Author: simchajfisher

Game review: Forbidden Island

You know those memes where people’s heads are melting, turning into horrible, bloated balloons, or otherwise undergoing some kind of excruciating suffering because they have to listen to someone read the rules of a new board game?

This is me. I’m too old and dumb and my neurons are all completely busy trying to remember where I put my pants. I don’t want to learn a new game!

So I was very skeptical about Forbidden Island. There seemed to be a LOT of rules and exceptions and actions and sub-actions and choices for each turn, and I could feel my head start to puff up by page two. But a promise is a promise, so I forged ahead. 

Glad I did! It’s a neat little game, and once you go a few rounds, it really does make sense. I would have made a few small stylistic changes to make it feel a little more coherent, but the structure is solid and all action and variety fall into place quickly. I played with kids aged 11 and 8 who had played once before, and it was well within their grasp. The game took about half an hour. It combines chance and strategy, but you’re supposed to confer and collaborate with your team members, and the tension comes from trying to escape in time, rather than beat each other.

You’re a team trying to rescue all four elemental treasures off a mysterious island and flee before it sinks into the sea. At each turn, you move around to different spots, or sometimes move others around, trying to collect treasure or achieve various goals. You also have to turn over cards that make sections of the island fall into the sea; but you also have the chance to shore them up, sometimes (but if they sink too often, they’re gone for good). Each player has a slightly different set of skills, which encourages you to work together and forge a plan that uses everyone’s skills and the fruits of everyone’s luck. You also occasionally draw a card that makes you ratchet up the speed at which the water rises. You can control how hard the game is by starting out at various levels, but it will get harder as it goes. I can imagine lots of variety in different games, depending on luck and on who’s playing. 

It is a beautiful game. The island is made up of an array of little cardboard cards printed with brightly-colored vignettes, each with a dramatic name, and when the different locations fall into the sea, you flip the cards over to see the same scene depicted in an eerie blue.

The treasures are little figurines made of heavy plastic, and are appealing and will seem worth collecting to kids.

The whole thing fits nicely into a medium-sized tin box that will fit on a bookshelf. 

I would have come up with some term a little more evocative than “actions” for the three things you can do on each turn; and I would have chosen something more romantic than a helicopter pad for the only possible escape route. But these aren’t deal breakers; they just disrupt the mood a bit. 

But I definitely recommend this game for kids who are ready to play something a little more complicated than the same old games that take you around and around the board, or require you to act viciously toward each other. It requires strategy, but only a little bit, and stronger players who have better ideas can guide the more confused players whose head blew up like balloons when the rules were being read (so it would work well for people of different ages to play together, as long as they don’t hate each other). It’s compelling but not nail-biting, and it will capture the imagination of visually creative players. You do need to be able to read, but not a lot. It says it’s for ages ten and up; but as I said, my smart eight-year-old did fine with it.

It’s also reasonably priced! Some games are insanely expensive, but this one is listed at about $20 right now. This game apparently has some expansion packs, and also a follow-up game called Forbidden Desert. 

Other game reviews:
Ransom Notes
The Catholic Card Game (NFP Expansion pack)
Mysterium 
Snake Oil 

Revisit abandoned spiritual practices; you may be surprised

Not long ago, I played my clarinet in a concert. It was the first performance I’ve been in for over 30 years. I used to play a long time ago, and although I never got very good, I stuck with it as long as there was a group to keep me going. It always made me a little sad to come across my old, broken-down instrument and wish I could be in a band again. So this past Christmas, my husband bought me a new clarinet, and my daughter spotted an ad for a community band, and away I went.

And guess what? I’ve gotten better. Not a lot, but unmistakably, I’m a better player than I was 30 years ago. This is somewhat counterintuitive, because, at age 48, my fingers ache in a way they did not when I was a teenager, and my lung capacity is certainly worse. I now need reading glasses to see the notes, and sometimes I still can’t see the measure numbers without sticking my face right in the page.

But my sight reading is much faster than it was, and my posture is better, too. My musical sense in general has matured. And there are more subtle things: I don’t get my feelings hurt when I’m stuck playing the harmony, rather than the melody; I’m patient with my own mistakes, and just try again, rather than getting frustrated and embarrassed and giving up.

I find it easier to listen to the director and accept that she knows what she’s talking about, rather than rolling my eyes because she’s bossy. I’m better at listening to the band as a whole, and trying to play my part as it’s written, rather than impress anyone. I also try my best to play all the music well, even if it’s not my favorite, because I’m just not as bratty as I used to be. These are things that I’ve learned to do in the last few decades, even while never so much as touching a clarinet. So now I’m a better musician.

The clarinet is not the only old hobby I’ve revisited recently, and it’s not the only thing I’ve discovered I’ve gotten better at, simply by taking several decades off and growing up a bit.

A few examples: I used to be the world’s worst baker. My biscuits were dense, my cakes were crooked and flat, my cookies were rubbery and always burnt. I could make cornbread, because it was almost impossible to do it wrong, but pretty much everything else was garbage. I resorted to mixes and store bought baked goods for decades. But then slowly, gradually, I recently started to experiment with baking some simple things from scratch— french bread, basic cakes—and guess what? I can bake fine. I’m no expert, but I’m completely competent, and the things I bake usually look like the picture on the recipe page.

How did this happen? For one thing, I’ve gotten better at assessing which recipes are going to be suitable for my skill level, and only attempting trickier ones when I know I will have the time and energy to focus on them. In the past, I would have approached an outrageously difficult recipe with the attitude of “but I WANT to” and then predictably ruined it, and then gotten angry and disgusted, and then had my confidence shattered for next time, making it harder to do well with a recipe that really was within my grasp.  I’ve also just gotten my competent in the kitchen in general. I’ve spent countless hours cooking, and many of those skills translate to baking—and the confidence and sense of self-worth absolutely translate. I don’t get flustered and distracted as easily, and if I make a mistake, I don’t automatically panic and make things worse. Some of my terrible baking was, I’ve discovered, due to me straight up refusing to follow recipes because I thought I knew better, based on zero evidence, for no reason at all. Now I know better. So now I’m a better baker!

The same thing happened with drawing. I used to desperately, achingly long to be an artist, but I hit a plateau in my rendering skills, and it became a miserable exercise because what I drew never looked anything like what I imagined in my head. Now, I can choose a subject, get an idea of what I would like it to look like, and render it pretty faithfully in a reasonable amount of time. Not every time, but fairly reliably. I haven’t had any lessons in the intervening years.

