Some days we wake up to a whole empty Saturday, and lie in bed planning the day. This morning Tim asked, "What is your heart's desire for today?" My heart's desire was to have lunch with my daughters and granddaughters. When I asked him his, he said, "to go back to the time before we came to America." I thought he meant that we shouldn't have moved countries, but he said no, it was so that we could have come earlier and understood the restrictions and had time to organise for the girls to have come with us. Wishes.
When I was little I attended a school modelled on British schools, and we had to learn pages of interesting things which children don't have to learn anymore, like collective nouns and proverbs. In grade 3, which was called Standard 1 then, we were tested on proverbs one day by having to "fill in the blank". I got them all right except for one, "If wishes were horses, ....", for which I wrote, "...then beggars would fly". Which made perfect sense in my head, because I saw Pegasus, the winged horse, when I read that line. And wishes were thoughts that flew through the air, not really connecting with anything real, in my experience. I had wished for many things not to happen which had just gone right on happening, despite my fervent hopes.
Anyway, the day's plans were laid and halfway through the day they changed, as plans tend to do, and instead there were friends and a movie and dinner at a restaurant, which is always a treat, as the older I get, the more I dislike cooking. Tim and I both long for a wife who loves cooking! When I think that I only have about 20 years left of my life I really want to spend the least time possible in the kitchen. I have cooked so many many meals for seeming armies of people, friends and relatives and children and children's friends and I've just had enough now. I am happy for my lunch to be a plate of steamed brussel's sprouts, quick, easy and delicious, to the horror of my family.
Of course, like anyone else, I love food, but cooking has always seemed such a terrible waste of time. You spend hours preparing a meal that is gobbled down in about 20 minutes, nothing left! Yes, it is lovely to eat, and to sit chatting at the table with wonderful scents and sensations as the food is appreciated and devoured, I am just tired of being the architect of that endeavour.
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