Undaunted Joy #121

Loved Through Food

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

My husband is leaving in the middle of the night.

Don’t worry. He still loves me. He simply has a work trip for which he is catching a red-eye flight across the country.

It has been a while since he traveled for work. When our sons were 3 and 4, he was out of town nearly half the week.  I did not have family close by and the separation was grueling. I tried to model a stiff upper lip for my children. The oldest cried but the youngest would say in an abnormally deep voice for a 3-year-old, “I’m not sad. Daddy’s gotta work.”

It is one of those delicious Pacific Northwest late summer afternoons where it is dark and rainy outside but it is still warm enough to leave the windows open so you can feel the breeze and hear the pebble rain dance on the sidewalk outside.

And inside, my husband is preparing to leave.  No, he isn’t pressing his shirts and bringing up the suitcase from the basement. He is cooking.

I am not a good cook. I come from a long line of bad cooks. I grew up on government cheese and powdered milk. Not necessarily choice ingredients for cooking. My husband wooed me with food. He knew I could not love until I had a full stomach. I still remember some of those first tastes. It was like the scene from Ratatouille where he combines both cheese and strawberry to create a taste firework. I realized I hadn’t really eaten before. I had merely fueled.

And so today, before my husband takes off for 10 days, he is making sure the fridge is stocked with some easy, ready-made choices to fill my stomach while he is gone.

There is a roast in the oven. The mixture of roast meat and rain invokes such a state of love, I am languid. Asian Pears have been picked from our tree and he has premade and portioned dough for galettes each evening. He is giving one of our teens directions on how to bake the galettes, continuing the line of care. “Don’t forget to feed the mommy while I’m gone,” he seems to say in his direction to take the dough out ten minutes before forming.

They both know, if let to my own devices, I will slurp on protein smoothies with a healthy pile of whipped cream on top.

This is the way my husband loves me.  He feeds me. And he makes sure my sons know how to take up this role when he is gone.

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