What has changed is that I’ve calmed the heck down. I have reasonable expectations, and I no longer feel like my whole identity is riding on what turns up on the page. I also don’t draw to impress anyone, but simply because I enjoy the process, and therefore focus better on the process. And that often makes for better work.

There are other examples, but you get the point.

Guess what? You can do this with spiritual exercises, as well: You can revisit long-since abandoned spiritual practices that you gave up because they weren’t working for you, or you didn’t like them, or they didn’t fit into your life, and see if they might work better for you now. Sometimes you just need to grow up a bit, and that makes a big difference.

Is there some saint that everyone loves, and they never really clicked with you? Maybe they’re not the saint for you—or maybe they were simply not the saint for younger you. Might be worthwhile taking another look and seeing if there’s more there than you realized. If not, that’s okay, too. But if it’s been a decade or more, chances are you’ll have changed so much, it will hit different this time around.

Maybe the rosary always felt like a terrible, pointless slog when you were younger, and you very reasonably set it aside, because it just wasn’t meaningful, and some other form of prayer was. But if you’re once again casting around for something to help anchor you to Christ, don’t be afraid to go back and try old things again. Relationships change, and prayer is about your relationship with God, so maybe it will strike a chord now.

The same goes for any spiritual practice that is licit, but just wasn’t working for you a long time ago. Things can change! People are supposed to change. If you let something go because it was hurting you, or because it’s associated with some trauma, that’s a different matter; but if you simply didn’t get much out of it, or it felt like you weren’t getting the hang of it, maybe give it another shot. Maybe you’re ready now.

One of the great things about the Catholic faith is that it’s so varied. There are countless ways to make and keep and renew contact with God. What works for one person may not work for another person, and that’s perfectly fine, because there are very many options out there.

But it’s also good to remember that what didn’t work for you once may work for you now. It’s thrilling and illuminating to find something new, but it’s even more gladdening to discover that something that once felt stiff and unnatural is now fruitful and profound, because you now have more capacity to appreciate and understand and receive it. This is part of what it means to grow spiritually: Discovering not only more about who God is, but who you are.

**
A version of this essay was originally published at The Catholic Weekly in May of 2023.

Image by Reuven Hayoon from Pixabay 

What’s for supper? Vol. 333: Schlorp ‘n’ blorp!

This is the week that never ends! It just goes on and on, my friends! I do not know this actual song! So won’t you bong bong bong bong bong!

Guys, I’m so tired. 

But! Here is what we ate this week, including a New Sandwich:

SATURDAY
Bagel, egg, sausage, and cheese sandwiches

Shopping day, easy peasy supper

SUNDAY
Grilled steak and chimichurri, asparagus, bread, strawberry shortcake 

Sunday was Father’s Day, of course, and Damien was actually gone most of the day driving one of the kids to a thing, so I made my best guess at what he would want for dinner. I did okay! A nice batch of chimichurri made in the food processor with curly parsley and Italian parsley, lots of garlic, hot pepper flakes, salt, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. 

About an hour before dinner, I salted and peppered the steaks, which Damien offered to grill outside, because they’re yummy that way. When they were just about done, I threw some asparagus on a tray and drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled on some kosher salt, and broiled it for juuuuust a few minutes. 

So we had nice little steaks with chimichurri, snappy asparagus with lemon, and fresh bread and butter. Quite nice. 

For dessert, I went with strawberry shortcake, but I decided to try a new cake recipe — one that’s more like those little golden spongecakes you get at the supermarket, rather than actual shortcake. I followed this recipe from Feast and Farm. I doubled it and baked the batter in twelve large ramekins. They turned out great. 

They tasted, uh, kind of like Twinkies. No complaints!

So I chopped up a bunch of strawberries and set them to macerate with sugar and a little vanilla, and I whipped up some cream, and we all had what I call a “schlorp ‘n’ blorp” dessert, which means first you schlorp on a scoop of strawberries on, then you blorp some cream on top.  

This doesn’t actually require its own category, because I don’t think I make any other schlorp ‘n’ blorp desserts besides strawberry shortcake. Anyway,  it was good, and I got to annoy the children, so win-win. 

MONDAY
Cemita sandwiches, watermelon

New sandwich! New sandwich to me! This is a Mexican sandwich that you can apparently make with any kind of meat. Chicken breast was on sale, so there you go. Here is the recipe I followed, from Serious Eats.

I cut the breasts in half lengthwise and pounded them flat, and dipped them in egg, then flour, then egg again, then bread crumbs; and then I fried them in a little oil. 

Then I salted and peppered the cutlets and served them on soft sesame seed brioche buns. On the bottom was a layer of sliced avocado, then the chicken, then a bunch of string cheese torn into strings, then raw onion rings, then pickled jalapeños, fresh cilantro, and some more cheese, and then a little olive oil.

I was skeptical about this sandwich, especially since I had forgotten to buy some of the things I wanted for it (chipotle chiles in adobo) and I had defaulted to the less-interesting option for a lot of ingredients (cilantro rather than papalo; mozzarella rather than queso oaxaca), and I thought it might be dry. 

WELL IT WAS NOT. IT WAS DELICIOUS. It was a tasty, interesting, well-balanced sandwich with everything one could want, and I almost ate my own hand in my hurry to gobble it up. So there! I think I may try {gulp} chicken fried pork next time. 

I also chopped up a big watermelon for a side dish. I gave 1/4 of the watermelon to the ducks, and let me tell you, it was a savage spectacle. Juice flying everywhere; bills dripping, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. 

TUESDAY
Spaghetti with sausage sauce

Tuesday was hot and bright and humid, so of course I cooked up some sausage and we had spaghetti with sausage sauce. Hot. Hah. Humid. Huh. Oh well. Food is food. 

WEDNESDAY
Porcfest!

The kids at home had corn dogs, but Damien and I drove way up north to cover PorcFest, which does not mean “pork,” but porc as in porcupine, as in libertarians, because like the majestic porcupine they are prickly and,,, eat garbage, I don’t know.

We got there the evening before the event we wanted to cover, which was RFK’s speech, and had a lovely dinner at a restaurant in a nearby town, the Littleton Freehouse. We split an appetizer of baked goat cheese with roasted tomatoes and garlic with rosemary and balsamic reduction with toasted sourdough points,

and then I had a peach and tomato burrata salad with prosciutto. 

Both absolutely exquisite. Some will say that this is too much cheese at a single sitting, but to those people, I will say, no it’s not. 

