My not-my-Aunt Ginny was doing pretty well this week, on my first visit of 2023 (I started the year with Covid but finally am safe to visit with her). She didn’t know me during my visit but also (a little bit) she did, which made for some of our more unusual conversations. I showed her a recent picture of me with my eldest son. She was surprised by how adult he is and asked if the woman in the picture is his wife. Friends, this is the picture I shared:

Later, she asked me what my mom thought of another picture. My mom would have loved it, so of course I answered that way, pretending for a bittersweet moment that Mom lived to know my children and my sister’s children, that she was alive to share a meal with me and to be recalcitrant about something I wanted her to do. 

Sharing a meal … that’s what I miss most. Not even her cooking, really. I miss the act of sitting together, talking about everything and nothing, eating food that someone else cooked for us. She used to love to go to a little tea shop in Erie. We didn’t even get tea. We’d get sandwiches and she’d have coffee. And we’d just spend a little time in each other’s company. 

For her, it was a major indulgence, an act of defiance against something though I never knew what. Possibly, probably, my father.  He was very controlling. She was afraid of him and most everything, really. Once I was old enough to see a future that wasn’t under my father’s control, I would tell her that I would treat her to lunch when I visited but she became ill while I was still in graduate school. We ended up having very little time for tea shop sandwiches.

Not-my-Aunt Ginny prefers companionship while she eats. When I arrived a little after noon, I found that she had not yet received her lunch tray. It was delivered about 10 minutes after I got there and something in not-my-Aunt G’s world converted that tray to a meal I had ordered for myself. From her perspective, we were in a restaurant and that meal became dinner out. It took some convincing but I finally got her to believe that the tray was for her. 

While she’s eating, I always make up an excuse for why I can’t share her food but she can be pretty persistent. Sometimes I tell her that I don’t like the type of food she’s having. Sometimes I tell her that I just ate and am not hungry. Not-my-Aunt G doesn’t care to hear those excuses. She hates food waste, not surprising since she lived through WWII. 

It would drive her crazy that we aren’t members of the clean plate club. Sure, the origins are understandable and waste is a horrible thing. However, I think it’s important to recognize, to acknowledge, that eating the crust of my bread did not, in fact, make my hair curly. If I could, I would tell my Grandma Myrtle (who died when I was 17), that I finally figured out it was a lie, bold-faced, in fact.

It is also accurate to note that starving children do not want my leftovers. They would, in reality, benefit from compassionate food policies that value human life over profit but I’m pretty confident, having eaten it myself, that they would not enjoy that last half-scoop of tuna casserole with peas and carrots.

Be kind to someone today, possibly even yourself.

Much love.