Visiting us, our son, a chef, searched our fridge for “a little something.” He flashed me a horrified look and insisted, “Com’ere. Look at this.”
“What?” I asked.
“Mom, how old is this tomato-bean casserole-y thing?”
“We had that chili two days ago.”
He spooned out a mouthful. “Not very spicy. Did you season it?”
He resumed the quizzing, “And these limp vegetables?”
“Stir-fry,” I told him. “Last night.”
He picked out an onion, “Kinda bland. Needs fresh herbs.”
He smelled everything. No suspicious odors, so I wondered about the alarm in his face.
“Mom, everything is stale, old, nothing alive. What’s you plan here? Microwave these scraps for the next week? Live off leftovers?”
No doubt set in my culinary ways, I asked, “Doesn’t everyone do that?”
“Mom, where’s the fresh food? You’ve been telling me that you feel drained, that your life feels stale, same-old, same-old. If you want to feel more alive, with more energy, you can’t just recycle old crap” (He might have used a beefier word than crap).
“Maybe feeling bored is Covid, isolation, quarantining, all that?”
“Mother” (you know when your grown kids call you “mother,” that they will speak some truth you may not want to hear), “you need new recipes.”
We laughed. It’s funny, right?
“Mom, you’ve whipped up these same dishes since I was a kid. And, mother, I mean new recipes in the biggest sense, not only about food.”
Bingo. In seeking alive and energy, to add years to my life, I’ve repeated same-old, same-old. The same walk on the same flat rural roads. The same basic vegan food. The same brain-enhancing puzzles. The same meditation: feel the breath, feel the breath again. Bedtime nightly at 10:00, up daily before 6:00. But my son cooked up an ah-ha moment: it’s not only that I need more oregano in my lasagna; it’s that I need more flavor in my days. I need/we need, not only to add years to our life but—to be happy, even healthy—I need/we need to add life to our years (I can’t take credit for that clever phrase. People smarter than me have used it for decades).
How do we repeat the same crucial rituals for health, how do we get through the day, without the boredom of same-old? Maybe the choice is not binary: either I grit my teeth and bear the here-we-go-again ho-hum or I give up fill-in-the-bank. Either read the same old paper or ditch the news. Maybe the response to the question of how to avoid life’s certain burnout (is it certain?) has something to do with flavoring, with life-spice. Hike the hills on city streets. Call a high school pal. Go to a new bookstore. Change the TV channel; watch the sunset instead or dust off the board games.
Here’s a binary choice: write the same thoughts and feelings yet again in the same journal with the same pen, at the same desk for the same 20 minutes at 9:30 am. daily, or stop writing. Here’s a flavor-enhanced recipe: sprinkle in brightly colored pens, mix in sparkly journals, let the writing simmer less or more at dawn or dusk, write laying down and outside, or take a writing class. Or, to escape same-old, take another kind of class. Can we risk adding a pinch of, you know, a little something?
Maybe the antidote to same-old is to shake life up, freshen routines, stir things around. As my son says, “you can’t leave your bland, stale life, but you can sweeten it….mother.”
Wisdom from a pastry chef.
Just the column I needed to read at a time when I am feeling very stale and boring. Covid has really exacerbated this situation too. We need to be safe and take care of ourselves and yet at the same time it can be so isolating. Thanks for making me rethink changes that can add some energy and sparkle to each day. Take care.
Glad your son knows that fresh spices change what we eat for the better tasting of our food, but also that we need the spices of life; more experiences, gathering with family and friends, time outside with nature,
time to have new extended thoughts as things are changing in our later years, (change the bland) be around young people and listen to and learn as we continue to live, love and be loved.
Say “hello” to your son and thank him for the inspiration to freshen our food, thoughts and plan for each new day.
With love,
Maddy