THURSDAY
Nachos

Thursday we had some hotel coffee, then turned down several offers of food at the Porcfest, including some incredibly filthy-looking raw oysters being dragged around in a wagon, and a “midsommer meal” courtesy of the New Vinland and Sovereign Love at the Spiritual Village, who had set out some plates of hard boiled eggs, which looked . . . smudged. Somehow I held out until we got to a gas station and then I got some prepackaged hummus and pretzels, and I drank my own drinks, too, which I had brought in from outside. Sorry, everyone is always all “not ALL libertarians,” and yet every single libertarian is someone I would not accept food from, not at midsomer, not at any time, so there you go. 

We drove home through some very glorious mountain ranges, and made a quick stop at Clark’s Trading Post to see what the deal was. I’ve been seeing these flyers my whole life, but have never been there. 

So we stopped by, and I feel like I still don’t understand. Maybe we’ll go back this summer and actually pay for tickets. A bear show, a water slide, and a train with some guy shooting at you might actually just about hit the spot. Better than all those damn art museums your mother is always dragging you to, oh wait, that’s me. Well, I also like bears. 

So we came home and poor Damien, who is a real journalist instead of a fake one like me, had to start writing right away, but EYE made some nachos — first running out to buy some cheese from the convenience store (FOR THIRTEEN DOLLARS) because apparently my nacho planning does not include cheese purchase. 

I did write up my whole experience at PorcFest, and I don’t know if the essay is to weird and long to go to print, but if it does, I’ll let you know!

FRIDAY
It was supposed to be pepper and egg sandwiches, but I started dragging stuff out of the fridge, discovered we were almost out of eggs, and almost had a nervous breakdown at the thought of running to the convenience store again, so Damien pointed out there is actually tons of food in the house, and we could just have leftoverpalooza. So that, is what, we did. 

This, and a tray of nachos. I just don’t ever know how much food to make, so I make tons and tons every day. 

 

The Pope’s response to Rupnik shows we’re still in the desert

Marko Rupnik, S.J., has been expelled from the Jesuits. I have written enough about sex abuse that I automatically started to type out “Disgraced former priest Marko Rupnik,” but guess what? He is still a priest (although his faculties are limited), and I am hard pressed to say that he has truly been disgraced, even now.

Father Rupnik is a voracious sexual predator who allegedly spent several decades manipulating and tormenting vulnerable women into acting out quasi-spiritual sexual fantasies for his gratification. He is also a popular sacred artist (his hollow-eyed figures haunt the missals at my parish, as well as the walls of prominent churches and shrines worldwide), and apparently he is also a charismatic and charming fellow. For over 30 years, nearly every time one of the victims reported him, his peers and superiors, including the pope, decided that even when he might need to be disciplined, he didn’t need to be stopped. Clericalism is bad, but Father Rupnik is different.

A formal investigation by the Jesuits confirmed that he had excommunicated himself when he absolved a woman of sexual sins that he himself had perpetrated upon her. But even while his excommunication had not been resolved, he was invited to substitute as the preacher of the annual Lenten retreat for the Roman Curia; later, his work was chosen as the logo for the World Meeting of Families. In January 2022, the pope met with him privately. When Rupnik’s excommunication was confirmed, that sanction was quickly lifted, and when Rupnik was later accused of decades-old crimes, the Vatican refused to waive the statute of limitations.

In January of this year, Pope Francis, who had supposedly been close with Rupnik, called the allegations against him “a surprise.” He strove to emphasize that he himself had nothing to do with this case beyond a small administrative decision. It wasn’t his fault. How could he have known? What could he have done? He is just the pope. He only met with the man. How was he supposed to make sure he didn’t keep abusing women?

When will this end?

When will the day come when we won’t see a headline about the Catholic Church reluctantly admitting that they have spent the last several decades protecting yet another predator and feeding yet more victims into the flames? When will it stop?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I know when it won’t stop: It won’t stop under this generation of bishops, appointed by Francis or Benedict XVI or John Paul II. Some of them are good and decent men. But all of them are tainted. And the purification that must happen in the church will not be completed until they have been replaced.

I am not thirsting for anyone’s death. I am looking to Scripture, and I am seeing how God’s slow hand works….Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image of Pope Francis by  Christoph Wagener, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What’s for supper? Vol. 332:  ¿TRES leches?  ¿En ESTA economia?

 Oh, I’ve been a terrible blogger and failed to blog last week. We have just been terrifically busy. A few people mentioned that they were worried I had dropped dead or something, and I’m sorry about that! I haven’t figured out what’s wrong with my stupid body yet, but they have ruled out everything scary and terrible, so I’m just full steaming ahead. I did just do a really neat interview with an artist yesterday, that I can’t wait to tell you about, and I wrote up a thought or two I had about a thing or two about the Pope, so those should be up soon. I appreciate the prayers so much. They are helping. 

Here’s something you might enjoy: I won a couple of awards from the Catholic Media Association: first place for Best Family Life Column (for Parable Magazine) and second place for Best Writing – Analysis (for my feature on annulments for America). Not everybody got a picture along with their announcement, BUT I DID:

I love the desperate little smile, clearly pleading for someone to come rescue me from my own hair. OH WELL. 

My patio is growing. It’s a menace. It’s a farrago. It’s a travesty. It’s Santa Maria in Travesty. And if your life has certain frustrations in it, may I recommend tearing up the sod and replacing it with bricks of different sizes that don’t quite fit together and need to be slammed repeatedly with a mallet until they do fit? I may pave the whole yard. 

Meanwhile, we et! Here’s what we et:

SATURDAY
Smoked ribs, fries

On Saturday, I went to my hometown for the alumni parade. I graduated from high school 30 years ago, can you believe it? Of course you can believe it, I’m decrepit. It was a cool parade, though, and it was fun to see old classmates floating by, as well as bagpipes, fife and drum corps, Abraham Lincoln, Shriners, and misc., and my kids got tons of candy, as well as corn and ketchup packets, which one group of alumni were throwing. 

Damien bought and smoked some amazing pork ribs.

Absolutely luscious. 

I spent the rest of the day working on my patio, and by dinner I was ravenous and became a complete hooligan in the presence of those ribs. 

SUNDAY
?

Corpus Christi! After Mass we had a wonderful procession down Main Street, with adoration on the commons

Then I went shopping in the afternoon, and for the life of me I cannot remember what we ate. Something easy, I imagine. Actually I think we just had leftover ribs. 

Clara made a cake for Dora. Here is the cake. 

As Benny said the other day in another context, “Mixed feelings all around, let’s move along.”  

MONDAY
Chicken enchiladas, beans and rice, guacamole and chips, tres leches cake

Monday we had a belated celebration for Dora’s birthday. I also belatedly discovered that we didn’t have any chili powder in the house, which makes a Mexican meal a bit of a challenge; but don’t worry, my caucasicity won the day and I found some old envelopes with orange powder in them, and faked my way through it. 

