Saturday, October 9, 2010

Imagine no spaghetti, I wonder if you can



I have time to myself with P gone. I rearranged the living room and cleaned the apartment. I took the laundry in. I packed up the summer clothes and exchanged them in the closets for the winter stuff. I dusted, I mopped, I showered. Now I am going to OD on pasta.

I have to. Its what I know.

When I was little the only thing I knew how to make was Kraft spaghetti mix because they sold it as a boxed set, the spaghetti, sauce and cheese and gave you real specific instructions. My mom and dad were very hard at work trying to make a Mexican restaurant work in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana in the late 60's, early 70's. They were always gone, working and when they weren't working they were sleeping and barely that. This didn't prompt me to learn to cook by any means, I did however learn how to clean pretty well. I remember the first time I mopped the kitchen floor and was fascinated that it seemed to magically change ten shades lighter and it had a color to it! Cleaning ended up being soothing for me, making me feel like things were ok and so did spaghetti.

Thank goodness my mom left me enough money to buy my daily fix. I had the routine down. I waited until I was so hungry that I could muster the courage to leave the house. I was shy. I hiked it up the hill to Hep's Dairy. I had just enough to get that boxed spaghetti, a bag of Seyfert's barbeque potato chips and a coke. If there was change, I'd treat myself to some penny candy. I can still kinda smell the sauce cooking up, dropping in that seasoning packet and waiting the ten minutes for the pasta to cook. Its seemed very upscale at the time. I must've eaten that every day for years. And ever since, anytime I feel a little lonely or sick or nervous, I eat spaghetti. It's comforting but not in the way that mashed potatoes are comforting. This is more like self medicating comfort. Its less romantic and more pathetic but its what I know and it works for me.

P's back tomorrow night. So tonight I will wrap myself in a turkey sausage, baby portabello mushroom and fresh tomato sauce over linguine sprinkled with fresh basil. And lots of it! ...and a chocolate ice cream chaser.

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