LETTING GO & HANGING IN

WITH SOME TALK OF PASTA AND FRIED RICE

I’m now entering my second year of writing here on Substack.

a lift of the heart this afternoon: my first sighting of crocus and dwarf iris in Toronto this year

I began writing here last year, at Nou-Roz, the Zoroastrian/Persian new year. I had decided that I needed an obligation that lay outside my immediate situation, which was that I was living with a dearly beloved adult child who was undergoing palliative treatment for his brain tumour. Tashi had just finished a six-week course of radiation. I was hoping he’d have a good summer. But I didn’t want to write about him or about all that. I thought that instead I could try to keep myself grounded by exploring thoughts and stories related to food and life.

Tashi in September 2020, a year before we knew his days were numbered

In late November last year, two weeks after Tashi’s death, on what would have been his thirty-fifth birthday, I wrote about him here for the first time. And since then I’ve been trying to acknowledge to myself and others the ways in which I’m living and feeling in a transformed world. It turns out that the course of grief, like the course of life, is a very unpredictable variable road. Each week brings me fresh understanding.

In the last while I’ve been feeling rather foggy. Realising I needed a break from my patterns, a week ago I took the train from Toronto to Ottawa to visit a friend.

As we rolled east along the shore of Lake Ontario, I saw the bike path and the sandy inlet where I’ve gone swimming while out for a long summer bike ride with friends. But in this season, from the train, it looked like a stage set rather than a lived-in place. There were no people. The sand on the shore looked wet and packed firm. It was like a model or a painting, not a living breathing place. No wind. The only animation was the false one of our passage which made it move out of sight.

My friend Lianne picked me up at Fallowfield station and drove to her house out in the country. I was there three nights. As always, it was very relaxing staying with her. I didn’t have to decide anything or be in charge of anything. And I was content to just let go. She made meals. I helped a little but took no initiative. We went for a long walk in the woods on crunchy snowy paths, her dog frolicking and exploring all over.

sun and sharp March shadows on our walk in the woods

Friends came for a potluck feast lunch one day, and the next morning I drove into the city to see other people dear to me. Despite those commitments, I was able to let my mind drift. I existed more and more in the present. I had little to no anxiety about plans or obligations. Everything felt simple and natural.

breakfast in Lianne’s kitchen: fried eggs over salad left over from the potluck

In the train on the way back I read a Simenon Maigret published in French in 1967; it was a diverting way to time-travel while train-traveling. Outside the window the cold pre-spring landscape rolled past: soft pale straw-coloured corn stubble in rows across curves of dull brown soil striped with snow, small farmhouses and buildings huddled low, and lines of trees at the top of low ridges, their bare branches silhouetted against the sky in traceries reaching up and out.

Perhaps it was the sensation I had on the train that I was like a package, a parcel being moved across the landscape, that gave me the gift of a kind of passivity. That, in turn, led me into what feels like acceptance. The edges of my mind, or perhaps my defences? softened a little. I was left with a mushier head-space, with less capacity for decisions or decisiveness of any kind. Engaging with any question of where or when or why to do a particular thing seems impossible right now. I don’t have the muscle for it. There’s a lovely lack of striving.

And that tells me how much I must have been striving these last months, without knowing it.

there must be a story behind this fallen phone pole…

Somehow the short trip to Ottawa, an exit from my normal space and patterns, has enabled me to recognise that I’m deeply exhausted. Normally I like to engage with people, to understand where they’re coming from, to explore ideas with them. But right now I am withdrawing. Leaving a room feels better than entering a room. That’s entirely new for me.

I am more weepy, softer, more vulnerable to all kinds of emotions. I feel a sense of relief. This is a new state of being. I don’t want to lose it. My question now is, if I find the muscle to help me take hold again with more energy, can I also keep the door open to this openness and vulnerability?

rainbow socks knitted by Lianne: a lovely encouragement to take things a step at a time

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with pasta, fried rice, and more

My tiredness and passivity meant that when I got home from the train trip on Wednesday mid-afternoon - a slightly chilly walk up from Union Station - I was a bit disoriented. I dumped my small knapsack and shoulder bag and retreated to the chaise longue with a book.

A while later there was the question of supper, so I had a look in the fridge (with very little enthusiasm I confess). I figured that perhaps the leftover dal spruced up with some spinach, plus a fresh batch of rice (brown jasmine), and a lake trout from Fisherfolk that was in the fridge, would work well. And there were some green beans I could quickly cook and dress with a vinaigrette.

I felt very inept, fumbly, without reflexes, as if I’d been away a year rather than just three days. I’m sure it was because I’d let go of my attentiveness and focus. I was blurry inside and out. The result was that the fish was OK but could have done with another one minute in the pan, the rice was OK, the green beans were under-salted, and the dal lacked vitality. Though I felt a bit badly that supper wasn’t better for my house-guest and friend, lively and lovely artist Sarah Khan, I wasn’t distressed. It felt kind of inevitable.

The next morning I suggested that we might go out for supper that night. I think it was a way of avoiding decision-making in the kitchen. But heavy rain arrived in the afternoon so that the prospect of heading out to a restaurant was unappealing. “I’ll make supper!” said Sarah. I felt a sudden relief.

She liked the idea of pasta, so she chose the one she wanted and decided she’d oven- roast the root vegetables we had: carrots, sweet potatoes, and parsnips. And then she’d figure out a sauce for the pasta. I withdrew happily to the other side of the counter and started to prepare for an interview I’m doing next week.

It was very restful to be out of the role of decision-maker, to leave everything in Sarah’s capable hands. I’m not sure if she’d imagined that I’d help or guide things, but in any case, I did not.

The meal was delectable. She’d made a sauce with ingredients she’d found: a bunch of spinach, a shallot, the leftover green beans, garlic, a few anchovies, and a jar of passata. She’d spiked the sauce with berbere powder so that it was warmingly savory and she’d cooked it down so that it coated the long thick country style pasta beautifully. The root vegetables were tender and aromatic, and a small chopped salad of pea shoots and radicchio was refreshingly green and crisp.

thank-you Sarah!

Then two nights later, suddenly, the kitchen became familiar again to me. I felt a surge of good happy energy as the wok heated. Decisions and gestures flowed easily. The brown jasmine rice left over from Wednesday’s supper became a generous heap of fried rice, enlivened with red curry paste, five cloves of garlic, the leftover roasted root vegetables (chopped a bit smaller), plus chopped spinach. I finished it with generous squeezes of lime juice plus fresh coriander leaves. Alongside we had bavette grilled outside over charcoal, plus a beet salad. I’m relieved to have found my footing a little.

the fried rice left in the serving bowl after everyone had had a first helping

And the sight of long-buried plants re-emerging, the first tips of my rhubarb showing above ground, the straggle of tulip leaves shoving their way through, is always encouraging, a kind of “yes we can!” It’s OK to weep and grieve, to be distracted and fuzzy. And it’s possible, in fact necessary, at the same time to celebrate the return of spring.