I sorta kinda followed Pioneer Woman’s enchilada recipe, except I used chicken thighs instead of breasts, and I used flour tortillas because I do what I want. I made some with red sauce and some with green, and they were okay, not my best. I was rushing like crazy, and didn’t buy enough sauce.

I threw together the beans and rice with white rice, black beans and kidney beans, canned tomatoes and diced chili peppers, and probably some onions in there, and then just whatever seasonings I could find. It was again not the greatest, but not bad.

The guacamole was tasty. A decent meal, with plenty of leftovers for people to bring home. 

The tres leches cake was a challenge for me. I have had one (1) tres leches cake in my life, and that was in college, and I all I remember is that it was, like me, white. So I followed a recipe from the Versailles recipe in Miami; but I believe I underbaked it, so when I poured the milk filling over it, it was, frankly, a little sloshy. 

But I went ahead and refrigerated it for the rest of the day, and then made the meringue and spread it over, and served the pieces with maraschino cherries. 

Kind of a blurry picture, but it was kind of a blurry cake.

I had made a double recipe so there was enough cake that I could serve the fully-baked parts and avoid the marshier spots, and there was still QUITE A LOT OF CAKE. I liked it! But my land, that is a sweeeet dessert. Probably I should have a properly-made tres leches cake before I make any judgments, but right now I’d just as soon have tiramisu. 

TUESDAY
Chicken salad with strawberries

The plan was blueberries, but I got to the store and discovered I had misread the flyer, and what was on sale was actually blackberries. I consulted with the produce guy and we both felt that nobody wants a blackberry chicken salad. First I was worried I was being annoying by asking him, but then he started going on about how he was “a tactile guy,” so I grabbed some strawberries and got out of there.

A lot of crops were blighted by the late frost here (my peach tree never even blossomed, and they say we lost 75% of the apple crop in the state, which is horrible), but the strawberries are cheap and plentiful and huge and sweet this year. Hooray strawberries!

So, mixed greens, roast chicken breast, feta cheese, slice almonds, diced red onion, and balsamic vinegar. 

Quite good, and very pretty. My photos are all dark and terrible this week for some reason. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

One cheese, one pepperoni, and one garlic, red onion, artichoke heart, feta, tomato, and parmesan.

Damien chaperoned the high school kids and friends at their class trip to Six Flags, and all he got was this halfway decent pizza. 

THURSDAY
Graduation!

Irene graduated from 8th grade! Look how delighted she is. 

Kids at home had chicken nuggets and cheezy weezies, and Damien and Irene and I went to Local Burger and had some nice local burgers, and then we dropped Damien off at home to do some more work and I scooped up the rest of the kids to get ice cream (ha, I guess that’s why I said “scooped”) (even though most of them got soft serve).

FRIDAY
Cheeseburgers, fries, chocolate cake

Friday we had a belated celebration of Moe’s birthday, and he had requested that I surprise him with the cake theme. I made the King Arthur simple and rich chocolate cake, which always turns out well, and I forgot to make any plans for icing, so I wung it. I threw a lot of unsalted soft butter in the standing mixer and creamed it, then sifted in a bunch of cocoa powder and kept creaming. Then I beat in some half and half and a little vanilla, and then sifted in a ton of confectioner’s sugar and continued mixing until it was smooth and whippy. I already had a migraine, so I went ahead and tasted the frosting, and it was nice. It was like hot cocoa in frosting form. 

I baked a large cake in a metal mixing bowl, and a bunch of little cupcakes, which I frosted and then decorated with caramel creams I had smooshed with a rolling pin. I sort of had it in my head that it would be the turtle holding up the world, but there are only so many hours in the day (and this was a day when I also wrote 1200 words and drove two hours and picked up 600 bricks), so instead I gave him a bed of kiwis so swim on and decided it was fine.

You can see by his face that he has seen some stuff. And Moses was, indeed, surprised. 

Friday was finally, finally the last day of school for the last kids, thank goodness. We haven’t done anything for summer fun yet, except splashing in the pool and not going to school. Just kind of shell shocked still. 

And that was last week! I spent most of my in-between hours fetching, hauling, and fitting bricks, and although I have gone through something like 1500 bricks, I am again almost out of bricks. Here is where I am right now: 

I’m going to finish it by the 4th of July if it kills me. AND IT WILL.

Check in. What’s just about killing you today? You gonna make it? Do you need a turtle cake? Are you holding up the world?  

Print

sugar smoked ribs

the proportions are flexible here. You can adjust the sugar rub to make it more or less spicy or sweet. Just pile tons of everything on and give it puh-lenty of time to smoke.

Ingredients

  • rack pork ribs
  • yellow mustard
  • Coke
  • extra brown sugar

For the sugar rub:

  • 1-1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp white pepper

Instructions

  1. Coat the ribs in yellow mustard and cover them with sugar rub mixture

  2. Smoke at 225 for 3 hours

  3. Take ribs out, make a sort of envelope of tin foil and pour Coke and brown sugar over them. close up the envelope.

  4. Return ribs to smoker and cook another 2 hours.

  5. Remove tinfoil and smoke another 45-min.

  6. Finish on grill to give it a char.

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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

God, like any good mother, won’t let you disappear into the crowd

Big families look really loony to me. I have caught myself thinking, “Holy cow, how does she DO it?” when I see a young mom surrounded by little kids on all sides, all of them bopping up and down and squawking and demanding attention. Sometimes I stop and discreetly do a head count of all the little heads that belong together, and I have a little revelation. Five, six, seven ….

… Oh. I had even more kids than that.

But it does look like a lot, from the outside. It is a lot. ANY amount of kids is a lot! One kid is a lot! But I had 10, after all. No wonder people were always staring at us. I get it now. Some of my kids have moved out, and none of them are really little, and while I’m not an empty nester yet, I’m out of the woods enough that I can see it from the other side. I see how we looked to other people when we were really in the thick of it: Beautiful, but undeniably loony.

Part of the reason for this is that, from the outside, a big family looks just like that: a big family. A unit. If you know a few big families only by sight, and not personally, you probably think of them as “the one with all the loud, redheaded kids” or “the one where they all look like farmers.” More than one person has told us we’re “that family with all the hair,” which I fully recognize is not the worst way we could be identified.

The point is, when there are a lot of kids in a family, it’s kind of a blur from the outside. Outsiders see that everyone in the family kind of resembles each other, and they’re sort of milling around the parents, and maybe you can recognize the oldest and the current baby, but in the middle — who knows? They’re just part of the bunch.

