Showing posts with label Patty Beecham photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Patty Beecham photography. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
MY GIRLFRIENDS' PANTRY
My pantry is full of girlfriends’ food.
Each son has brought home women who love food: to eat, or look at, or both, and they have stocked up our pantry with my money for their dietary preferences.
I have three bottles of vanilla essence from Hannah, who loved her cakes. Mention cupcakes and she would squeal. Seriously! Hannah also bought three large packets of sugar. I haven’t bought sugar for 12 years, and at this rate, I won’t be buying sugar until I am an octagarian! I don’t eat it, I don’t cook with it, I don’t put it in my tea, but I could bath in this. And that’s just white sugar.
I also now have brown sugar, castor sugar, three packets (you guessed it!) of icing sugar, and sugar cubes, for goodness sake. There are three bottles of balsamic vinegar on the high shelf, and two bottles of sweet chilli sauce. *faints.
In my ‘plastic cupboard’ (more like a morgue for Tupperware and takeaway containers of chicken and almonds) I can count 8 vanilla ice-cream buckets. There are only 8 because I threw away the other 14, in various colours. Blue (Pauls) white (Streets) and green (extra creamy). The brown ones were Sara Lee and cardboard, so out they went.
Hannah grew from a size 10 skinny girl to a size 18 making her own clothes. I have lost count of the number of safety pins I gave her as her waistband/zip/buttons all pooped with her increasing girth.
I tried not to show judgement, but my teeth were gritted. She should have tried the same trick.
Beth – my youngest son’s friend is on a heath kick. So far she has stayed the same weight, but it’s early days.
She’s very much like my son; intelligent and nice, but serious, studies too much and thinks a great day is laying in a darkened bedroom for eight hours watching tv shows downloaded onto his computer. *So that’s where my bandwidth went.
Beth’s donation to the world’s growing food shortage is to stockpile it in my fridge. High up, on the shelf I used to keep my eggs and pate, there are blocks of Haloumi cheese, feta and tofu.
I have two containers of rice milk. Rice milk! There are two packets of oats and three packets of natural muesli.
Can’t these women buy in singular units?
Regularly she buys mangoes/peaches/avocadoes and soy bread. My possums have never eaten so well! I must tap her on the shoulder and remind her to eat the food she brings. No wonder she’s skinny.
My fridge too, is groaning with fresh mushrooms, (hey, I am not complaining, I love fresh mushrooms) and sad little herbs in plastic. It’s always fascinating to watch them turn into slime, I never tire of it. I have a complete science lab and evolution in my crisper drawer. Did I mention the fish sauce?
My pantry - and fridge - are full of girlfriends’ food.
Pity they don’t cook for me. Dinner anyone?
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent but the ingredients stay the same.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Crossword Hands
These are my mothers hands that held me and didn’t wipe away my childhood tears. My father did that job, and then I would blow my nose on his large white hanky.
My mothers hands instead; checked the stock market, and picked out winning horses for the next race.
It kept her busy.
My mothers hands grew vegetables, and snipped cuttings to grow in the garden.
My mothers hands were still and quiet at dad’s funeral, holding a simple handkerchief, which stayed dry for the whole service, but my mother’s hands became more agitated as time went by.
“The days are so long to fill” she would tell me down the phone, almost daily.
Her hands would tap on the arm chair as she watched the time tick-tock by, noting each click on the clock, measuring each minute melt into an hour, each hour merge into a day, each day murmur into a moment, each moment emerge as another memory.
My mother’s hands do crosswords now, the silver pen poised above 20 down and 5 across. They flutter above the black squares, hovering like a hawk, waiting for a word to come to mind.
Holding her place within the puzzle with her left little pinky; her opal wedding ring - now loose and spinning around her finger -peeks over an arthritic knuckle.
My mothers hands. I kiss them.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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