Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Woman.

"'If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.'" -John Irving, "The World According to Garp"

...

Days are busy around here lately. Very, awfully busy. Have been for a while. Though I love to cook, the past few months have involved a lot of non-cooking: crackers-and-cheese, hummus-and-chips-and-salsa kind of dinners. Or half-price appetizers at happy hour. Breakfast is snatched on the run or not at all. I can sometimes get free lunch at work but it's boring, and things have been so crazy it's been hard to even make time to run get free food. (I'm a hungry person. This is a sign of serious derangement.)

...

Tonight, though, I will cook. I've been home sick while Chloe and Red went off to work; the ingredients are in the fridge, and I'm rested up enough to turn them into dinner. The reason I know this is so rewarding? Besides years of translating love-into-food for my friends and family and partners, I mean. Lately? It's brown bag lunches.

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A few weeks ago, in an effort to save money and actually improve nutrition to something above the vending-machine cracker level, I started packing lunches. For all three of us. The lunch-packing started back before Chloe was staying over at our house very much; I would sneak a sack to her on the days when I could manage it, or mournfully pack just two lunches if I couldn't. These days, I'm regularly setting out three brown paper bags (with initials C, M, and R - must keep straight the mayo vs. Miracle Whip sandwiches!)

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Though it requires me to get up a little earlier, and gets in the way of other things I might be doing, I've come to love this ritual. I get home from the market with packages of goldfish crackers and baby carrots and mixed nuts, and parcel them out into little ziploc bags for a week's worth of lunches. I assemble three sandwiches at a time (turkey, maybe ham too! or tuna salad - gotta make two kinds, since Red doesn't want celery - or PBJ if I'm really in a hurry). Those get made in the morning, otherwise they'll be soggy. I use special tricks my mama taught me, for combating sogginess in different types of sandwich. When I can, I try to stick in a container of homemade iced tea.

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Every motion, swipe of a knife, scrunching of lettuce, folding a napkin, says "I love you". Picking out the fruit, snipping the grapes into little bunches, sealing up the bags, reminds me "they love you back".

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Tonight I will serve them affection over steamed rice, with a side of passion, and kisses for dessert. They will fuss over my cooking, and comfort me for having been sick. Or who knows, maybe one or both of them will be in a foul mood, and we won't have much to say to each other. That's okay too. We will at least eat and drink and be together, and be in love.