But believe me when I say that this is not how the parents see it, not unless something has gone very wrong in the family. Sometimes the wrong name comes out of my mouth when I’m calling a child, but this is just the general confusion of my brain, and it doesn’t mean I don’t know who they are. They are all unambiguously themselves and have been since day one.

I, like every decent mother of a large family that I know, take my children’s individuality extremely seriously, and they don’t seem like an undifferentiated mass to me, and they never have. They don’t even really look alike to me, except in little fleeting flashes here and there. I made them all individually, one at a time, and even when they were born very close together and raised under more or less the same circumstances, they have all always been so very different and distinct from each other. It has always been startling and bizarre to realize that, to people outside the family, we are just some kind of indeterminate welter of humanity, just a sort of Fisher borg.

The domestic church

We do have to treat our large family as a unit in some ways, buying large amounts of food and giant vehicles and sharing clothing and making plans based on the reality that parents cannot bilocate, and simply cannot accommodate every possible thing 10 individual children, no matter how cherished, would like to do. But in other ways, we tried (with varying success) to think of them as, and to convey to them that they are, distinct, and distinctly important; unique, and uniquely valuable.

Well, there is a reason we refer to the family as “the domestic church”… Read the rest of my latest column for Our Sunday Visitor. 

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Image: Bianca degli Utili Maselli, holding a dog and surrounded by six of her children (c. 1565–1614) Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

What’s for supper? Vol. 331: Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

Happy Friday! Are you ready for some PEPPERSSSSSS!!!!!!!

But first, just like old times, there’s a little dust-up going on in my combox, which began when one reader wanted to know how it is that I’m over here eating kale salads and lean protein crumbles, but yet feeding my kids buttered corn dog nuggets and hot salt slop noodle casserole pie. A few readers jumped to my defense, which I appreciate very much, but the real answer is simple: I don’t like my kids. Please address any further questions to my menu planning assistant, who can be contacted here.  

I kid, I kid. I love yez all, more or less. 

The real question of the day is, WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THIS RHUBARB? 

Short version, I planted a rhubarb root in early spring, and it didn’t come up at all, but by the time I had given up hope, nobody in town was selling rhubarb anymore. Or so I thought! I stopped by the Cheshire Floral Farm, honestly mainly just to cheer myself up, because it’s so pretty up there. It’s a nursery built on top of a hill, and it’s the cleanest air I’ve ever breathed in my life. Even the birdsong has a special clarity, because the air is so clear. The man who owns it is 74 years old, and he has thousands and thousands of plants which he appears to know intimately, individually, and everything is thriving. He showed me the rows of pots with seedlings he has prepped for next spring. Next spring!

So I mentioned rhubarb, and he started hiking up to the top of the hill, and I panted up after him. There were half a dozen potted rhubarb plants about two feet high, and half a dozen smaller ones. He said, “This rhubarb has a history, you know.” It started as a plant in England that his grandfather grew, and they divided the root and brought it over, and he planted it here in New England, and off it went. I chose a smaller plant, and he knocked the seeds off and told me to dig a deep hole and fill it with manure. Then he kept walking up hill, so I followed, panting. We went through a gate, across a lawn, past a garden, and around a shed, and there, my friends, were three rhubarb plants, each as big as a Volkswagon Bug. He snapped off three stalks and presented them to me. 

So now I have rhubarb! Rhubarb for now, and for tomorrow, and for all my days to come, if I don’t screw it up. Usually I just make strawberry rhubarb pie, because it’s expensive and I only get it once a year, and that’s my favorite treat. But now I have plenty! What else do you like to make? Pickled rhubarb? Rhubarb jam? 

He also said you can chop up the poisonous leaves along with some tobacco leaves, boil them, and make an insecticide, which you use as a spray. I’ll probably leave that one alone, but I love knowing that there’s a use for the leaves besides murder. 

Okay! So here’s what we ate this week. And I apologize in advance, but I added in a lot of medical complaining, because it was that kind of week. 

SATURDAY
Hot dogs

H.O.T. D.O.G.S., and I think fries

SUNDAY
Cuban sandwiches, coleslaw, fruit salad

Sunday I took a big step forward with the patio, finally. I salvaged some pressure treated lumber from various old projects, and shoved them in around the perimeter, and staked them in place with lawn stakes. I rented a vibrating plate compactor and ran it over the soil. Then I roped the kids into trucking the gravel down to the backyard, spread that out, ran over it with a makeshift screed, and ran over it with the compactor several more times.

Then the dog ran over it several times, because of course he did. It’s fine. He’s helping compact everything. The gravel I ended up getting is not exactly what I wanted, but I did want to move forward, and I achieved that! So, hoot hoot. Next is sand, and then finally bricks. 

A few hours in, I remembered “oh, supper,” and I had a boneless pork loin or something, so I threw it in the Instant Pot along with several giant glugs of apple cider vinegar, some water, a lot of cumin and garlic powder and some salt and pepper. I pressure cooked it on high for 22 minutes and it came out non-beautiful but very tender and quite tasty. 

For the sandwiches, I had big pieces of sourdough bread, and I built them in this order: bread, mustard, Swiss cheese, pork, pickles, ham, more Swiss cheese, mustard. Mayo on the outside, fried in butter. 

There is no particular reason this heavy, greasy, carby sandwich appears to be leering at you. You’re just imagining it. 

I made a nice fruit salad with watermelon, mango, strawberries, and blueberries, and a quick coleslaw with cabbage and carrot with a dressing of mayo, cider vinegar, a little olive oil, and freshly ground pepper. 

MONDAY
Lemon pepper chicken, taboon, and muhammara (red pepper walnut dip)

Last week, I asked for more recipes with pomegranate molasses, which I had used so deliciously in the cherry walnut herb salad. Several people suggested muhammara, which is a Turkish red pepper walnut dip.

SEVERAL PEOPLE WERE RIGHT. I followed this recipe from The Mediterranean Dish, and made a triple recipe. It calls for two red bell peppers, but I had four red and two orange. I keep learning and then forgetting again that red and orange (and yellow) bell peppers are just green bell peppers at different stages of ripeness (and therefore sweetness). Red is the sweetest; orange is the medium stage. (Yellow, which I didn’t have, is the first “turning” stage.) But it’s all the same pepper. 

Anyway, I oiled and roasted them peppers, which is something I enjoy.

So pretty. 

These recipes always tell you to cover the roasted peppers with plastic wrap and let them steam themselves, to loosen up the skins; but I have found (by the scientific process of forgetting to do it) that this isn’t necessary. The skins come off just as easily if you just let them sit. 

