I’m a reluctant and mediocre cook. Oh, I can cook some things well enough, but I also have an incredible history of kitchen screw ups. One was even deemed my “best culinary f*ck up ever” by Cooper. I could try harder, but I really find NO joy in cooking. Yeah, I probably lose mom and wife points for this flaw. I can do other things. My mom, sister, and daughter all enjoy cooking and are good at it. I just didn’t get that gene.
“Where’s this going,” you ask? Well, my sister shared homemade egg rolls last week. I do love egg rolls. I also know how to make them. They are a pain in the butt, but I know how. If I pay attention, I don’t even burn them. So, tonight I made egg rolls.
Here’s the thing.
The last time I made egg rolls, Cooper helped. He might have taken a turn at the skillet, but he definitely sat at the bar, visiting with me and offering *sometimes* solicited advice. He also snatched the first egg roll off the plate, burned his mouth, ate it anyway, and proclaimed, “These are damn good, Mom.” High praise from Cooper, who was himself a good cook.
Today, I cooked the pork and vegetables in the gigantic cast iron skillet I bought three weeks before he died, specifically because I didn’t have a skillet big enough to cook stir fry and end up with leftovers. Coop loved stir fry. We both loved leftovers. That skillet is way more skillet than two people need, but it lives on top of my stove; I can’t stomach the idea of storing it away and not using it.
Coop and I made egg rolls twice last summer. When he was here, I had to make two packages of skins worth of egg rolls. By the time we got to the end, the oil was too hot and not too clean. The last few turned out how you’d expect. Nevertheless, both times we made egg rolls, we ate until we were miserable. They were just so good.
There are no metaphors here. I could work some in. I could talk about not burning the next batch, learning from our mistakes, and go from there, but there’s nothing fancy tonight. We can learn from our mistakes another day.
Tonight, I’m just sharing what it’s like, six months into After Cooper. Tonight, it was the skillet, the memory of burning egg rolls and our mouths, of eating ourselves stupid on a greasy treat of a meal, of his words of praise. That’s what it’s like; there’s something every hour of every day. Today’s memory is bittersweet. I thought of Cooper as I cooked. I didn’t cry; I just remembered.
There’s a terrible missing him that doesn’t go away. I hate it, but I’m getting used to it — this pain that roams through my throat, my chest, my gut — and there are days I can think of nothing else. Some days, that pain is so fierce the rest of my world is obliterated. Today wasn’t one of those days. Today, I was sad. I missed him. Those two emotions are my baseline for now. But today . . . I was sad, I missed him, I wished he was sitting at the bar scarfing down egg rolls and telling me how to cook, but I also felt comfort in the memory.
So I cooked egg rolls tonight. I didn’t burn them. And Coop? They were damn good. Wish you were here.
Woods Writes 