Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Oranges & Onions

Last night my sweet neighbor Jan left a bag of oranges on my front porch. I took a look at them and thought they would be good for juicing this morning.

But I can't bring myself to juice them right now. Michael loved fresh squeezed orange juice. We would go to the farmers market nearly every weekend so he could buy a bag of oranges for juicing. He would only buy oranges from one vendor there, and he got to know the sales ladies by name. He made friends wherever he went. Then each morning while I was getting ready for work, he would prepare me a delicious hot breakfast and a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. I really miss sharing breakfast with him. It was such a sweet way to start the day.

In my grief, I'm finding it hard to enjoy food, and I think a lot of that has to do with how much we enjoyed food together. Michael did most of the cooking because he was a picky eater, but we also enjoyed cooking new recipes together, and we had quite a few favorite restaurants we liked. He introduced a lot of new foods to me, especially Filipino dishes that I'd never even heard of before.

We both hated onions. That made cooking and eating together easy. If an order came out with onions because we'd forgotten to tell the server "no onions", Michael would carefully pick them out of the dish for us before we began to eat. I loved that he would do that. Last night I went out to get some tacos, and I specifically asked that they not put the pico de gallo on them. But, they didn't listen to me, and I was too tired to ask them to fix my order. So, I picked off what I could, but a few onions got by me. I'm still tasting them this morning. Blech!

There. I started with oranges and then segued to onions. That's sort of symbolic of my life right now. Sigh...

5 comments:

  1. Well of course he didn't like onions, he sounded like such a happy chap and everyone knows that onions make you cry!
    Sorry that the little things are so hard to deal with at the moment. I hope that blue sky days are within reach, very soon.

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  2. It will take time my friend..
    BIG HUGS..
    Take it one day at a time..
    Love ya...

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  3. Thanks for opening your heart and writing about grief. I can only imagine how lonely it is to lose your best friend.

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  4. I was always intrigued by the restaurants and food that your blogged about. I wondered how you and Michael found so many good restaurants.

    I wonder if all the goodness of God that makes the Earth so rich and bountiful also comes from our loved ones who are departed. Every time I work in my yard, I feel my grandfather so near that I talk to him while I mow my lawn. Every time I cook something particularly nice, especially from food from my garden, I feel my grandmother close and talk to her.

    I wonder if you'll soon feel Michael's "sunkiss" in every handpicked orange you come across?

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