feel like someone was watching me. Like there were henchmen in the bushes who knew I was at the bench. Walkie talkies all over Chicago were crackling, Subject is at the bench. Please proceed with clue. Just as my curiosity piqued, my phone started vibrating out of control, asking all sorts of incriminating questions.

Do you remember… when you used to send Brad messages during work from that one computer? —where you first met Brad? —where is the best place in Chicago to get schnitzel? All clues were pointing to the Berghoff, the restaurant where Brad and I met one another. Industry shifts amidst which we fell in love. A few more messages from my dear friends buzzed in, Go there now, pal! There was a twenty for cab fare in the envelope. Brad must have known I would try, frugally, to take a bus.

I stood outside the Berghoff for a while. I didn’t exactly leave this place of employment all candy and roses, a going away party with streamers and balloons falling from the rafters. A blind man climbed out of a cab right in front of the Berghoff marquee. Maybe he has my clue, I thought.

Finally, I ducked inside, slid comfortably into the corner where I learned a large percentage of what I now know about Bradley. Behind that lunch counter computer I cleverly, coyly, sent blinking, unordered tables in paragraphs to my bartender years ago when we shared everything in this city. There was a note slid under the monitor with my name on the front in familiar penmanship. I was out the door with the clue and a bit of Spanish dialogue.

I walked down Adams, turned at Michigan to head into Grant Park, where our stage was on the corner. We used to play a graffiti game in the city. Wrote couplets, little lyric lines that we penned on sticky labels and stuck to newspaper boxes, light posts, parking meters, following riddle-directions to one another’s words. We have fun. The last graffiti was on this stage. A simple summer outdoor amphitheatre. I found the graffiti in the winter, something like “Every song I sing ees for you.” Two e’s, like the way he writes my name. It was so perfect, my musician. But things weren’t working right then, so it felt so bittersweet. This empty stage, winter snow, standing alone, the words his heart meant, all the time we’d spent.

I wasn’t sure how many clues there would be. Brad was somewhere in this city. One of the clues would hold him in its palm. Maybe it would be this stage. It was supposed to be, I find, but this weekend there was Bluesfest in Grant Park. Brad sent a message, a picture of Buckingham Fountain, down the street. Change of plans, go here instead.

I walked up slowly to the fountain. I thought he was near, wasn’t sure whether to look for him or for another clue. When he slid in next to me on the rail, he startled me so that I gasped. The seconds moved in fast-forward, crawling over one another to happen next. They’d been waiting for this for years, too.

Linda, will you be my wife? from down on one knee.

All brides-to-be everywhere, don’t be ashamed on behalf of me. I don’t actually remember what I said. Yes, of course, only yours. I’ve wanted to be your wife for years. I’m confident that right now, today, this Fall, it’s right and healthy and perfect. I want to spend “the next forty years” with you. I could have said any of that. My heart was spilling over with all of it.

Whatever I said made people clap.  A man took a picture. In the end, it would only be a few short months until we would be the Dennisons.

the waiting [1/5]

Tags

breakfast, Chicago, clues, downtown, engagement, friends, future, love, marriage, new york, proposal, relationship, scavenger hunt, surprise, travel

We have a friend, Christina. We call her Migsy. And, in a sense, from my end, the plot begins with her. It begins back when I had not yet met her in February, when her name stuck in my head as Brad told stories from work. I contacted her, on blind faith, and commissioned her to help me when I surprised Brad with a visit. I liked her immediately. She’s charismatic and charming. Has a reality about her that I was sure would suffocate in a place like Manhattan. Migsy breathes genuine life into an overstimulated city. I can get down with that.

So when she said she was coming to visit me as soon as I moved back to Chicago, my excitement was overflowing. Sticky root beer float all over my knuckles when the ice cream drops in and the glass lip takes to napping. Brimming over.

The morning of Migsy’s arrival, I waited at The West Egg, a breakfast spot in River North near the lakefront. Downtown Chicago. It’s right around the corner from where a friend of mine used to live, where she once saw Kevin Costner eating a tomato. Or something. My eyebrows were raised, my head on a swivel, waiting for Migsy to saunter around the corner, her head high, cheekbones glistening, smiling.

I put our name in, sent her a text message. She was coming, she said. The sweet hostess sat me at a two top, awaiting Migsy. I sent her another message and sipped a cup of coffee with sugar in the raw. Waited just a bit. My heart was filled with excitement and although I had suspected this weekend as a plot of sorts before, while I waited at The West Egg on the eleventh of June, I really thought Migsy was going to walk through that door.

Across the restaurant, instead, was Steve, Brad’s roommate while he lived in Chicago, and dear friend, proofed by incriminating pictures which may or may not include Looney Tunes sweatshirts and suspenders meant for men over sixty. What are friends for? Momentarily, I thought it coincidence, us all having chosen the same restaurant for breakfast on this particular Saturday, as I waited, still, for Migsy’s arrival.

But then, after I stood to give Steve a hug, he sat down at my table with me. In Migsy’s seat, which was odd. Something wasn’t normal.

