Never make a resentful salad
Here’s to a week of only making loving salads...
As you likely know by now, food is love in my world. That could be having people over for dinner, baking brownies for the softball team, or cooking for days before the big Halloween party every year.
Way back when the kids were little, I used to make a special salad for their dad to bring to work every day. Sunday through Thursday evenings, I’d take a few minutes and put together a thoughtful, healthy bowl of veggies, protein, pasta, or whatever I could invent. He’d come home and tell me how jealous his colleagues were at lunchtime when they saw what I’d packed for him.
He would always thank me and let me know how appreciative he was of my efforts. I liked making his lunch because it felt like a way for him to feel how much I cared even when we weren’t together. As with most things though, over time, it became this task I always did and, as my life got busier and busier, I started to resent making this daily salad.
One night I was standing in the kitchen after a long day of clients, coming home and taking care of a three and five-year-old, and longing for bed: I just had to get through this damn salad. As I was rummaging impatiently through the refrigerator, trying to make something that everyone would ooh and ahh over the next day, I heard a strange noise. “What the hell is that?” I wondered.
When I ducked my head into the bedroom, I found out. There was my husband… fast asleep and snoring!
I was outraged! How dare he be asleep when I was making this salad for him!? I mean, I didn’t even pack my own lunch, and here I was trying to come up with something brilliant for him! I was thinking these thoughts as I angrily threw lettuce into a Tupperware bowl, followed by some resentful chopped chicken. I added a few outraged cucumbers, overwhelmed julienned carrots, frustrated tomatoes, and martyred chickpeas. As I furiously whipped up an indignant vinaigrette, I suddenly stopped and realized what I was doing.
I’d made a resentful salad.
This wasn’t the original intention when I’d started out. In fact, no one had asked me to do it in the first place! I’d taken it upon myself to make his weekday lunch, yet it had come to feel like a burden. I’d lost my way and my real reason for doing it in the first place.
The next day, I let my husband know about the resentful salad, and (once he checked that there was no poison in his food) he let me know that of course he was fine with me never making him lunch again. He reminded me that he’d never asked me to do this in the first place and that he always felt very loved, salad or no.
I’m telling you this story because I realized recently that this weekly Love Letter is becoming a tiny bit like that resentful salad. I’ve found myself “having to do it” when I’m exhausted and trying to make something incredible that you’d ooh and ahh over, even though you never asked me to!
But, like making those salads back in the day, I generally really like writing to you every week, so it hadn’t occurred to me to stop. I like our connection; I like the responses I get and the feeling I have on Wednesday (mornings here) when I know you’ve received it.
In his Lettres Provinciales, written in the 1600s, French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously wrote, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” And this is the issue for me. It actually takes me quite a bit of time every week to craft something meaningful but relatively short. And my time is something rather valuable at this point in my life.
I so appreciate your encouragement and support as I move forward in continuing to create connections with you that are truly filled with love and joy.
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