So I pulled off the skins, which I enjoy, and yanked out the core and scraped off most of the seeds. This is about half the pepper flesh. 

And then you just whiz it up in a food processor along with toasted walnuts, olive oil, raw garlic, tomato paste, bread crumbs, of course pomegranate molasses, sugar, sumac, and salt. Now, this recipe also calls for Aleppo pepper, and says cayenne pepper is optional. I didn’t have either, and suddenly got an attack of the cheaps at the store, so I only bought cayenne.

Since I had so much dip, I divided it and added cayenne pepper (somewhat more than the recipe called for) to only one portion. 

Friends, for something so earthy, it is heavenly. This is one of these profoundly nourishing, joyful foods. It just tastes like it’s feeding your whole being. It’s wonderfully tart but not in an aggressive way. The heat in the peppered one built gradually, and it tasted good with chicken, with vegetables, and with bread. And just by itself. 

I made twelve little taboon breads. Last time I was a little unhappy with how they turned out, rather tough and chewy. Not sure if this is what caused it, but I realized that I forgot to put the pan in the oven to heat up before putting the dough on it to bake. This time I followed that step, and they turned out much more tender and fluffy. I love taboon. 

It’s so easy, and you can start it less than two hours before you want to eat. Fast as a quick bread, but with the texture and heft of a yeast bread. So good. It doesn’t puff up and separate into a pocket like pita, so don’t expect that. It’s more bready, while still being a flatbread, so you could use it for wraps, or for scooping or sopping purposes.

I just made very simple roast chicken breast sprinkled with a lemon pepper seasoning mix and cut up, and spinach, black olives, and cherry tomatoes.

Damien and I ate the muhammara steadily for lunch and snacks for the rest of the week. It was wonderful with those flattened pretzel chip things, and also really nice with baby carrots, and with cucumbers. I am completely sold on muhammara. 

Still happy to hear about more pomegranate molasses recipes, but if this is all I ever use it for in the future, diyenu! 

TUESDAY
Tacos

Tuesday I made a bunch of taco meat, put it in the slow cooker, and then I was like, screw it, I’m going to the ER. Here’s the most exciting part:

Yes, that is my blood pressure. No, I did not eat tacos when I eventually got home, even though they had ruled out heart attack, as well as cancer and pulmonary embolism. But I do not recommend this blood pressure, at all. 

WEDNESDAY
Shawarma

Wednesday I wanted to get back to normal as much as possible, but I had lots of help! Clara made the shawarama marinade, Corrie made the yogurt sauce and Benny cut up the cucumbers and gathered and chopped the mint, and I had bought readymade pita and hummus, so it was just a matter of finishing everything up.

And very good it is, shawarma. 

At this point, I had learned that there was, in fact, nothing wrong with my heart, and all my lab work so far came back showing that I’m actually extremely healthy, except for when my terrible doctor takes me off my medication and makes my blood pressure go nutsy; so yeah, I had a big blob of yogurt sauce. Ugh, I guess I’m self conscious about my food pictures now. Boo. 

THURSDAY
Aldi pizza

Thursday I drove up to the pulmonologist in Lebanon and they did all the breathing tests. I stopped to check on my parents’ grave (they are still dead, whew), and the lilac tree and rose bushes I planted made it through the winter, so that was nice! I said a decade and went on my way. Damien bought and served Aldi pizza, and Moe came by and helped with the driving. 

FRIDAY
Spinach chickpea stew

Friday morning I found out that my lungs are very healthy, capable, and working fine! Which is great, except . . . you know, I still can’t breathe, and my chest still hurts, and my lungs still make a sound like bacon frying at night. Like, other people can hear it, so I can’t be making it up. I don’t know! I don’t know. I’m getting an echocardiogram at the end of July, and I’m going to look into chronic anemia and sleep apnea, because I don’t know what else it might be. It’s not the smoke from the wildfires, because this has been going on since November. Albuterol doesn’t help at all. Maybe I’m just making bacon in my lungs. If anyone could, I would.

ANYWAY, today we are having this lovely lemon chickpea spinach stew

the recipe for which you can find here at Saveur. This weekend I’m going to work on my patio without worrying it’s going to be my last act on earth, so that will be nice. 

Anyway, rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb. Allegedly that’s what crowds of extras on movie sets are supposed to say, in order to convincingly sound like they are having a conversation in the background. Someone smarter than me can write an essay about turning food into the logos. Imma go lie down.

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taboon bread

You can make separate pieces, like pita bread, or you can make one giant slab of taboon. This makes enough to easily stretch over a 15x21" sheet pan.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups bread flour
  • 4 packets yeast
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.

  2. While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.

  3. Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.

  5. If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.

  6. Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.

  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

 

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

  • 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
  • 4-5 red onions
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 2 cups olive oil
  • 4 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 entire head garlic, crushed

Instructions

  1. Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

  4. Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.

  5. Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

 

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

I make things up to be dramatic

Here I am, waiting to go in for a pulmonary function test to find out what is wrong with me, IF ANYTHING. I have spent the last several weeks, including seven hours in the emergency room, getting lots and lots of tests — EKGs, x-rays, a CAT scan, and countless blood tests of various kinds — and they have ruled out a major problem with my heart, which is great. I would hate for there to be something wrong with my heart.

I would hate it so much that now I think it’s possible I scared myself into having chest pains and breathing problems, symptoms which led me to believe there’s something wrong with my heart, and/or lungs. Maybe! Or probably not. No, I definitely am having trouble breathing, especially at night. Or some nights. And chest pains, and palpitations. Even the doctor noticed it. Maybe? 

Last time I talked to my therapist, I said that I’m always afraid people are going to think I’m just making things up, or exaggerating them to be dramatic, or to get attention. And I’m always afraid that they’re right, that I’m actually doing that. I’ve always been afraid I’m like this.

She asked who told me I’m like this, my parents?
Well, yes.
She asked if, in fact, I did used to make things up to get attention.
Well, no. I was definitely a dramatic, emotional kid, and I cried all the time, and I had weird problems that I couldn’t explain well, but I can’t think of a single time I was actually making anything up. If anything, I kept things to myself, and just silently cried because I didn’t know what to say. 

Since that conversation, every time I get the nagging anxiety that I’m just being a drama queen, and I’m wasting everyone’s time, and they could be spending their precious energy and resources saving people who really are sick, I ask myself, “Do I make things up?”

Well, yes.

That’s what I do for a living. I make things up to be dramatic. I exaggerate on purpose, to get attention. That’s what writing is. Yes, even non-fiction essays, which is mostly what I write. 

