First things first: we went to Newfapalooza last Saturday. This is unrelated to this week’s newsletter, but come on- 130+ big fluffy dogs. You need to know about it. You need to know that there is a day in May when over a hundred Newfies get together at a winery to play in baby pools full of ice, nap in the shade, and drink a few hundred gallons of water.
Numa never gets to hang with dogs her size, and we rarely get to be around people who truly don’t care about her size (or her slobber, or her fur, or or or…) When Numa raises her head from taking a drink of water it’s like Niagara Falls coming off of her face, and the first thing she’ll want to do after that is give you a big soaking wet kiss. It’s nice to be amongst people who embrace that level of mess.
Bonus- the whole event benefits the National Newfoundland Rescue, a great organization that helps find homes for Newfies in need!
In writing news, I had the great honor of contributing a guest piece to
I also spoke at the Project for Advancing Healthcare Stewardship’s Planting Seeds of Radical Hope symposium on Friday. I got to share a bit of Carolyn’s story and talk about how isolation and loneliness played a role in our cancer years- both the root causes and the efforts that curbed it. It was a wonderful session. I’m so taken with the work they’re doing, and grateful to have been a small part of it.
I joked last week that I was going to do a roundup of my recent writing lunches and then a bunch of messages came through to the effect of, yes please! So I started writing about lunch, but lunch brought me to the farmer’s market, which brought me to last week’s strawberries.
I brought a flat of strawberries home last weekend. I rearranged the fridge so they fit without stacking and admired how they looked- small, shiny, perfectly red. They looked like cartoons, they were so perfect. I knew they’d be delicious. Seasonal strawberries are a highlight of our springs, and I called out to the kids that I’d brought a bunch home. Then I closed the fridge. It took two days before I could convince myself to eat some of them.
When the kids and I were on SNAP, we had a set budget for food every month- $383. This was not enough to feed three people. The kids were in public school and eligible for free lunch, so that helped, and we lived with my mom (who wouldn’t have let the kids starve), but it was an enormous source of stress trying to budget our food stamps each month and make them last.
I’ll never forget the feeling of checking my card balance each time we went to the store, watching it whittle down with every shopping trip. The card balance printed on the end of each receipt and I’d tear the bottom of the receipt off and keep them in my wallet, replacing each one as needed so I could always reference our balance. I tried to plan meals that would keep us within the thin margins of our budget while still providing variety and nutrition, and I felt flustered and anxious each time one of the kids got excited about something in the grocery store that wasn’t on our list.
We didn’t have enough money to buy double of anything, so I got into a habit of not eating pricier foods that the kids liked. If the kids tried something I’d been enjoying and found they liked it, I’d save it all for them.
There are dozens of foods I’ve added to my mental ‘save for kids’ list over the years: Trader Joe’s tomato soup, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, milk, greek yogurt with honey, brioche bread, blackberries, butternut squash mac and cheese, sumo oranges, chicken sausages, tofu, bacon, cereal, guacamole- and strawberries.
My avoidance of ‘for the kids’ foods eased a bit when we were off SNAP and could afford to buy more of what we wanted, but it returned when Carolyn was diagnosed with cancer. She bounced between intense cravings from rounds of steroids and nausea-induced food avoidance. I was desperate to keep her weight up, so any food she’d eat was reserved entirely for her.
She loved my homemade garlic scape pesto, and for two years I made it by the quart and never ate a bite. I baked double loaves of maple bread and brought one loaf to the hospital and left another home for Jack. I couldn’t eat any myself. I felt a compulsion, once again, to save all the best things for them.
Somehow this has translated into me not being able to eat certain foods if I know they’re a favorite of my kids, even now. There is a mental block that I can’t get past, like if I eat something they like, I’m taking something from them.
I’m not trying to imply that I don’t eat well, that I starve myself or deprive myself of good food. I do not. I love to buy food and I love to cook, and our fridge is always stocked with leftovers from great dinners and ingredients waiting to be made into salads or fish tacos or slow-simmered beans. The kids and I meal-plan together and they’re always something delicious on deck that we can all get excited about.
My lunches are especially fun. They’re colorful and delicious and nourishing. I love crunchy foods, so vegetables abound. I can put a good salad together fairly quickly. I keep a jar of homemade mustard vinaigrette in my fridge at all times, and it’s perfect over chopped cucumbers and dill or torn bibb lettuce and halved radishes.
Lunch is the only meal I eat alone. Breakfast is often eaten on the run- in the car on the way to play practice dropoffs or while taking Numa on her morning walk around town. Dinner is eaten with the kids, but it’s a joint effort. I don’t subscribe to the ‘this is what I made, now eat it’ approach- I actually find it more enjoyable when we land on common ground for dinner- but that means extra spicy chili crisp noodles are rarely on the menu.
