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HALF A LIFETIME AWAY, IN SEVENTH HEAVEN
Eldest grand-daughter Jessica is getting married on Saturday.
One day, about half of her lifetime back,
the two of us prepared dinner together.
Here are my notes.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table, observing Jessica. She’s 13 years old these days, and 13-year-olds must be watched and carefully considered, since time passes so fast and before you know it a 13-year-old will be a 25-year-old and you won’t have any idea where the time went, where the moment went, where the 25-year-old went.
Jessica is sitting at the table in front of four soup bowls, or maybe they’re salad bowls, only they don’t contain soup or salad. Into one bowl she has crumbled up a bunch of Ritz Crackers, another bowl contains milk, another is filled with flour and the fourth holds several eggs she has whisked together into a sunshiny blend. She’s had me cut up a lot of de-boned chicken breasts into nugget-sized hunks–the only way to do it, she insists.
Over on the stove, the wok awaits usage, since Jessica instructs me not to turn the heat on till she’s through doing what she’s doing at the table, which is: each hunk of chicken must be dipped one at a time into all four bowls, until the hunk looks kind of flaky and golden and quite raw. The process takes a while, but that’s OK because we’re chatting a little bit and she’s got the TV turned up high so she can watch and listen to one of her favorite shows–Seventh Heaven, or something like that.
Earlier, we’ve gone to Bruno’s Supermarket and bought everything on Jessica’s list: Chocolate chip mint ice cream, corn oil, pre-packaged salad (Jessica likes it because she says it doesn’t have to be washed and it’s already cut up. I wash it thoroughly, just in case somebody named Booger has not practiced good hygiene the day he packs the plastic bag), frozen lima beans for microwave zapping, and whatever else Jessica has decreed for the ideal meal at home.
Process is important to Jessica. Everything must be done a specified way, a specific way, or the meal will be ruined. She’s a particularly finicky eater, so finding a meal that she’ll actually eat is tricky. She’d rather not eat at all than eat something she’s never tried and has made a firm decision against.
Anyhow, we get this meal cooked to Jessica’s satisfaction, and we even clean up the kitchen so that there will be no trace of the havoc we’ve caused in her father’s absence.
The deep-fried chicken nuggets are good–we’ve cooked about four times as much as we can eat. And we’re both somewhat satisfied with ourselves. She gets what she wants–a meal just like her Aunt Vikki cooks. I get what I want–a nice meal at home, not prepared by strangers, prepared with love and camaraderie, and the company of my grand-daughter.
We settle in to wait for her father’s return, watching this TV show she loves, Seventh Heaven, and the night is quite all right, as nights on earth or in Seventh Heaven sometimes are
© 2011 A.D. by Jim Reed