Right after work, I went to the Indian grocery store to pick up items I needed to cook for J on her short visit home. She had texted her "requests" earlier in the day and I smiled reading it because there was not thing in there that I did not already know and anticipate. She did add "and anything else" as a placeholder for me to use my imagination.
It is little beyond that for me. I like thinking of food I want to cook for J as receptacle for memories - ones we have from the past and the ones we are now creating. Ten years from now, I would love for her to remember this weekend trip home and ask me to cook a certain dish again. But the perennial favorites cannot be dislodged in the favor of the bold and new. As it goes with comfort food for most people, the dishes she loves the best are rather simple to make.
The pace of our lives are diverging rapidly - she is picking up speed every day and I am trying not to slow down. Earlier that day, I was talking to C, a woman my age I met a work sometime back. We are both empty-nesters and trying to figure out how to do something different now that we can. It turns out change is scary because it requires moving with a certain speed to land correctly in the changed circumstance. It is easier to stay the course as dull and uninspiring as it might be. The weekend with me imbued with the speed of J's life not mine but it will allow her to slow down a bit, catch her breath before she returns.
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