dinner
There are times when I sit down to write, and thoughts pour out in long, tangled (and overly parenthesized) sentences. I laugh. I cry. It’s better than Cats (which, after that movie, it’s saying much).
There are times when I sit down to write, and nothing comes. I take that as a cue for me to engage the Shower Principle and go for a walk, make a loaf or two of soda bread, Kondo my clothes, reorganize the kitchen or a closet (again...to my husband’s bewilderment), or, you know, take a shower to distract my conscious mind and let the narrative juices flow.
There are times when I sit down to write, but nothing comes because I just don’t want what’s about to come to come. I don’t want to revisit a particular time or reenter a particular headspace because it’s still so painful, or because it’s still so raw, or because I haven’t had time to fully process it, or because I haven’t figured out how to embrace a particular mistake or personal failure and make myself look better.
For the last few weeks, I thought I wanted to write about November, the start of the winter holiday season and a time designated in Catholic tradition for remembering the dead. I tried to write about the weather and the seasonal shift that is a blunt reminder of the cycle of life and death (but all I could think about was my sister, who died a little over five years ago). I tried to write about All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day and about the theological idea of the “communion of saints” (but I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad, who died a few months after my sister). Nothing came (that I wanted to write about). I resigned myself to the fact that I’d skip a week, and that, true to form, I had come up short. I had fulfilled my always-just-under-the-surface fear that I’m insufficient. To avoid a thorough self-lashing, I closed my laptop and went to the kitchen to prepare an unnecessarily elaborate meal.
And then there are times when the universe says, in not so subtle ways, “Fuck that shit.”
It was an exciting Friday night: friends were coming for dinner. Back in the days of “normal,” this wouldn’t have been an extraordinary statement, but, because my husband and I have had direct social contact with very few people since quarantine began early in 2020, I’ve been deprived of one of my favorite things: entertaining. Seems a funny thing for an introvert to say, eh? Indeed, throughout quarantine, introverts like me thrived in many ways - no crowds to navigate, no panicked reading of rooms, no straying from established plans - I mean, there were no plans to establish. Virtual platforms meant I could look 20 people in the eye in a meeting or happy hour without three hours of anxiety ahead of time or needing an hour of isolation when it wrapped up. I’m one of those “social introverts,” and I thrive on connecting with other people. A costume party induces three days of pre-party anxiety and a solid week of post-party depression, but I could sit with a complete stranger for six hours if she has a story she wants to tell.
There’s a curious phenomenon among some introverts: we love entertaining. (Note: I say neither “we love parties'' nor “we love going to parties.”) As soon as I lived on my own, I started throwing parties and quickly grasped the best part: getting everyone I want to see in one place and not needing to spend time with anybody. I’d greet people at the door, direct them to the bar or introduce them to that person over there who’s also from wherever or who also knows whomever, and, once a new conversation bubbled, I’d “go check on something” or “check the door (my cover for hiding in the bathroom for two minutes or stepping in my bedroom, closing my eyes, and counting to 10). Most of my guests were hungover the next day, but I’d spend the next three days, satisfied from a successful soirée, replaying conversations, and recounting who left with whom while staring at a blank wall in an introvert’s coma.
Every three or four months, I’d send an evite out to just about everyone I’d ever met and instruct everyone to “bring your significant (or not so significant) other and a bottle of something for the bar.” That guaranteed both a good crowd and a well-stocked bar for the next three months. For days ahead of the party, I’d rearrange furniture, clean and vacuum furiously, and design the flow between conversation clusters, food, and drinks. Occasionally, I’d ask a few friends to come early for dinner to make sure that nobody made an awkward (for the guest and for the host) “first one to arrive” entrance.
For New Year’s Eve, I devised themes to make sure folx dressed, if not “up,” festively. For “A Very Madonna New Year’s Eve,” I promised prizes for the best outfits as voted-on by guests. I even dyed my hair black for my rip off of the “Human Nature” video. With the calendar turning to 2000, I asked guests to be inspired by various decades of the 20th century (and assigned decades by last name so everyone didn’t show up in 60s garb). When my ex and I threw a Hitchcock-themed soirée, a couple dressed as North by Northwest - one in a suit and askew necktie, as Cary Grant running from the plane, and the other as the plane. Our last was our swankiest - a Mad Men theme inspired plenty of skinny ties and pencil skirts (and plenty, and I mean plenty, of martinis).
While others of my generation looked to Martha Stewart and the rapidly-expanding DIY industry for guidance on party planning, I looked to my mother. As a kid, I wasn’t impressed by my mother’s capacity for feeding us (though, in retrospect, I should’ve been), but I revered her knack for entertaining. Three days ahead of the biggest gatherings like Christmas Eve or Easter, she’d extend the dining table and start thawing the main course. Two days ahead, the tablecloth was spread, the giant coffee percolator would land on the counter, and stacks of plates and piles of silverware would appear on the table. One day ahead, she’d delegate tasks - put out the plates, fold napkins, place silverware, set water and wine glasses. Days of steady preparation left the day-of for cooking (and grazing), enjoying the moment (drinking), and letting someone else do the dishes.