I don’t tell lies. I don’t say anything I think is untrue. But when someone asks that dreaded question about what my creative process looks like, I have to admit that it looks like making things up to be dramatic. It looks like looking around for anything that might be a tiny little ember, and cupping it carefully in my hands and deliberately blowing on it until it’s hot, and then showing everyone how hot it is. Or squinting at every smooth rock I find to see if any of them are the least bit egg-shaped, and then brooding on them as devotedly as I can, hoping something might hatch out. Or searching around in the dead dust until I find a speck that looks like it might be organic, and warming it and watering it, and breathing on it, just in case it’s a seed that’s ready to grow; and if it does grow, you are going to hear about it! If no one ever told you the facts of life, this is how 800 words get born. 

But it’s one thing to find and coax into life an idea that you know is already real and true and big and important, something you will have the luxury of returning to again and again over the course of your life. You can write about motherhood or work or education or food, and be perfectly aware that you’re writing what seems truly true at the time, but you’re probably going to shift and change your understanding of it as your life shifts and changes. Only weirdos hold it against you if you change your mind; most people understand it’s normal to grow through different points of view. 

But it’s somewhat different when you’re writing about your own life, which is something I do a lot. Hannah Gadsby (who I know is controversial, but just set that aside for a second!) said something on NPR that I’ve never heard anyone admit before.

The interviewer asked, “[D]does writing and performing stories about your life help you to make sense of them?” and Gadsby said:

“Oh, absolutely … but, you know, there’s a danger to it as well because as you tell it and share it, that works as kind of a seal to how you remember something that happened. So that’s why I’m incredibly careful about what I put on stage and how I talk about things, because it will eventually become the way you think and feel about things. And you can play with fire a little bit there.”

This is horribly true.

The other day my daughter told me she calms herself down when she’s upset by going into the woods and talking to herself. I told her this was good and healthy; that there is great power in naming things, and putting what you’re feeling into words, because then they are more yours in some way; they are contained, at least for a time. 

But any power, even the power of describing your own life, can be misused. We’ve all seen people taking a popular narrative, complete with its own set of powerful, trendy words, and retrofitting their own past into it and applying emotional pressure to their memories until they fit into this story, whether that’s what really happened or not. People persuade themselves that some lost partner was a blameless, precious, irreplaceable angel; or they persuade themselves that their estranged parents were thoroughly toxic and malevolent monsters. When in fact the truth was (as truth is) perhaps more complex, less of a tidy narrative.

Memory is strange. It’s more malleable than it feels like it ought to be; and at the same time, words do set a seal on it, especially once you share those words with other people. We speak carelessly about the power of words, but maybe not enough about the great power of words to call into life things that simply aren’t true. It’s as if human words, in their fallenness, carry a dormant virus in them, and sometimes, carried on human breath, they enter into our minds and bind and reproduce with our living pasts and begin forming . . . I don’t know, zombie pasts. Things that resemble our lives, but are lumbering along animated by something other than order and truth. I know this can happen. I have seen it happen. 

Fear of misrepresenting and retroactively malforming my own life even to myself has made it hard to pray, sometimes. I get into a state where I feel that I can’t trust anything I think, and I can’t bring myself to put anything into words. I also know this isn’t really a desire for truth or objectivity so much as a trap of anxiety, though. What to do?

The other day I was in my garden and felt so glad, so simply and plainly happy to be in the sun, smelling the sweet weeds, hearing the wrens and robins, and tending my little cucumber and squash seedlings, and I wanted to pray and praise God, but I couldn’t find the words. I felt myself headed into a snarl. What do I say? How do I make this right? How do I do it so it’s about the thing and not about me being clever enough to express the thing cleverly? 

And I says to myself, I says, En arche en ho logos. I remembered a sentimental little story I heard once of a kid stuck in a tree during a storm, and he’s so scared, he can’t remember his prayers. All he can remember is the alphabet song, so he sings that, and he figures God will take the letters and make them into something good. So that’s what I did.

(That’s what I do for a living.)

I will not be telling my doctor that I sometimes go out into the garden and sing the alphabet song. I hate to think what that might be recorded as a symptom of. But I’m telling you, in case you get into little binds like me: Keep it simple. Jesus is the word. His breath is pure. Give him the nod, and he sorts everything out, and he keeps the zombies away, and makes the cucumbers to grow, and the robins to sing. Next time, won’t you sing with me? 

Linocuts or laundry? Sarah Breisch speaks about art, faith, and family life

Sarah Breisch doesn’t really draw what she wants. Not yet. Breisch, 40, is the mother of eight children, ranging in ages from 17 to 4, and she only recently started showing and selling her work. It’s been a long time getting to this point.

Her artwork — primarily watercolors and lively linocuts of birds and other animals — is vigorous and arresting and sometimes comical. A frazzled mother bird approaches a tangled feathery nest stuffed full of fat, ravenous chicks, in a posture that somehow conveys both love and exasperation. A fox slinks under the moon, casting a knowing, uneasy eye directly at the viewer. A thrush grips a branch between its thorns and sings his tiny heart out into the darkness. They are just animals, but they all seem like someone particular, familiar and very alive.

But Breisch would like to do more. A demanding critic of her own work, she considers her pieces to be mainly decorative, and calls them illustrations without stories. She would like to make art that tells stories, because she has a lot to say.

Breisch had very little in the way of formal art training. Homeschooled from fourth grade through high school, she was free to pursue her own interest in art and artists, and taught herself through museum trips, by leafing through numerous art books inherited from her grandmother, and by using the miscellaneous art supplies she found in her house.

“At that time, art was intensely personal,” Breisch said.

So personal, in fact, that she could hardly stand to show what she had made to other people. And so, although her father, a skilled carpenter with an artistic bent of his own, encouraged her to go to art school when she finished high school, she chose instead to pursue other academic interests and entered the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire.

Inspiration in the Church

It was in the college’s chapel that she first encountered the beauty of the Catholic Church: the beauty of its theology and also of its physical art.

“In the churches I grew up in, art had no place, beauty had little place. Sentimentality and kitsch, what [founder and then-president] Dr. [Peter] Sampo called ‘the banality of received ideas,’ had a huge place. I never set foot in a Catholic church until I went to college, and the moment I did, I was overcome with a sense that this was what I was looking for. And it specifically had to do with the architecture and the art,” she said.

She recalls that the chapel was “not even anything fabulous,” but what there was looked like it had meaning and belonged.

Then the class spent a semester in Rome.

“I came home exploding with joy and inspiration,” she said.