Lunch is a little love letter to myself. It’s something I can get excited for, and it’s only ever exactly what I want.
Sometimes I’ll have a baguette with ham, butter, and cornichons. Sometimes it’s french-style yogurt with honey, blackberries on the side, a glass of green juice. Tuna salad or tuna-style chickpea salad with tons of chopped celery is never a bad plan. I’m also a big fan of beans simmered in a broken-down-cherry-tomato sauce. Dollop some ricotta on top, swipe a heel of sourdough through it, and I’m sold.
On rainy Fridays after a long week, I’ll order pad thai noodles and tom kha soup for delivery and split the order in half, making two lunches. Takeout lunch always feels a little luxurious for me- food that is delivered hot to my front door? Yes, please!
I don’t keep the ends of my grocery store receipts in my wallet anymore, but I haven’t been able to completely leave that part of our lives behind. Food insecurity is so stigmatized, and it stays with you long after you’re out of the SNAP woods.
Single moms are especially scrutinized. When I was receiving food stamps, I couldn’t do anything correctly. I was supposed to use my assistance to only buy healthy food, but if I bought organic I was a wasteful spendthrift. The assistance provided wasn’t anywhere near sufficient to feed my family, but if I couldn’t make it work, I was seen as a financial mess who can’t budget.
Lunch is a reminder to myself that we can afford food now. We’re on a fixed budget while I’m working on my book, but we’re not in a place where we need to ration the tomato soup or skip the fresh market strawberries. We can all enjoy these things, and we can buy more later if we want.
Still, I haven’t eaten more than a handful of our market strawberries over the years. Sometimes I’ll pick one or two off the top of each pint and snack on them while I put the groceries away, but I couldn’t ever eat a whole bowl of them myself.
Then, last Sunday night, I wanted something snack-y before bed. Something hydrating, sweet but not too sugary. I found myself staring at the three pints of strawberries left in my fridge.
It dawned on me that I could just…eat them. I’d bought them. They were in my fridge. There would be more at the farm stand the next morning, and I have a driver’s license and a car and a bank account and money. I could eat them and then replace them- or not! If these were the last strawberries of the year, if my kids didn’t eat a single other strawberry until next May, they’d be okay.
I let all the cold air out of the fridge while I tried to talk myself into eating some of them. I deliberated on this longer than I’m comfortable admitting.
I did finally cut myself a bowl of them and ate them in bed, tucked into the bay window in my room. They tasted like strawberries should taste- sweet, concentrated, bright, berry-ish. Like something that will stain your fingers a little. As I ate them, I tried to tally how many flats of fresh strawberries I’ve bought over the years, and how few I’ve actually eaten.
The windows were open and street noise filtered through. I thought about every person passing on the street- all the people in their cars, people walking their dogs, pushing kids in strollers. I thought about the right to food- how no one should ever question whether they’ll have enough to eat, and I wondered at how we got ourselves to a place in which some of us do.
No Cancer News
This newsletter is late because Carolyn fainted at school and then got seasonal allergies. These two things are not connected- she fainted because she was singing in a chorus concert in front of the whole school in a warm gym after not eating enough at lunch, and she has seasonal allergies because she has seasonal allergies. She does not have cancer again.
My body and mind are still catching up to this fact. There were two calls to her oncologist, one about the fainting and one about her stuffy nose. He is a patient man, and I’m grateful, because the alarm bells in my head were hammering away and every time I opened my mouth mindless panic poured out.
We went over the bloodwork from her last visit and I got my head on straight. Then I crashed. I walked Numa, made meals, kept up with dishes and laundry, but when I wasn’t handling the essentials I stayed in bed with Netflix playing vaguely beneath my pillows. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My body felt like it was made of stone.
Carolyn has been sick with ordinary illnesses since leaving treatment. She was sick while IN treatment. I don’t know why this time was such an upset, but for days I felt like we were standing in a hallway lined with doors, a monster behind each one, and they all started creaking open at the same time. It was breathtaking in its terror.
This morning I woke up early and did some yoga. Then I took Numa on a long walk and got everyone sorted for school. All the essentials taken care of. Then I sat down to finish writing this, and each word feels like a fight against my impulse to crawl back under my blanket.
I’m going to Tulsa for a mini writing retreat with some close writer friends this week, and it couldn’t come at a better time. I’m going to take the time off from Substack-ing so I can focus on finalizing edits for two essays I’m hoping to finish. I’m also going to pay close attention to myself for a moment. This feels necessary.
I’ll be back next Friday, rested and refreshed, with some tattoo talk- my favorite thing!