Steve said Migsy wasn’t coming. And that I should come with him. He didn’t know that, for once, I had already decided what to order. With Brad, it usually takes me dozens of minutes. With my friend Charissa, nothing short of an hour. Instead, I left with Steve. But not after an accusatory, if prideful declaration.

Brad’s here, isn’t he? From New York City. He must have flown when I thought he was at work. Steve’s eyes avoided contact with mine. He laughed. Never answered. My thoughts were in fast forward. This is it! I could hardly wait to see him.

Bearing Burdens

Tags

burden, conversation, emotion, God, healing, love, marriage, pain, past, relationship, sharing, unity

I’ve carried my burdens.
Bore them for miles.
Hesitant, resilient to impart my trials.
To share too deeply,
With anyone, really.

It’s not trust, I don’t think fear
Not instability or feeling irresolute.
It’s the way I know it weighs down,
And how I’ll be to blame.
The way it will weigh love
Make your love for me swing low
With my trials, my shame.

When I give my sh*t to God,
He doesn’t flinch, move, budge an inch.
His heart hurts with my hurts,
But he heals as I wound, clots while I bleed,
Mends as I rip stiches with my breaths, gasp and heave.
I pile my sh*t on you, and you ache, anger, bleed.
It’s with me and for me, which should stop my re-shame.
It doesn’t, I throb, wishing my mess back into my own depth.
Wondering if keeping to myself
Would’ve just been best.

These breaths we take together.
Our steps, some pained, are measured.
This is what it is to share.
To come out from my corner, alone,
To say I promise, I’m weak, I’m yours.
For you to promise, I’ll stay.
Yours is ours.

Moments that Make Marathons

Tags

coffee, conversation, distance, driving, future, life, love, marathon, marriage, moments, perspective, relationship, Starbucks, travel, waiting

Her coffee was too hot, she said. She usually tells them not to make it so hot. When they do, she can’t drink it right away and she hates that. I wondered, when she said hate, if she really hates it or if it’s just something she doesn’t like very much. I’m always wondering about things like that.

She stirred the whip cream, melted it into her coffee with a wooden stick from the coffee bar. Talked about how, today, differently than some of her yesterdays, she would shake nutmeg and cinnamon into her travel mug and see how her taste buds appreciated the gesture.

I hope it keeps me awake on my way to Flint, she said.

She invited me into her conversation, and I took a step I hadn’t planned on taking. The one on my map led me back to my table, to my isolation, brewing in mediocre circumstances, trying to grade papers. My map used terse words and fake smiles. But the step I took was off the map, it went beyond the hatred I feel for a commitment I must fulfill honorably, with excellence. It left papers ungraded. It spoke with patience for a relationship that must wait behind phone calls and weekend flights to spend forever. It worried not about me; it listened and found waiting unobtrusive.

Her husband, I learned, works across the state and she’s driving across to see him. They’ve been doing this for two years. And will do it still for one more.

I thought fleetingly, while she was sharing, of the eight-hundred miles that separate me and Brad, and how we struggle to appreciate this far-away time before being together, proximally, permanently. About how she was trying something fresh and new, something as simple as spices in her coffee, after two years of regular separation from her permanent lover. Her spices gave me perspective.

Good luck, honey, she said as she left. For what remained of our relationship between Michigan and New York, she meant. Even though she was the one driving to bridge the chasm in a marriage. Three-hundred miles, maybe. Between two that are supposed to be one.

Good luck to you two, she says, and climbs in the van on her way to Flint.

I Will

Tags

bridal party, bridesmaid, celebration, eloping, friendship, Las Vegas, love, loyalty, marriage, rejoice, wedding

Yesterday, Paula and I were talking about weddings. She, however, is already married—the single most gorgeous, personal, and relaxed wedding I’ve been a part of to date—so I guess we were only talking about one wedding.

There was a silence in our conversation, where we sat on the couch, our feet tangled up on a love seat too small for every inch of our adult bodies and the nuzzling snout of her black lab, all of which were finding space here.

I had alluded to eloping, not said that I would or was in favor, just alluded, even a little in jest. I had mentioned, even admitted to romanticizing the fact that eloping was something we almost did a number of years ago. I was a touch embarrassed that we’d suggested Vegas. I think I credited him for saying “Let’s go” because he did.

She broke the silence with disgust edged in playfulness. If you ever, she said. If you ever run away and came back married… It was a threat, not a joke. I laughed at the way it fit her character. At the way she so boldly called me on it like that. I will be standing in your wedding, she said.

Delighted in her boldness by which she said, I will stand by you, I will rejoice with you, we will do life together, I tossed the dog’s squeaky toy to relieve myself of his slobbery face and quieted her fears. Oh yes ma’am, you will.

Engagement Announcement

Tags

change, engagement, friends, future, God, love, marriage, proposal, relationship

In the picture, they’re dressed nice,
both in black sweaters, she in tights.

Frosted with glass, there are cupboards behind,
Mom and Dad’s kitchen—Iowa—both families intertwined.

We all met in seminary, intermingled with one another
She fell so gently, his steps so slow, so measured toward her.

I, so impatient, watching them come together
But now, it’s too soon, knowing they’ll spend forever.