Talents that glorify God

Breisch, whose mother is ethnically Jewish, said, “I knew more than your average kid did about tabernacles and the Holy of Holies and those sorts of things. So when I saw the baldacchino [the ornate bronze canopy-like structure built over the altar at St. Peter’s Basilica], I thought, ‘I know what that is.’”

She thought her father might be open to hearing what she had discovered. But he was not able to.

“He suffered from that sort of mental divide of Protestants [in that] he was artistic and creative, but also an iconoclast, and somehow it felt wrong of him to marry the two,” she said.

As for herself, Breisch had never felt that her faith and her artistic drive were at odds.

“I thought, ‘I glorify my creator through my God-given ability by trying to imitate what I see in nature, because I think it’s wonderful.’ Because it was so private, it was almost like a private meditation,” she said.

Finding time to make art

It was obvious to her that art and faith belonged together — less obvious that what resulted was something that should be shared with other people, even after she decided to join the Catholic Church.

And soon enough, the decision about how to approach her art was taken out of her hands. Shortly after college, Breisch went through RCIA, married and began having children. Over the course of the next several years, she was simply too busy to draw, and too overwhelmed, and didn’t have the money to spend on art supplies. She would make flashcards for her children, or make materials for curriculum when she worked as a teacher, but it was always something utilitarian….Read the rest of this article, the second in a monthly series for OSV featuring Catholic artists. 

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If you have a suggestion for a Catholic visual artist (including yourself!) you think should be featured, please drop me a line at simchafisher at gmail dot com with “Catholic artist feature” in the subject line. I am interested in all styles of art.

All of life is worth living

The other day, I performed the solemn rite of white women in their late 40’s: I shared a photo of my lunch salad on social media.

The ritual goes like this: I post a photo of my lunch, and I complain about trying to lose weight, and then I humblebrag about my plate full of nutrient-dense leafy greens and lean proteins, and I say that between this and yoga, I’m going to live forever. Then my friends commiserate about how, if I keep it up, I’m not going to live forever; it’ll just feel that way. Then we all anoint ourselves in the digital stream three times, sprinkle ourselves with irony, and we are cleansed.

This ritual has worked for me for many years. I’ve always looked at health fanatics with something of a jaundiced eye, thinking, “If that’s what it takes to extend my life, I’d rather cut it short, thanks.”

Jokes like this were very much a part of my family culture, growing up. My father, in particular, believed that life was worth living as long as you were enjoying yourself, and if you weren’t, well, maybe your time was up. Or at least, part of him believed that. He especially liked to eat whatever he wanted, as much as he wanted, and he really relished heavy foods, sugary, fatty foods, noodles and greasy briskets and things filled with cream. (And so do I.) He wasn’t exactly a hedonist. He believed in constant conversion of heart and the resurrection of the body and things like that; he really did. But in practice, noodles and brisket often got the upper hand.

I want to tread carefully, because it’s easy to get carried away when you’re telling the life of someone who is dead. I don’t want to speak for him just because he can’t speak for himself anymore. So I will just tell you what I observed, as I remember it, and maybe the conclusions I drew were wrong. Nevertheless, this is what I saw:

My father’s health was poor for many, many years, partly because of his personal habits, and partly because of terrible genetics. I remember him going in for serious medical procedures throughout my childhood, starting at about the age I am now. He had a hard time staying motivated to take care of himself, although he did keep trying, for his family’s sake.

But eventually, he really lost enthusiasm. He had the choice to correct a problem with heart bypass surgery, and he didn’t want to do it. It just didn’t seem worth it to him. His family felt differently, and we urged him to consider it. We contacted a friend of his, who had had the same surgery done, and was very glad that it bought him some extra years of life; and that finally did it. My father agreed, and he got it done.

And he got better. He recovered well, even in his old age, and he started doing so well. He had a lot of health problems, still, but he accepted this; and my overall memories of him from this time are of him smiling. Smiling at my kids, smiling up at the sky, smiling at the brilliant clouds, at birds singing, at snow melting, at records playing. This was something new for him, or something he hadn’t felt in decades. He seemed to be enjoying himself in a way that I had never seen him do, ever.

But how strange it was, to see him looking small. I had to keep correcting the image I had of him in my head. I still thought of him as a powerful, deep-bellied, overbearing, heavily bearded man, taking up as much space as he wanted. Never bothering to whisper in quiet places, never bothering to follow signs that said “no admittance.” I still thought of him as doing what he wanted. And he wasn’t like that, anymore. His clothes hung loosely; the top of his head showed through his brittle hair. His voice was muffled, as if wrapped in cotton. He was so physically diminished, and he shuffled, and tipped over sometimes. But he smiled so much.

It was also during this time that some personal reconciliations happened, or started to happen. He knew he was at the end of his life. But that was the key: He knew it, and he was getting ready, rather than dolefully sliding along. He said that the Lord was taking more and more things away from him, and he was glad, because it was getting him ready for death. He smiled when he said this, too. He was grateful it was happening—the getting ready, not the dying.

So, then he died. It happened quite suddenly, and I’m not sure if it was COVID or not. He went to watch TV in his reclining chair, and when my brother went to check on him, he was on the floor. It was very hard when he died, and I won’t pretend he made his peace with every last person, or that he had righted every wrong, before he went. There were a lot of wrongs. But those last few years were undeniably, irreplaceably fruitful. For him, and for many of the rest of us. Fruitful enough that they are not yet over, even though he is dead.

If you are halfway imagining that people live the real bulk of their lives when they’re hale and hearty and doing as they please, and that they slowly dwindle into a less and less meaningful existence as the standard earthly pleasures drop away, well, possibly that’s true for some people. There are many ways for the course of a life to run, and not all of them are within our power. The end of my mother’s life looked very different from my father’s. But even that was not what you might think. Strangely enough, caring for her in her profoundly vulnerable and inert state was a huge part of what transformed my father’s final years, which makes me almost quake with fear when I think of my mysterious mother and her strange, quiet power to change people, for good and for ill. A power that continues to burn and insist, like the light from a star that is already dead. 

As I said, I am reluctant to tell you what someone else’s life means. So I’m not going to tell you that the last two years of my father’s life were his most significant. I’m just telling you that there was a time when he thought he could have done without them, and he was wrong.

Take care of yourself. Take care of your poor, dumb, needy body. Your body’s time will run out eventually, because it isn’t meant to last forever; but it isn’t meant only for pleasures and satisfaction, either. Most people are joking when they say life isn’t really worth living if you’re just eating salad, but most people also halfway believe it. Don’t you believe it. Your time on earth is your time on earth. If you’re still here, it’s for a reason.

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A version of this essay was originally published at The Catholic Weekly on May 5, 2023.