"Last Meal"

My daughter and I have successfully cohabitated for the past two plus years.  And we've successfully worked together.  I know - truly a different relationship we share.  At the very least, certainly not traditional mother-daughter.  But then, when is anything in my life 'traditional'?

Now, though, two years out of Berkeley, she's reaching for the CITY.  And not just any city - oh, no.  She's going for La-La Land.  She leaves in May ... 

Changes, and their ripple effects, fascinate me.  Part of her leaving reminds me so of myself, when I was leaving home at the age of 21, to travel across the country.  I wanted to wring every last ounce of those last few weeks, asking for favorite meals, going to my favorite park, spending a lot of time with my girlfriend Lynn - who, I'm happy to report, remains my friend still.  As if I could soak up a lifetime of memories to sustain me after I was gone.

Jordan is doing the same thing.  'Mom, aren't you coming walking with me?  I'm leaving in two weeks, you know.'  'Mom, will you make chicken and dumplings for me?  I'm leaving in a week, you know.'  It's heart warming, and heart wrenching, in equal measure.  Heart warming, to know that she will carry these pieces with her wherever she goes, that our time as adult family will always be part of who she is as she goes forward.  Heart wrenching, because 'I'm leaving in a week, you know.'

So this morning, I prepared her request meal - chicken and dumplings.  Hungarian style, only with a twist for the grown-up taste buds of my daughter.  I used a LOT more hot paprika than I did sweet.  So much more that my first taste of the gravy damn near seared my throat closed!  But she'll like it.  Funny thing about the connectivity, from generation to generation, and the things that can trigger such connectivity.  For Jordan, I've connected her to my grandmother, to my mother, through certain foods.  Hungarian chicken and dumplings; Hungarian sauerkraut and spareribs; Grandma's Christmas cookies.  These meals are tradition where I come from, and they are now tradition wherever Jordan will go.  And, yes, as I cooked, I mourned.  It was a healthy mourning - a poem came from it, and I've not written a poem in a dearth of Sundays (what is a dearth, anyway?).  The poem is as follows:

     (untitled)

buffeted about, creaking

      swaying - groaning

           in consternation

pieces fly past my window

      cracks and bangs

           resonate

as my oak does what

       I cannot -

           weeps.

                                N.

As these last few weeks rush by, screaming in their eagerness to always move, move, move, I will do my best to simply enjoy.  And save my mourning time for when I am alone.  I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time alone for a bit.