Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope that this year for you is one filled with grace and peace! I am truly hoping that this year will bring a measure of grace to me (especially in parenting) and peace. One significant step in that direction was the purchase of our new home. I won’t go into all the details but let me just say that this house has a peaceful presence about it that has not existed in other homes we’ve lived in before. I walk around the house and though it’s smaller in size than the home we had, I feel embraced and safe in this home. It’s cozy and I like it. The great thing is that my children also really like it. They now go off to their bedrooms on their own volition to play, and they are relatively nice to each other. (meaning the boys will let their little sister play with them) The house’s location also means less driving for me on a daily basis, so I feel as though I will gain back valuable time in my day for prayer, housekeeping, and cooking. All things that have gone by the wayside since My Love died.

Cooking is something I really used to enjoy, and if my sisters are to be believed, they say I am pretty good at it. For me, it’s the creative process of cooking that I enjoy. Searching out a new recipe and trying it. I actually have experimented all that much since becoming a mom because I have some picky palates. One doesn’t like any spice, even garlic. Another won’t do tomatoes. Two like things extra spicy and don’t like the neutral flavors as I try to accommodate my pickier palates. Thank goodness for tabasco and hot pepper flakes! The net result is that the only time I would experiment with new dishes and flavors, was when we had company. Then I would happily spend hours putting together a menu, searching out recipes, and cooking. I know it’s probably not the thing to experiment with new dishes when you have company, but it really was the only time I felt I could legitimately try out new flavors. It makes me sad though that I didn’t cook more of the things that my husband and I liked. I remember the Christmas we were engaged, he gave me a box set of spices and Indian cooking book. I had so much fun trying out recipes like Chicken Tikka Masala, homemade Naan bread, making ghee (clarified butter), using unusual spices like cardamom, garam masala, fenugreek, and black mustard seeds. I remember how he gallantly ate the cucumber raita (it’s like an Indian version of salsa) even though he couldn’t stand cucumbers. That is love.

I am not sure how I got off on this cooking tangent except for the fact that I now have a great kitchen for cooking. I feel as though everything I wanted to have in the old house but didn’t, is in this house. It makes me both happy and sad. Happy to think that God cares about me enough to lead me to a house that I wasn’t even looking for at the time, but sad because I wish I could share it with the person that I loved most in this world. My kids can’t appreciate the sunroom or pergola over the back patio, the way the My Love would have appreciated it. My kids don’t realize how much I craved a light-filled space such as we have here, or how much having an actual laundry room instead of a cubby makes doing the laundry both easier and more enjoyable. Mostly, I find myself once again just missing him terribly and I can’t decide whether I want the passage of time to ease the hurt and make the pain more distant, or whether I want to always feel this way because then it means that we had something really, truly special.

~ The Reluctant Widow