Anyone can have a bad day

The Lebanese grocery store we went to last week was  bursting with colour and texture.  There were aisles of vibrant green, orange and yellow fruits and vegetables, many of which can’t be found in our local grocery store.  Behind a glass partition were trays of olives ranging from green to eggplant-purple  to black.  A refrigerated section held containers of creamy concoctions like hummus, babaghanouge and tzatziki and the butcher counter had marinated chicken to make Shishtaouk, ground beef with parsley and spices flattened and skewered called Kafta and other delicacies.

But our favourite is the bakery section. And that’s where we saw that on any given day, one person can be content with life while someone else can be having a terrible day.

Ben and I were feeling pretty good about our day as we checked out the mounds of baklava made with layers of flaky fillo dough. The sweet, sticky pastries were shaped into tiny rectangles, logs, triangles, round nests or little bundles filled with nuts and dredged in a syrupy sugar-water.

Ahead of us was a young family waiting to be served. The father’s hair was tucked into a bun at the base of his neck and he held a toddler in his arms. I heard the little one cry and his mother try to comfort him but I didn’t pay much attention. That’s just what babies do when they’re wet, hungry or unhappy.  After he quieted, his mother wandered off to another part of the store while the young father waited with the little boy still snuffling in his arms.

Soon the clerk wearing a white hairnet over her dark hair and a white lab coat over her street clothes turned to him. Even with a mask on, I saw a smile that crinkled her eyes as she approached him holding an empty cardboard box to fill with his choice of sweet pastries. I waited, curious to see what he would choose. Instead he said abruptly, “You know what? Never mind!” and stomped away with his son.  The clerk turned to Ben and I and we all and shrugged as if to silently say, “Oh, well.”

At first I was irritated by the man’s behaviour. It was inexcusably rude and there’s never a reason to disrespect someone. But then I realized he was probably having a bad day. Maybe his son had kept him up all night. Maybe he’d lost his job (we were at the store in the middle of a week day). Or maybe he was worried about how inflation, sky-rocketing gas prices, COVID or the conflict in Ukraine was affecting his family.

We’ve all experienced that spark of anger when worry tests our limits.  It stretches and shrinks, curls and uncoils until we snap at our partners, children or sometimes, whoever happens to be on our path. It’s not right, but it is human.  My attitude toward the young man softened. It would have softened even further if he’d returned to apologize. He didn’t, but I still hoped the next day would be a better one for him.

Made with Love

Last  Saturday afternoon, every surface in my usually-neat kitchen was covered with condiments, vegetables, spices or soon-to-be-cooked meat. The scent of roasting chicken wafted from the oven and meat sizzled in a pot as my son browned beef cubes in oil for a stew. My daughter stood at the counter next to him, handing him the ingredients he needed.

Christmas for our family was hijacked by COVID, as it was for many families. None of us contracted it, but my son had been exposed and was waiting for test results. Different factors and scheduling conflicts meant that we could only get together last Saturday. None of us wanted to try to re-create Christmas. The tree and decorations were long-gone and we all wanted to move away from 2021 and, hopefully, to a better 2022 for all of us. 

So we chose to do a cooking day – a Saturday spent prepping meals for the week.  We each chose recipes and bought ingredients to make enough for all of us. Ben picked our daughter, Luce, up at the train station around lunch time. Erik, arms laden with bags of food, his own pots and pans and an impressive cutting knife arrived shortly afterwards. He quickly (and efficiently) usurped my place at the stove and I didn’t mind a bit.

Ben sat at one end of the kitchen table creating a colorful mosaic of chopped vegetables for a recipe: vibrant-orange carrots, bright yellow and red peppers, translucent white onions and the soothing pale-green of celery. I slipped into the chair next to him and watched my daughter and son deep in conversation. They leaned their heads closer together to be heard over the whirring of the stove fan and the sizzle of the meat. “I guess we’re not really needed here,” I said to Ben. He knew I meant this in the best possible way. He lifted his eyes from the cutting board and glanced towards our adult children just as they laughed about something one of them said. “No,” said Ben with a smile. “We’re not.”

There was no fancy table setting, no uncomfortable holiday outfits, no Christmas carols, no turkey or stuffing and no expectations to make this a perfect day. Instead, the day was a chaotic jumble for the senses:  a rainbow of colored veggies, the smell of meat cooking, voices raised in conversation, music, a warm fire in the next room and laughter. At the end, we all had containers filled with hearty soup, chicken in a spicy red sauce, a rich brown stew and chicken enchiladas in salsa verde – all made with love. It felt pretty perfect to me.

Guilty pleasure or bad habit?

Photo credit: wikiHow

I was alone in the house, but I still looked furtively around before putting my spoon down. Then I placed my hands on both sides of my bowl, pinky fingers delicately extended (as if to show that what I was about to do was proper etiquette). I raised the bowl to my lips and saw strands of shredded wheat cereal floating in the dregs of the milk. Then I tipped it and the deliciously cold milk filled my mouth.

Please don’t judge me unless you’ve never dunked a sandwich in your soup, split an Oreo cookie and licked off the cream filling first, stirred ice cream into a soupy mess before eating it or snacked in bed. If you can honestly say you’ve never done anything like that – then you’ve earned the right – go ahead and judge.

I’m a grown-ass woman and I know better. The proof is that I would NEVER do it if someone else was around. But there’s something satisfying in the gesture that is a throwback to the simple days of childhood.

I remember a home movie my father took during a family vacation at a lakeside cottage. In it, my youngest brother sits at a picnic table under the shade of a tree eating a big bowl of cereal. He is about six years old, a chubby little boy with a round face and a white-blonde crew cut. Oblivious to the fact that he’s being filmed, he picks up his bowl and his face disappears behind it when slurps the last of his milk and cereal. He puts it down, spots my father’s camera trained on him, and breaks into a good-natured, unabashed grin. There’s just pure delight on his face – no sign that he’d been caught doing something embarrassing.

And this got me thinking.  Are these things we mostly do in private bad habits or guilty pleasures?  Well, the research is unanimous:  A guilty pleasure is something we enjoy but that we think would be looked down on by others or seen as unusual.  A bad habit, on the other hand, is defined as a negative behaviour pattern that can be harmful, like smoking or stress eating.

Table manners and etiquette shouldn’t be thrown out the window. But since slurping cereal or dipping a sandwich in soup is harmless, I might continue to indulge once in a while.  You can too and, best of all, you can leave the guilt at the door.

P.S.:  See point 5 in this link.  WikiHow embraces drinking cereal in this article on “How to Eat a Bowl of Cereal” !

https://www.wikihow.com/Eat-a-Bowl-of-Cereal