Nearly one year into COVID quarantine, and we’re still in darkness. I still believe hoping in darkness: that unseen good things thrive, grow and bloom in the darkest of places.
Today felt like another dark day in a long stretch of dark days, so I decided to intentionally eat my feelings on days like these as I have done for roughly ten of the eleven months of lockdown.
Pioneer Woman’s BestEver Lasagna fit the bill for the day’s emotional eating. I set out meats for defrosting as my daughter and husband set out for shopping at the local hardware store and Target.
They got back home as the meat sauce simmered; and after settling in with her newfound Target treasures, my daughter offered to pitch in with lasagna assembly.
This, in of itself, is any parent’s reason to rejoice, but when you are the parent of an artistic kid with specific and precise aesthetic expectations, an offer to help with lasagna assembly is less help and more annoyance.
But I said Yeah sure. I inhaled, exhaled and waited for the fifteen minute assembly to evolve into a hour-long ordeal.
As she meticulously placed each piece, I blurted out Seriously, just put the noodles on the base, okay? It doesn’t have to be perfect. But she was already in a different zone even as I needed to slam my face into dinner and emotionally gorge myself.
Then, a funny thing happened.
You know… (Lord give me patience, I prayed) … this reminds me of that time when we made lasagna and cookies for that family.
Wait, what?
Yeah.
Remember that time we made a family in need a couple pans of lasagna, and we
got a whole bunch of cookies for them? We delivered it and then
they took us on a kind of tour of their house.
Honestly, in that moment, I had no idea of what she was talking about. Then I panicked and wondered whether my non-memory was an early flag of dementia.
She kept prattling on as I wondered and worried. But I kept listening.
I was around eight or nine, and I remember feeling like it was out of my comfort zone because we didn’t even know them, but I always remembered that you said we needed to help people.
Oof.
That whole memory is fuzzy at best, but what I can tell you is it happened during a dark, dark time. It was when I had a grown-up job tied to many commitments outside of, but also related to my job.
In that particular brand of darkness, I was the sole school drop-off and pick-up and was always – always on deck to take a time off work in the case she’d wake up with a fever and/or duck out of work if she got sick during the day.
They were the days when I would double-back home on lunch breaks to prep dinners replete with step-by-step instructions if I knew it’d be a late night.
During those days, I’d get sick twice a year. It was the same dark time when I explicably lost at least forty pounds without even trying.
My fuzzy memory recalled being hyper-conscious of intentionally setting an example of helping people as much as we were able.
But yet, her memory is that "we need to help people".
I guess it’s just weird how you can plant seeds in darkness when you don’t even know you’re doing it. Like maybe there’s a germination period that happens, and then the seasons do their magic. Farmers could tell you more about that than I could.
What I can tell you is that today, my kiddo let me know that some seeds planted in darkness took root in her.
When it's dark, let's remember that we're planting good seeds…even if they’re only
fuzzy memories for us a few years down the road.
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