Post Traumatic Cooking

Cooking used to be my go to stress relieving hobby.  I love to create.  I love to make things.  I love art.  To me, making beautiful food is like making art you can eat.  What could be better?  You can be as creative as you want, but there are basic principles- guidelines- that if you follow, ensure success.  And not just success, but uniformity.  Predictability. 

In the last three or four years, my life has been anything but predictable.  Is it no wonder that I would latch onto to something that was?  Give me a wooden spoon and a spatula...they were my life preservers.  Not only did cooking distract me, make me feel successful, and in control of something in my life-if only what I set onto a plate at the end of an hour- but it also provided me with the single most powerful way to comfort my child who was in anguish that I could not stop, or even lessen. 

Yes, she loved my hugs.  Yes, she loved to sit and talk with me.  But boy, did she love a medium rare tenderloin with sauteed mushrooms and Manhattan sauce drizzled overtop...a double stuffed baked potato with the works...oven roasted string beans with fresh tarragon and a touch of lemon.

So here I am, in the most anguish I've ever been in, and I can't seem to set foot in my kitchen.  At first, I thought it was because of all the great times we spent together in there, prepping dinner, dancing, talking, laughing.  It was months- grief makes you slow on the uptake- before I realized my aversion to cooking, and the kitchen, in general, was likely because it was where I was, and what I was doing, when I found out about the accident.

I was chopping an onion and deboning a rotesserie chicken when the little boy came pounding on the door.  I dropped everything, and went on the run, screaming behind me for Jake to follow me.  Which thank God, he didn't.  How a ten year old boy knew it was a better idea to wait on the lawn is beyond me.  I left a pan of sauce on the stove, with the burner lit.  I ran like hell.  Within a short few minutes, I went from calmly making dinner for my two beautiful children, who were my entire world, to looking down at the face of my dead child...broken....twisted...crumpled...blue.

I don't know a lot about post traumatic stress disorder, but I know I can't be in my kitchen for any prolonged amount of time.  If I linger, my heart starts beating way too fast.  I start to feel like I can't get my breath.  I become bombarded with images from the road...snatches that pass before my eyes like someone shuffling a deck of cards:  her arm twisted, her hair covering her face, the responders cutting her shirt open  right there on the road, her lips so blue, the faces of the bystanders who already knew the awful truth that my heart would fight everyday for the rest of my life.

I have tried cooking since the accident.  It is torture.  The first time I smashed a garlic glove, which used to be her job, it sounded like my heart breaking in two.   I've made it through a couple dishes, but usually leave the room every couple minutes, and return just as quickly...a sad and frenzied hummingbird at the feeder.  One evening, I realized I was humming Pop Goes the Weasel under my breath.  What the heck?  I don't even like that song.

So for many reasons, this is a problem.  First and foremost, it is not healthy to keep feeding my son take-out and fast food.  I don't want him to think back to his childhood dinners and have, "Does that complete your order?" ringing in his ears.  I want him to remember the sounds of chopping and rattling, sizzling and bubbling.  I want him to associate certain smells of cooking with me for all of his days.  I want him to rave over my best dishes long after I leave this world.  I want to vex the future girl who is lucky enough to marry him...try as she might she should never be able to duplicate his Momma's recipes.

I wish I could get Jake to join me in the kitchen.  I have tried including him in the cooking process, which he used to love.  He will appease me by doing a simple task- as quickly as humanly possible- and then he's out of there, as fast as his little legs can carry him.  He remembers our good times, too.  Cory and I might have spent a little more time in there, but he would always be drawn in to join us by the sounds of the music, and our uncontrollable laughter.  Tim is not an option because he works nights.  I am always alone in there, my heart beating too fast, and the grisly mental pictures overtaking me.

So what I came up with this tonight:  maybe you can come with me.  Just a couple nights a week to start.  I will bring my laptop in and set it off to one side of the counter.  I will write a little bit about what I'm making or how I'm feeling about being in the kitchen.  Writing has been the one thing that has helped me the most since the accident, maybe it can get me through this, as well.  I think it's worth a try.  And I am trying.