There wasn’t anything unusual or extraordinary about my mom’s table, but I loved its elegance, its functionality, its order. None of the cuteness we saw in friends’ and neighbors’ homes, and once the candles were lit, the table was perfection. Everyone sat, my Mom would improvise a blessing (“Well, let’s think about all those people on the street tonight…”), and then the magic of the table overtook us. The placement of dishes and glasses, where utensils were placed, how dishes were passed - every object was placed intending clarity about when and how to use it. And once bodies were in seats, glasses were filled, and grace was uttered, we adhered to an unspoken but essential rule: no one left the table until everyone was finished with dinner. None of this was her innovation - the table manners with which we were raised came from the rules of etiquette, for which my mother was happy to serve as coach, manager, umpire, and league commissioner (did I just make a baseball analogy?). Ours was a crowded dugout (what is happening to me?), and all those rules just felt like a common sense installation of order over chaos. Whatever their source, they all directed us toward one task: to focus on each other.
I’ve adopted Mom’s approach, even (or maybe especially) in pandemic mode. When friends came over for a drink a few months ago, I designed a socially-distant yet intimate clatch with an assortment of napkins, plates, and small bowls filled with snacks near each end of the couch and a hospital-grade air filter in between. When a friend invited me to co-lead a virtual seder, though it only had places for me, my husband, and Elijah, I spent a solid two days creating the table and seder plate to ensure everything was at our fingertips (and everything looked good on camera). Now, though, we four were vaccinated and tested and ready to mingle, so I could set the table for more than my husband and me (and Elijah). Plates under soup bowls, soup and dessert spoons in order of intended use, napkins folded, serving dishes placed at the outer edges of the table, wine and water glasses in place, and nothing in the middle. I even opted for stemless glasses over my mom’s crystal - there would be no barrier of any kind.
Some folx like to cook when their guests arrive, but I’ve never been much good with multitasking. Like a good OCD Virgo, I had the meal prep scheduled to be finished by the time our friends arrived. The only thing that would take me away from our time together, our first interaction in two years, would be heating up the soup and pulling the lasagne out of the oven. Even better? A dose of writer’s block and a short fit of self-pity got me focused on dinner a couple of hours early. I put Spotify on shuffle and started chopping celery.
When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
“When I’m Sixty-Four” was my mom’s favorite song. That’s a surprise to most folx who met her (she wouldn’t have been confused for a Beatles-maniac), but she knew a good lyric when she heard one. Paul sang on, and I thought, This would’ve been a moment to call her. I would open with “Hey, your favorite song just came on,” then tell her about the table and what I was making, talk about how work is going, catch up on family gossip, read into her silences and long pauses, get an update on their plans for heading to Arizona for the season, and hear the litany of who’s sick, who’s dying, and who’s dead. I smiled, amused at this most Irish-Catholic habit of tallying local suffering before she could hang up, but my smile squeezed a couple of tears from the corner of my eye.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
You know, I muttered to myself-but-not-myself, I think I finally understand why this is your favorite song. When I came out to her, Mom’s soundest argument, one I hadn’t anticipated, was the fact that “I’ve never met a happy homosexual.” Before she died, she never saw me in a truly happy, loving relationship. She never liked my ex (though she didn’t tell me that til three months after we split), and she never met my husband (whom I think she’d secretly really like...she wasn’t, let’s call it, effusive that way). She never got to see me surrender to domestic bliss, weeding table-setting and all. She never got to hear me hum Will you still need me, will you still feed me every time my husband bakes a loaf of bread.
I’m not surprised by how much I think about my mom while cooking - my kitchen is filled with so many triggers that I don’t usually need Spotify to prompt a tumble down memory lane. For various birthdays or Christmases or housewarmings, she gave me a set of knives, a set of pots and pans, and a mixer (one of the reasons my husband married me). I added various things from her kitchen before (I “borrowed” her Monsieur Crêpe in 1997) and after (a handful of bowls, serving plates, and salt-and-pepper shakers) she died.
But hearing her favorite song made me look at the kitchen, really look at myself in the kitchen, differently. I’ve adopted her very solitary approach to cooking, something my husband has noted a few times. It gives me something to do with my hands and gets me out of my head. It helps me to turn down the volume on critical voices and open wounds. I find myself making soda bread whenever I can’t work through an idea or a dilemma. When I cook with others, however, I’m constantly attending to their needs or preferences and assuming that my cooking prowess will determine the future of our relationship. I doubt she carried the exact same kind of self-doubt and deference, but I think cooking gave Mom a similar oasis from a crowded life. By the time anyone else was rousing, she’d have breakfast made, lunches packed, a pot of tea brewed, and the day’s crossword puzzle half finished. The first one to descend in the morning was greeted with a sigh of resignation, as if to say, Ok, here we go.
It was an exciting Friday night: friends came over. We hugged, we talked, we drank, we listened, we ate, we talked, we breathed the same air, and nothing got in the way. But the table was more crowded than I planned. My mom was there. So were my dad and siblings, the team she trained so well in the rules of the table. So were the many friends and strangers who came to my parties, who stocked my bar and surpassed my hopes for making connections and getting creative with corny themes. So were my husband’s and our friends’ families and friends and all the people we intersected together. And I’m so grateful that nothing got in the way.
