Anticipation (Sing it Carly!)

Four of us picked up our forks and began to dig in when one of us realized that the fifth in our group hadn’t yet been served.  Oops. Sorry. No worries, said the unfed one.  He was just fine waiting.  Because anticipation can be the best part of a meal.  Or a vacation.

My anticipation of this summer’s vacation is but a memory. It’s been a great time but it’s been emotional too. Pretty much each day of break I’d wake up with a bit of depression  because I only had 4 weeks, 3 weeks, 2 weeks left of break. Now it’s the last week of vacation. The depression has become sadness mixed with some worry about all of the things I was going to do but didn’t.

But experience reminds me that after the initial shock of the alarm going off way before the crack of dawn next Monday, it will all be okay. Because I can begin a new round of anticipation.  Anticipating a great meal, anticipating the first long weekend, and most of all, anticipating the birth of my next grandchild.

Sing it Carly!

 

Breakfast In Paris (in my mind)

Sitting at a sidewalk café always makes me feel very Continental.  We were only in Oregon but it could have been Paris.  The sky was blue, the sun was bright, the air was crisp, and the restaurant was small and quaint.  We—hubby, our pregnant daughter, her husband, their two year old son, and me—had nabbed ourselves a table and five chairs outside, under a wide umbrella.  I was enjoying my omelet and grandson, sitting beside me, was working on his Mickey Mouse pancake.

Apparently a Mickey Mouse pancake, dripping in melted butter and syrup, can be a finger food. Grandson did  a great job with piece after piece when he decided he’d had enough. Maybe he was full of drippy pancake.  Maybe his fingers were tired. Maybe the view to his left was better.  He picked up his adult size fork and swung it toward my plate where he deftly speared himself some omelet and returned it to his mouth.

Is that the way they do it in Paris?

I Had Lunch With a Friend Today

I had lunch today with an old friend.

We met 40 years ago when I took a job at the company where she already worked.  I was newly married and newly graduated from college. She was 17 years older than me, divorced with 4 children.  But differences in age and marital status were no barrier.  We both liked hiking and we became fast friends.  It seems like nearly every nice weekend we went on a day hike together but it couldn’t have been that often.  She had adolescent kids and I had a husband.  But we did go on lots of hikes.  We hiked National Forest trails and county parks.  But mostly we loved Mt. Rainier where I found my favorite place on earth, Spray Park.

Time passed and after a couple of years we each changed jobs. I divorced.  Her kids grew up.  We continued to go on some hikes.  For a while. But gradually our time together grew further and further apart until we had no contact with each other at all for many years.

I remarried and had children.  They grew up.  I changed jobs again.  We moved to the country.  One day my friend came to mind. I’m not much for talking on the phone and it had been so many  years I wasn’t sure she even lived in the same place or had the same phone number. But I decided to take a chance.  I called. She recognized my voice right away.

That was about 12 years ago.  We no longer go on hikes together.  But we do go to lunch.

It’s good.

 

Homemade Ravioli

What could be better than a warm summer’s day with my 90 year old mother? We made ravioli from scratch, like she made for me when I was a kid.  Then we whiled away the afternoon out in the yard, watching the leaves of the maple trees flutter in the breeze, gossiping about distant relatives, and reminiscing about the olden days.

“We’ll remember this for a long time, won’t we?” she said, her face lit up with happiness.