Funny thing happened on Christmas dinner. Lately, since my wife has retired, she has taken over the day to day cooking, and still does most of the cleaning (which she always did). But for major meals, I’m the cook, and it’s kind of like a performance at the very end when all the dishes are getting done together, and I have to finish the onions, mash the potatoes, take the turkey out of the oven, get the pan juices, and make the gravy, together with trying to communicate with everyone that things are about to be done, and accept the guests contributions to the dinner.
My friends had a great time trying to distract me by asking me questions in the middle of all this. They they amused themselves by making comments about my lack of response. They speculated about whether I could even hear them or not. I could. But I was in the zone. I like being in that zone where everything is happening at once and I have to make it all make sense. It happens in cooking and music and at work at crunch time.
You instantly prioritize things and there’s no time for politeness. It’s triage in the Wundayatta kitchen. And there’s an audience. They like to watch me cook, maybe because I do enter into this fugue state.
I don’t think women are the only ones who like to take care. I do it for everyone, not just myself. I do it to bring people together, and I do it because I can. Because my wife knows what her areas of responsibility are (the front of the house, so to speak), and we’ve been working together for decades now, doing this. It’s a wonderful thing, and it’s a lot of work, and it took three days to clean up afterwards, and now there’s New Year’s Eve, although I doubt if we will party.
Life goes on.
Until it doesn’t.