At 76, she went on a date for the first time in nearly 60 years.
At 77, a man brought her breakfast in bed for the first time in her life.
At 78, she travels, she laughs, she goes to concerts, she eats out more than she cooks at home.
At 78, she visits for a week and we sit together, night after night, sipping wine. She tells me, with a twinkle in her piercing blue eyes, about her adventures and the gentlemen friends she has waiting for her at home.
At 78, she is finally living the life she has deserved all along… one full of happiness.
I snarled at my husband over a wilty, soggy, left over salad. Oh yes, I did.
This morning, as I rushed to prepare Alison’s school lunch, my eyes drifted toward the container of left over salad I was saving for my lunch. As soon as I saw the lid lying askew, exposing the now disgusting looking salad to the air of the fridge, I abandoned my task and stomped over to my unsuspecting husband.
He had apparently been curious about the container from Strings in the fridge last night. I’m sure he was incredibly disappointed to find salad where chicken parmesan should be. That was no excuse, however, for just dropping the cardboard circle haphazardly over the top of the container, rather than sealing it the way he found it.
He tried blaming the salad for looking unappetizing.
So, basically, had the salad looked good to him, he would have gone ahead and eaten it? But since he found it unappealing, he couldn’t be bothered to preserve it for me?
Well, thanks.
Tears began to spill over my cheeks and I couldn’t let it go. It was my salad. That I went to the trouble of bringing home. Maybe I like my salads to look unappetizing, it was still mine. Had he eaten it, that would be one thing, but now it was ruined and nobody was going to eat it.
He apologized, profusely – he hadn’t meant to be careless, hadn’t meant to ruin my lunch, hadn’t meant to upset me.
Even as I accepted his apology, I felt stupid for making such a big deal about a wilty salad. On any given day, I probably would have been happy about the excuse to eat something delicious, rather than a left over salad that, truthfully, wasn’t all that tasty the first time around.
I knew I was making a mountain out of something far more ridiculous than a molehill – an anthill, maybe. A very tiny anthill, made by miniature ants.
There are mountains all around me – other people’s mountains, ones I want desperately to help them conquer, but I can’t. And while those steep peaks looming in the distance help me to see my molehills for what they truly are, I find my eyes filling with tears and my face flushed with heat.
Life is so freaking unfair sometimes. And it’s not the salad, forget the salad, it’s the injustice of people’s mountains. And looking at that pathetic salad, I’m reminded that there’s nothing in the world I can do about that.
I can try to ease people’s suffering, but how I would love to throw it away like an old, wilty salad.
Replace it with something tasty and warm, paired with a nice bottle of wine and some laughs.
