recovery

Last Supper

ThanksgivingWay back in November, we cooked a Thanksgiving meal, not for crowds of people, as we had the year before, but just for each other. It was a chance to try out some ambitious recipes and to please just ourselves. I had at first said, “no poultry,” but a trip to Whole Foods revealed some never-before-seen exotica that ended up as the basis for our meal.

There, in a freezer on the shelf nearest the floor, a place I admit I never look, we saw guinea hens. And marrow bones. And so the menu started to form in our minds. Neither of us had ever cooked a guinea hen—and we hadn’t eaten one, either. Same with the marrow bones, although we had tasted them before. So the marrow bones for the starter, the guinea hen for the main course, and we needed a side dish. No traditional Thanksgiving green beans or squash—we decided to make saag paneer, including the cheese. I am wild for cheese, and even took a course at the Boston University School of Culinary Arts, where I earned a certificate in cheese, which makes me a dairy queen, or a cheese whiz. I’d never made cheese before—it turned out to be easy, fun, and yummy.

The plan for the day, as much as there was a plan at all, was to take it very slowly, to start whenever we felt like it, and to eat whenever food was ready.

Maybe some other time I’ll write about the recipes. What was remarkable about the day wasn’t the food, which was glorious, but the conversation. It’s rare to have an entire day that can unspool at its own pace, where there isn’t a deadline or urgent errand or sense of a ticking clock and other things that must be dealt with. Even though we share a house and a kitchen, our time together is usually short and silly and then we ricochet off into our separate lives.

For the marrow bones, we chose Anthony Bourdain’s recipe from the book/web site My Last Supper. Roasted marrow bones—his choice for a last meal. At some point after we’d prepared and eaten the marrow bones and were hanging out (actually, lying down on the living room couches) while the guinea hens cooked, I asked Chip, “If you knew you were having your last meal, would you use?” His answer came fast and clear—no, he would want to be entirely present for his end.

Over the next few days, I asked this question of a few of my other friends in recovery. Pretty much everyone came to the same answer, although a few people admitted to being tempted. One friend with 28 years clean wants his clean time on his headstone, and that goal would keep him from using. Others said they had lost any cravings or desire to use.

I like to believe I would face my end with grace and presence…but I can’t be sure. I’m enough of a foodie to think that maybe it would be nice to have a glass of wine or two with my last meal…but when I think it through, I realize I’ve lost my taste for wine. Would I take something to relieve fear and anxiety? I don’t know. I hope not. Being alive, fully alive, until the moment I’m not, seems like a good death. On the other hand, I was very happy to get the epidural during childbirth…so who knows? My tolerance for physical pain is pretty high—less so for emotional pain. And after decades of reaching for a pill or a drink to get me away from emotional pain—I just don’t know how much courage or faith I’ll have, when faced with death.

Oh—what would be on my last meal menu? I don’t know exactly, but I think there would be ripe peaches and figs, rich dark chocolate, and sushi prepared by a master. Not in that order.

 

The “I Need Help” Sandwich

Not just a sandwich

This is a sandwich, a banh mi sandwich, made by Chip, the dude of chickdudefood. It’s not even the sandwich at the heart of this story, but that one was too delicious to take a picture of.

It started like this: Chip makes an incredible, and I mean out-of-this-world BLT. It’s so amazing, and his process for making it so precise, that I wrote a poem about it…that won’t be shared here. I’ve seen him take 45 minutes to get this sandwich to a place that he deems mouth-ready. It involves getting a lot of things exactly right: the kind of bread and how it’s toasted, the amount of mayo, the seitan bacon layered just so, the peeled tomato sliced a certain way, the placement of the must-be-Boston-or-butter lettuce, the salt, the pepper, the final pinch of a secret ingredient that maybe he’ll write about some day.

Anyway, this sandwich usually gets constructed late at night when Chip gets home from work. The smells that come up from the kitchen will wake me from a sound sleep and propel me downstairs in my pjs, with pillow hair and sleepy eyes, just for the chance of a taste, or just to watch something so beautiful get made and consumed. (I know, I’m a little strange about food.) There’s been deep analysis of what makes this sandwich so great, and he thinks he knows, but again, that’s his recipe to share.

About a month ago, maybe a little more, Chip made this BLT at an actual mealtime. For himself. In every possible way I could think of, I took a sidelong approach—to see if I could get him to make one for me. I tried everything, that is, except simply asking for one. He finally turned to me, while he was peeling the tomato, and asked me if I wanted one. You know the answer.

Here’s how this ties in to the “Life” part of this blog. If I can’t ask for a sandwich, how can I ask for help? And if I can’t ask for help, how can I be fully in recovery? Because the truth is, I can’t do this alone. I do need help.

We talk a lot, my friends and I, about how hard it is to ask for help. For me, whose identity was for so long completely dependent on being perceived as strong, as self-reliant and self-sufficient, as perfect as I could be, it’s nearly impossible. My response to difficult emotions or stress or whatever has, in the past, been to isolate myself, pull the covers over my head, and drink or take something until I felt I could face the world again. Sometimes that took hours—sometimes days or weeks or months—and, by the end, I was pretty much silent, alone, miserable, and desperate.

Asking for help makes you vulnerable. Being vulnerable is insanely painful. If you’ve ever been hurt, and we all have, it takes a leap of faith to put yourself and whatever is going on—shame, guilt, confusion, sadness, anxiety—whatever it is—in front of someone else and say the words “I need help.”

It takes courage and practice—to raise my hand at meetings and at home, to share the sorrows and puzzles of my life along with the joys—stories of gratitude are easier to tell. I’m getting a little better at this, slowly, and with the support of my community. I’m slightly more likely to be able to ask for help as freely as I give it.  (Giving?  That’s simple.) I’m trying to give up the facade of strength and self-sufficiency and perfection, because they are destructive and unattainable.  I’m allowing myself to be a mess, when I’m a mess.  And it turns out that I’m surrounded by people who also struggle to ask for help, but who show me how to do it and that it’s safe and that help will be freely given to me.

So last night when Chip said there was probably one more garden tomato to be turned into an October BLT, I said, “Will you make one for me, too?” Straight out, direct, face to face, with eye contact. And so I will get what I want—my reward for asking—an out-of-this-world BLT that is, for me, more than just a sandwich.