August 16, 2012

• LIFE IS A FREAKIN SMORGASBORD!!

   

   

    

   

   

      I started my life on the crawl like everybody else. An innocent babe living each day one minute at a time. On that journey, I grew to appreciate the joy and wonders of ‘food!’ Good food, warm places, soft playthings and taking dumps. My entire world was less than twenty square feet! My life experiences were few and slowly learned. I learned that I could not eat everything I picked up, especially Dad’s cigarette butts. Banging my head on the floor was not the same as banging it on my crib mattress. Last of all, grabbing everything with a toddlers death grip was not wise especially in the case of the dog’s balls.

      I entered my preschool years with an appetite for glue paste and green play dough. I took notice that some of the guys had longer hair and wore dresses and did not like sharing their lunches. By third grade they stopped being guys and became sassy female aggravations. By the sixth grade they became scary which continued for the next 30 years.

      The twelfth grade was a time of both tribulation, exhilaration and humiliation. I now had an appetite for every food group known to man. I finally figured girls out, but my conclusions changed every other day. They were a paradox, an aggravation, exhilaration, humiliation and they were wonderful! My body was manly now and except for those awkward occasions when my hormones were in control, I felt like I could take on the world!

      My twenties. The third decade of my life seemed to vanish into some type of time warp. Before I realized the passage…..they were over! I had refined my taste and appetite to the finer delicacies and culinary joys of life. Those were the years of knowledge, attitudes, betrayals, heartbreak, responsibilities and shame. I went to college, I went to Vietnam, I went to South America, I went to the altar and I went to the delivery room. I had a family, a mortgage, in-laws, career and direction. All in my twenties.

      My thirties and forties were a monotonous continuation of careers, diets, in-laws and resentment of those in their twenties.

      My fifties launched life’s next journey. All my food groups were now fried, followed by brownie mush ice cream. My kids were grown with kids of their own. I had grand kids, a mortgage, a career, a bad back, still had in-laws and one day had a heart attack. My first. Life really changed then. People looked at me differently and family now loved me differently. What was worst, my diet changed. I was now committed to only one food group…..mushed up cardboard with boiled bark chips…..or so it seemed.

      My sixties finally arrived. As I am rushing towards seventy now, my final food group is all comfort foods, as the disciplines no longer abide. Had a quadruple by-pass, my grand kids are on the verge of parenthood, a few of my in-laws are still hanging on, my retirement started, my mortgage is still around and all the women my age now look like guys with dresses and long hair….and they still won’t share their lunches!

   

   

   

  • 12:51 am
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