Communication by Casserole
I’ve been living up to the bonontherun moniker lately, dashing around from place to place, most recently Paris and then London. There’s really no way to describe everything from the trip, so let’s shortcut it all. Just close your eyes, think “Paris in April” and let your imagination run wild. Food played a major part in the trip. In Paris, I stocked up right away on bread, cheese and fruit and really only ate one meal the entire time I was there. The rest was grazing, with chocolate croissants figuring heavily in the mix. Perhaps it was the croissants that inspired my very rusty college French to return to service without complaint. There was a fun moment in London when I was able to help a lost and befuddled French couple find their way to the Houses of Parliament.
The food in London was just as good as in Paris. I had a smoked haddock pie with a tomato and feta salad at the cafe in the National Galleries that will stand in memory just as surely as the Cezanne that followed. Sacrilege, I know, but it was a really good meal with more tomatoes assembled on one lunch plate than I’ve seen in total the last six months. Pardon me while I close my eyes and let my imagination run wild…
Perhaps food stands out as the peak experience on this trip because I was fed in so many ways – history, art, long walks, beautiful spring days and most important of all, connection. While living in Alaska is not exactly the isolation it once was, it still stands true that we’re a long way from anywhere up here. If the norm is seven degrees of separation, we’re only about a degree an a half from each other up here and the sense of community can be both powerful and occasionally overwhelming. As interesting as our local color may be, though, we’re but one small tile in a complex mosaic. Conversations struck up on the trip with complete strangers far from my normal stomping grounds reminded me that there is, after all, no such thing as a complete stranger. The effort of speaking in French, the experience of smelling different flowers and eating different foods, the empathy felt with the history of another place – it’s all connection every bit as tangible as a touch on the shoulder or a hug and air kisses.
I bought a book on the London Blitz and read it on the flight home. I remember this from my time in France in college as well – the need to understand the incomprehensible, to not forget. There were several photos of rubble and smoke, of people somehow both dazed and determined, that were taken on spots where I had stood the day before on a rare sunny day. I still remember my host family in France all those years ago pointing out the ruins of a building still standing watch, a jumbled stone and brick reminder of our essential choice to be either destroyers or creators. Was it waiting to be rebuilt or hoping not to, wishing to stand as a monument and reminder of dark times and of the hope and determination that shone through?
On the way home, I got the news that someone very close to me has been diagnosed with cancer. I imagine more details will come forth as she makes her choices about how private or public she wishes her journey to be. I know many people reading this have experienced the so-called “cancer journey” as one of the many travelers along the road – patient, friend, family, supporter, caregiver. I understand why we use the word “journey” to describe what happens, but I’ve never really liked it. It’s one of the things I get angry about from time to time. Confronting a cancer diagnosis is, on a day to day basis, more like being a refugee than it is like a stroll down a country lane. The word “journey” is far too tame. That being said, it does describe the sense of separation, other-ness, disorienation. It also can describe the hope, strength, victory and joy that comes along the way.
Sensing ambivelence? Yep, that’s it in a nutshell. People huddled in those makeshift London bomb shelters had concerts, reading groups, plays and created a whole life around running underground each night only to emerge in the morning and survey the altered landscape. The average oncology waiting room has some remarkable similarities – puzzles, cheerful banter, knitting projects, laughter – yes, LAUGHTER and above all buckets of hope and heaps of love and support. Fear and hope and determination all bundled into one confusing package.
I know that at one time I had a very different reaction to the news that someone in my circle had cancer. I have vague memories of what that might have been – wanting to know more, fearing too much knowledge, nervousnous about knowing what to do or say. Now I know more and my response is more in the form of images. I have snapshots from other journeys that absorb a little of the shock, that give me a bit more of a roadmap for the trip ahead. I know now that a cancer diagnosis is a down the rabbit hole experience, so I’m no longer surprised when the Mad Hatter shows up. Reading these words, I wonder if they sound cold. They’re not – it’s just the opposite. I now know that there’s an endless supply of real understanding and compassion in the strange places we need to go with each other and I respond now with the emotional equivalent of simply packing up a duffel bag to hit the road. Based on what we know now, this particular trip is going to be along a shorter and easier route and will take us to a really good place, but I’ve packed my rinse out in the sink, quick dry pants just in case we all need to be flexible.
I’ve gotten better at understanding what to do, how to help. I can even make a few suggestions: Follow through on offers of help and don’t suggest anything you’re not prepared to deliver. Ask questions, ones that make it clear you want to listen. Allow room for fear and anger as well as for hope and strength – both have to be expressed. There are hundreds of little things you can do to help, most of them completely mundane and all of them more helpful a month or two down the road than they are right now. Offer to clean house or do laundry or give rides to appointments and after you’ve done this once, make a note on your calendar to offer again in two weeks or a month. Don’t make assumptions about feelings or progress or outcomes – it’s possible to feel choked off by the helpful and hopeful when what is really needed is a tearful breakdown and release of the pressure. Most important of all – understand that the equal footing we come to expect in all our relationships and interactions breaks down completely under the weight of cancer treatment, or any other major life challenge for that matter. Don’t expect things to be equal – they’re not. The person you’re supporting is more important than you are, at least for the time being.
