What I Ate, mid-January, 2020: Popcorn, and The Soothing Taste of Humility

I am sitting here eating a bowl of popcorn in the light of the Christmas tree. My first Christmas without my mother. A Christmas in which me and my husband took some of the remaining members of my family to a Hibachi grill. Where I shared scallops with my sister and my father.

**

Nic paid for the meal — after tip — which came to $150. He shrugged it off, and smiled, and said he was happy to do it. But for a man who will eat semi-rotten cottage cheese with old beets and call it a meal because the price of those items was $0— I knew he must have considered the cost.

But what is this life? Other than an opportunity to buy Christmas dinner for our families — to be out, on a cold night in December, not counting up the cost of living.

**

I have written the story of my life through my mouth.

Through the only vehicle I could control. What went in, what came out. Food in, words out.

**

I am working on a book, and I want it to feed people.

I want to write sentences that change your understanding of the world from one minute to the next. Sentences that make you gasp, that make your eyes pop. And then I want to gloss over all…