Faith

Stew

All I’ve got is a stinkin’ analogy: You know how you make a giant pot of stew (of any kind) and you eat stew for a week in an effort to empty the pot? You eat stew every day and you exercise massive gratitude and you thank the universe for stew and you practice intentionality and savor every morsel. You observe reasonable portions and try not to gorge yourself on stew and at the end of the week you look in the bottom of the Tupperware and you still have about three bites of stew left. Before you move on to the next awesome – perhaps even improved -- meal for the coming week, you need to figure out how to dispense with those three fucking bites of stew. There’s no eating the stew – you’re done with stew. You can’t just pour the soapy wash water into the Tupperware – you’ll end up with nasty, soapy stew instead of a clean Tupperware. What do you do? You have to empty the damn Tupperware.

So, in my experience of reality, the stew is this most recent phase and view of my life. I have for the last little while been intentional and full of gratitude for a life that inspires me. I have observed and treasured every fucking moment of my beautiful stew of a life. But it’s time for a new stew. The three bites at the bottom of the Tupperware are the few lack-luster thoughts I have about this phase of my life. I’m ready for a new stew. Really – maybe it’s even time for some vichyssoise! I need to clean the Tupperware. I’m not even gonna try to fashion those few remaining thoughts about yesterday’s reality into something like a post or an essay or something beautiful. Whatever. That stew is done.

You know what else? (Really, I only have this one analogy.) My home is that stew, too. I love stew and I love my home. But I need something radically fresh, something radically NOT stew. I’ve been cleaning out every corner of the home (not a fun exercise, I might add). I’ve been throwing away bits and pieces of this and that. I’ve been digging to the bottom of the Tupperware. It’s a process. I’ve been reminded of all the things I love about this stew. I’ve taken a few moments to reflect on just how this particular stew was made and I even licked my fingers to remember the taste of each, beautiful, aromatic, flavorful ingredient.

Some of the ingredients are exotic. I think of nutmeg as an unexpected compliment to beef, even as some of the gee-jaws that crowd my home might be thought of as nutmeg: a lacquered box of buttons my grandmother used to mend my grandfather’s button-down life. A cricket ball that hasn’t seen any action since Dusty’s Dad enjoyed it in his early childhood in England. A pair of brass, greyhound bookends that belonged to my sister-in-law’s father stay on high alert, poised next to me on the desk that sat in the small home-based office my great-grandfather operated as the General Practitioner of his small community. These things absolutely lace and steep my stew of a life with full, exotic flavor. I have no idea why it is that I’m staring at three, lonely, inedible bites of stew at the bottom of this Tupperware. Why do I find it so difficult to find the inspiration for these few small bites?!

I think, to belabor this metaphor, that it’s time that I fully appreciate and taste each element in my life so that I can be inspired to shift the ingredients and envision a new iteration of those ingredients. Stews come in so very many forms. There are African stews spiked with dried fruits and aromatic spices. There are earthy, Western European stews that feature simple ingredients and one or two distinctive herbs, like thyme or sage. There are Latin stews that burst with the complex flavor of a mole – remembering that mole is just a marriage of many, sometimes disparate, yet humble elements. So, I need not throw away all the ingredients that sit and wait in the cupboard to be discovered again. I don’t need to decide that I’ll never use nutmeg again, but perhaps it’ll be an element in my mole. Or maybe in my African stew of apricots, Kale and a cumin-dusted chicken. I’ll look at that cricket ball, that box of buttons, the hundreds of ephemera in my home that will inspire a new iteration of my life’s stew.

Tonight, however, the Tupperware is almost empty and I have no idea what kind of stew will fill it up next. I’ll swish that soapy water around, throw out the nasty, soapy detritus, turn out the light in the kitchen and hope that I’ll see those lovely ingredients in the light of a new day.

Fuck. Now I’m hungry.