Food is Love

Counselors and Psychiatrists agree that feelings need to be manifested. If you don’t express your feelings one way, they’ll come out in another way. Thus being said, I must explain that feelings are messy – or at least that is what I was raised to believe. I grew up in a fairly orderly household. My mother and father weren’t neat freaks, but they did like their spaces tidy and orderly. Feelings are neither tidy nor orderly – they are messy. They come at inconvenient times and make us who were raised in a feeling desert uncomfortable. I’m the one who laughs when someone falls, not because I find slapstick particularly funny, but because I don’t know what I should feel. When a friend is pouring her heart out to me and is sobbing, I often have a hard time understanding what she’s saying. This leaves me in a dilemma. Do I just say, “there there, it’s always darkest before the dawn,” or do I risk seeming unfeeling by asking her to repeat what she just said so that I fully comprehend her words? I often resort to jokes or humor to pull someone out of a funk. I think I do this so that the negative mood lifts and we can get on with our lives. It’s not that I can’t be serious; I just don’t know what to do with other’s emotions.

 A popular book series by Dr. Gary Chapman, describes 5 Love Languages. I’m not sure where food fits into the mix, but my mother expressed her love through food and I’ve followed in her footsteps. Mom was a great cook. We could go all year and not eat the same meal twice. I have an entire shelf of my cookbook shelves filled with her old cookbooks and that’s after paring them down. It was two years after she died before I could search for a recipe from those. The feelings were there – in her cookbooks – in her food. She made my favorite food on my birthday. As I’m not a big fan of cake, I’d ask for tapioca pudding. You might be thinking – what kind of treat is that slimy stuff? Have you ever had it with whipped cream (the real stuff) folded into it? No? I didn’t think so. Well when you do, and I strongly advise it, you’ll see what I mean. Mom and Dad traveled 500 miles to bring me some for my birthday when I lived in Kansas. When she made liver for dad, I got a steak. As a kid, I can remember shopping with her – she’d give me coupons and I felt like I was in a great treasure hunt to find the match and get it back to her quickly so that I could get the next treasure. There were brands she did not compromise on:  Peter Pan peanut butter, Nestle chocolate chips, Hellman’s mayonnaise, and I won’t get started on flour and sugar. Other items depended upon the coupon or the sale –even better when the coupon item was on sale. She was a pro. As she aged, I took her to the store. I was often frustrated at her fastidiousness, but looking back on these times; they’re precious hours where we related as women.  Like many 1960’s moms, she was a pro at jello. Like her tapioca pudding, jello was never the plain, jiggly mass of goo. Hers was full of fruit and other mysterious ingredients that made it seem like a ride on a roller coaster. Take a slice of jello, scoop it up with a fork – click, click, click, up to the top and….. whee!  It was a thrill to let the tastes mingle and sparkle as I savoured the unlikely mixture of cucumber, lime jello, cottage cheese, and 7-Up. I don’t eat jello not because of its unnatural beginnings, but like Tang and Hostess Twinkies, I relegate it fondly to my unenlightened childhood memories.

I could go on and on, but let me wrap this up with thoughts about food and love. When I was diagnosed with anxiety that affected my digestion, she helped me change my diet (she would not let me see a counselor… no surprises there). When my dad was diagnosed with heart problems, the first thing Mom did was to get a heart healthy cookbook and learn how to take care of him with her food. You see, Mom could take care of anything with food. She showed her love by preparing food. I was not a fat kid. I ate 3 meals a day and didn’t snack too much outside of special occasions. I didn’t put weight on until I was responsible for my own food. Then feeling lonely and insecure, I went to what I knew would make me feel better – food.  I am tackling this new aspect of my eating like mom and her coupons. There is a goal in mind and the means to achieve it. I now love myself with fresh and minimally processed ingredients. I still miss certain indulgences, but am learning that food is not love – being healthy and connected to the people in my life is.