I am roasting a chicken. I’m not hungry – and I don’t plan on having dinner at home for a few days, but I am roasting this chicken none the less.
I cried all morning. Not big heaving, hysterical sobs, but that eye leaking thing I can’t seem to avoid lately, and today was particularly damp. I’ve been a little weepy as of late. I hate being a weepy woman.I hate the word, weepy, so I’m calling it a therapy breakthrough. There are chinks in my armor and apparently that’s the whole point. I’m a Brick House with walls 6 feet thick. They’re wholly invisible and invincible, surrounded on all side by a moat of alligators, nightmares, mechanisms of defense and deflection and a few gadgets so secret that I’d have to kill you if I told you about them.
Therapy Guy (TG) is out of town for two weeks. I expected that in August when all the Therapy Guys take vacation and the city in a big bag of nuts with no one monitoring the meds, but it’s March for Chrissakess. I’ve barely recovered from discovering TG was seeing another woman. Really – I thought I was the only one. It’s crazy, but I was knocked speechless. Another woman. I was crushed.
Every Thursday at 8am we meet and we talk about my dead Fred, my dad. TG considers it a good session if I cry, if he gets to toss the box of tissues at me. He smiles when he does it and his eyes crinkle up and he so freaking pleased with himself that I want to smack him upside the head. For the money I shell out I really think I should be able to smack him once in a while, but he’s been very clear that that was not an option. One of us has very strong boundaries. So I settle for an occasional “Fuck you” which he does not like– but when he says things to get a reaction ( “Lets talk about Fred” ), then I’m sorry, Therapy Dude,you don’t get to choose what my reaction is going to be.
I haven’t forgotten the chicken (3 lbs, washed, dried, buttered, sprinkled with garlic salt, paprika & Mrs. Dash – popped in a 350° oven for just about ninety minutes) – she is how I started telling you this and we’ll end up with her.
I cried all morning. I cried in the car on the way into the city, just a little, listening to Frank Sinatra. I went to my Sunday morning 12 step meeting and cried for the entire 90 minutes. I considered wearing my big Jackie O sunglasses, perfect for exactly these situations, but I think people who wear sunglasses inside are A-holes. Sorry, if its something you do, but I think it’s A-hole-ish. People were gentle and kind and reached out and I had to walk away, deny I was crying, deny anything was out of the ordinary. Not that I didn’t appreciate it – I just get all flummoxed by kindness, its presence as well as its absence.
I knew what started the cry, it was a simple tiny thing. A nothing really. Someone had disappointed me, someone I had thought was Decent my whole life was flying Creep colors – not a real big deal, he is easy enough to avoid. But I’ve noticed that the nothings that resonate today are echoes of really Big Somethings from before. My heart makes that connection light years before my brain and eons before my tongue can get involved at all. My heart starts the healing of the old wounds, the old disappointments, whether I’m conscious of it or not . My heart let me cry in safety, with the friends who will leave me alone when my skin is too raw, when my insides are on my outside. My heart sent my brain, my feets, my body, grocery shopping and it brought home a chicken.
Every Jewish kid, and every Italian kid, knows food is love. For the French I believe it’s art; for the English, a necessity, but for Jews, the cooking and offering of food is love. The eating of it is accepting love. That’s why you can never go to a Jewish home and not have at least a little something, a bissel, to eat before you go. You will drive them mad. They’ll turn themselves inside out trying to figure out the thing that’ll make you happy, the thing you want to eat. What is it? What can they give you?How can they show you they love you if you won’t accept it?
I’m roasting a chicken for myself — a very simple little 3 lb Perdue. I hear the fat and butter crackle as the skin crisps up, smell the garlic, the spices, the rich smells of cooking chicken fill my kitchen, giving me space to breath — to let some light seep into the passage between the little nothing and the Big Something. I can do that, with a little help from a roasting chicken.
sorry you had a weepy day. that sweet chicken picture makes me feel a little weepy as well and bad for ever eating chicken at all.
i remember all the meals you’ve cooked for me. i remember you and debbie and barclay teaching me how to roast a chicken.
healing hurts, doesn’t it? i don’t think i, for one, would pay attention if it didn’t.
Funny how that works. It has to hurt in a whole new way to heal the thing that has been hurting forever.
My Head Doc and I have an odd relationship. He’s a very interesting guy. I haven’t cried with him but once–after he started crying when he was talking about his dog who had died 4 months before. He said it was the first time he’d been able to cry about it, not even with his wife, because he knew I understood the relationship we have with animals. He asked me how it was to have my psychiatrist cry and I asked him how it was to cry with a patient. We agreed it was different but okay for us both. I still had to pay for the session, though. I went directly from that to a marriage couseling session, walked in late and still sobbing a bit. Hubby and LCSW were puzzled but when I gave them the brief version the LCSW said “Cool, Ttouch for psychiatrists!
The third sentence out of my grandmother’s mouth, everytime anyone walked in the door was, “What would you like to eat? There’s a cake.” Food is pretty much the language of love for us southerners, too. I confess that whenever someone dies, one of my early thoughts is for the wonderful food that will be around.
Weepy sucks! I once felt that pieces were, literally, falling off me.
HUGS