Food is Love ... and So Much More

I'm in a strange place right now with food. I kind of hate it. I hate the "power" it seems to have over me. Or, more correctly, the power I give it.

I thought a lot about food this weekend. I know food is fuel. I know food is necessary. Functional. It can also be dangerous ... you know, in a PMS-and-a-pan-of-brownies kind of way. It can be celebratory, like wedding cake and birthday steak.

But it is also so much more than that.

I spent this weekend with my best friends from childhood. We try to get together at least once a year for a weekend away from husbands and kids, schedules and responsibilities. It's often in the fall, and almost always involves lots of talking, even more giggling, shopping, just a few drinks and eating. Occasionally lots of all of those things.

This weekend was a bit different. One of us is going through a very difficult time. She's losing her dad. While the original plan was to head to the Fox Cities and have a light-hearted couple of days, that agenda simply couldn't work for her and what she's dealing with. So, we moved the getaway to her, knowing we may not see her at all, but hoping that if she needed a break from her situation or if it took a turn for the worse, we'd be there, support and hugs ready to administer.

Friday night, we picked up pizzas from the same pizza joint we frequented as teenagers, stopped at the grocery store where half of us worked during those same formative years for snacks and a few adult beverages. Then we went to her house. We sat around her table and we talked and listened and laughed and cried. We cried a lot. And we ate.

The food mirrored the conversation ... it was familiar and comfortable. How many times in our lives had we sat together and shared a meal? This meal? I know we ate pizza 30 years ago and discussed break-ups, parental injustice and whatever else we thought was so important way back then. I am sure we did the same when we graduated college or on the night before our weddings. I am willing to bet there was pizza when our babies came. And though the pizza was different, I know it was there this past summer when those same babies graduated from high school. And here we were again, facing the death of a parent, seated around a table, trying to figure out how to help one of us get through this awful time. Together. Eating.

And then, after a short few hours of sleep, we woke up and went back to that grocery store, this time for actual ingredients. While there was no way we could make the situation any better ... no words we could say, no function we could perform ... we could make some food and take one thing off the family's list of things to worry about.

We cooked together. We danced around the kitchen, like a well-rehearsed ballet. One stirred. One diced. One measured. We talked. We laughed. We welled up. We nibbled. And in a couple of hours, we had two full meals, with two pans of Scotcharoos, ready to deliver. All of our love and all of our support in four disposable foil pans.

That night, after dinner, we pulled together again. We sat as our dear friend talked about her very difficult day. We toasted to our friendship and to her dad. And yes, we cut into one pan of Scotcharoos.

Nothing we ate all weekend was healthy in a PX90 sort of way.

But it was all good for the soul. It fortified and nourished us in a way that not much else can.  ... because it was shared with people we love at a time when we needed it most.