Molly wanted something to go with polenta on her Sunday night home from school, so I tried a new all-oven method to cacciattori a chicken. I got a big deep glass roasting pan, spilled in some olive oil, added a pound of baby portabella mushroom caps without their stems, half a bag of frozen cocktail-size onions, and a couple dozen cloves of pre-peeled garlic from one of the giant organic conglomerates in California. On top of that I put a cut up “smart-cleaned” chicken from the upscale super market, lightly salted and peppered the whole pan, and stuck it in a very slow, 300 Fahrenheit for a couple hours until browned up nicely. Then I dusted it all with oregano and basil, topped it with a big can of diced tomatoes, poured in some off-the-shelf grocery store balsamic vinegar and some red wine, pushed the oven to 325, and let it ride for another couple hours. It was reported by Cathy and Molly to be quite delicious.
But here’s the thing. Remember a few months back when GP Dr. K asked me what was the hardest thing about a year-and-a-half of cancer and cancer therapy? Well, I was still fighting the physical battle then, and it was a physical answer that came to mind. Told him it was the second night after my radiation and chemo were finished and my physiology collapsed into painful and swollen dehydration and anemia. And maybe that was, then, the hardest thing.
Since then, my physiology’s gotten better. I’m strong, back to fighting weight gain, not really discomfited by my partially paralyzed left arm, able to mostly function like a human being. But.
But. For as much of my life as I can recall, two of my greatest personal pleasures have been eating and lecturing. Hell, I was watching food TV before there WAS food TV. Spent a whole summer watching “The Galloping Gourmet” sink deeper into hilarious, if pitifully dysfunctional, alcoholism before he got God and got clean. Worth noting in passing that he now offers a mixture of high-tannin brewed tea and non-alcoholic grape juice as a wine substitute. And I was a teacher before I started teaching. Used to take younger neighbors sloshing into the woods and wetlands giving them long, undoubtedly soporifically dry, lectures about the biology of the salamanders, snails, and centipedes we’d find.
But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here so I can report the revelation that struck me while I was doing the grocery shopping this morning. That eating, the actual mechanical process of ingesting, masticating and swallowing food, is so uncomfortable now that I dread it. I don’t like to eat any more. I have to force myself to do it. Which is ridiculous on its face, but now a fact of life. More often than not I forget to stick a microwavable sausage biscuit in my brief case on my way to the office, and then I skip lunch and sip cold coffee instead. At night I have a very hard time passing up the soothing smoothness of a thick chocolate milk drink for choking down some solid or semi-solid food. Total bummer.
My speaking, I suppose, isn’t quite so massively depressing. I don’t have the control over tone, cadence and clarity like I used to. But I can make myself understood. I feel sorriest for kids in classrooms and presentation audiences. When I get wired up in front of a white board or Power Point screen, I tend to start to roll my speech faster and faster. Now I have to catch myself, remember to slow down, enunciate carefully, constantly ask if they’re understanding. Which is ok. I can do that. I miss the silken abilities of rhetorical persuasion I’ve lost with my whole voice, but that might be for the best. Now I actually have to think before I speak, which, for me, is a genuine life-skill gain. Still, I miss being able to convince people that my concept was correct because my mouth was so smooth.
Well, you know, it is what it is. I had some email from an old friend and colleague that got me thinking about my relationship, such as it is, with whatever passes for God, god or gods in my psyche. We’ll pick that thread up next week. Don’t miss the semi-coherent personal steel cage theological death match between Dave and his gods next week! And don’t miss my professional blog over at http://www.aehsfoundation.org/ either. I have a built up supply of autumn photos, with a little luck by next week I’ll have this whole multi-weblog empire up and functioning. Live it while you got it, my friends. Because it ain’t forever!
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