As I started to allow the images and feelings to flow after getting this news, one bit became a magnet for my anger and frustration. No matter how many times someone you love tells you “I have cancer”, the anger and disbelief always comes - I like to break pencils when it happens. Anyway, the detail that jumped out and got me going on a rant was the perrenial favorite response to crisis, the casserole. What on earth makes us think that tuna noodle will help heal anything at all?
As a symbol of community and fellowship, the casserole is also confusing - it delivers mixed messages. When I moved to Ohio for grad school, neighbors brought me casseroles to welcome me. We bring casseroles to celebrate new homes and new births but we also tote them along in times of trouble. Thankfully, jello molds are not as common as they once were, but I clearly remember experiencing a sort of sick fascination with a particularly wobbly and cheery jello mold with mandarin oranges slices and marshmellows presented in pride of place at the center of the table at a wake. Is there a secret code to all this that I just don’t have the language skills to interpret? Does tuna noodle celebrate something positive and hopeful while baked ziti is ambivalent and pea salad seeks to heal deep pain? I’ve never figured it out, but I can still feel that awful moment watching the red jello with the slices of what looked like blood orange jiggling in the middle of the table. It was like something out of a horror movie – I actually had to step back and shake the cobwebs out of my head to realize it was just food.
No one has offered casseroles yet in response to this particular crisis – it’s just typical of where my mind likes to go when it needs to stretch its legs.
This really all comes back around to people being good-hearted and trying to take care of each other when we don’t know what to do. We communicate our affection for each other by fixing up favorite dishes or baking treats and we celebrate special occasions with food done just so. If I were more British, would I be able to withstand anything life dishes out by taking a cup of tea? Perhaps Starbucks has influenced the modern American version – so many of the most difficult conversations in my life have been soothed by conducting them over a latte.
So the poor casserole became the topic of my angry and powerless ranting over the course of a couple of days. What do we think we’re doing? Why don’t people understand what’s really needed? What kind of idiot thinks that food made with Cream of Mushroom soup as a sauce is the correct response to a really big and complicated problem? For all my knowledge and experience, I was behaving in the classic way that we all do – sick with worry for someone I love, I had to find a target to blame so I could unleash my fury. My duffel bag is packed, you see, but as I haven’t been asked to hit the road yet, I have to do something. Getting on my soapbox for a nice, satisfying rant felt pretty darned good. It felt good, that is, until a friend pointed out the error in my logic.
The casserole, it seems, has a whole symbolism I’m as yet too young to have experienced. My friend, who has also been down the cancer rabbit hole, understood my need to focus on something trivial and therefore understood the rant. He also understood the need for laughter and told me about his mother.
Statistically, we all understand that women tend to live longer than men, but how often do we really think about how that all plays out? If I’m 80 or more, as my friend’s mother is, and I’ve lost my husband, what do I do about companionship of the opposite sex? Since I’m assuming that my fundamental nature won’t mysteriously change as I breeze past 75, I assume I’d want to give my grief time to heal and that I’d eventually start testing the waters with a little light flirting. Apparently, my ideas about this are right in line with what my friend’s mom is up to. Some time has passed and healing has happened – now it’s time to dip a toe back into the pond. Here’s the rub – many, many women in her situation and far too few men. Here’s where the casserole comes in.
The first phase of the casserole conversation is exactly what we all expect – sympathy in the form of soupcan sauce food. When you’re in your 80′s it appears that losing a husband rates a tuna noodle or perhaps a sheppard’s pie or a chicken pot pie. All of the women in her community have been schooled by the women who came before them to show affection and sympathy and support in this way. I even do it and am in fact so well schooled in baked sympathy that I intuitively understand that blood orange jello mould is in poor taste.
The part that got me going, though, that brought the laughter bubbling back up through my fear-choked throat, was this: Apparently the really good casseroles only come out when an older gentleman has lost his wife. Now we’re talking lasagna and stroganof and generations-old secret recipes for warm, creamy, spicy delectibility. Dessert, of course, is included. The poor guy doesn’t stand a chance surrounded by the siren song of “food, glorious food!” fashioned by temptresses who have invested a lifetime in perfecting their favorite recipes.
I’m grateful to my friend on a number of counts:
For knowing that laughter doesn’t actually get your mind off things – it gets your feet back under you so you can focus again, but now in a positive way.
For opening my mind to a new perspective on the much-maligned casserole.
Perhaps most important of all, for giving me a leg up on the day I may want to be the most tempting of the octagenarian sirens – I’ll be putting a little more effort into my green chili enchiladas and blueberry pie – you never know when they might come in handy.
