I have a love-hate relationship with food. On the one hand, I love to bake—breads, cakes, cookies, you name it—if it’s carbohydrate-loaded and produces an overdrive-shift of the olfactory senses, I’m there. The holiday season is my ideal season—a welcome excuse to bake myself silly, to lose myself in the old standbys as well as try some new recipes in hopes of finding a gem. I love the accolades of my co-workers when I bring in the fruits of my labors (which are always more than my husband can possibly consume). I love listening to my husband’s yummy noises (he is always honest, and never short on positive feedback). I LOVE to bake.
There’s only one problem now, which has complicated not only my beloved holiday season, but a large part of my social life as well—the problem being, quite simply, that I cannot eat.
In a stubborn rebellion of nerves and muscles, my stomach has decided (without the courtesy of consulting me on the matter) that it no longer wishes to do its work, and digest the food I consume. It prefers, instead, to hold onto it for about sixteen hours, and then push it out the wrong way when it’s tired of looking at it. As a result, I am significantly underweight, and I currently get all of my nutrition through a central catheter. The condition is called gastroparesis, and it has changed my life (not to mention my beloved husband’s life) forever.
Now, not being able to eat is tedious enough—think about the last time you missed a meal, and the physical (headache, nausea) and/or psychological (crankiness, mood swings) effects you experienced in anticipation of food. Now imagine walking through the food court at the local mall, and knowing that, despite your body’s insistence that it is in need of sustenance, you will not be able to partake of any of those delicious aromas. That’s where I live. You see, until you’re starving (literally), it’s nearly impossible to notice how prominent food is in our lives—nutritionally, socially, emotionally. We meet our friends for lunch, we feast at Christmas and Thanksgiving, we invite friends over for dinner, we go out to dinner for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, we go to Costco on “Sample Day,” we give plates of cookies to welcome our new neighbors, we stock candy at Halloween. Certain foods are even associated with certain occasions – cake and ice cream for birthdays; pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving; ham for Easter; popcorn for the movies; apple pie for Independence Day; cake for weddings; candy canes for Christmas; chicken soup for illness; chocolates for Valentines Day. We eat to celebrate, to mourn, to socialize, to distract, to comfort. Food is everywhere.
This has always bothered me—as an ex-anorexic, I knew before gastroparesis how prevalent food is in our society—but the last few months have made this point nearly excruciating. As the impact of the diagnosis set in, I began to deeply resent the central place that food occupies in our lives. I resented how my husband and I had to start putting stipulations on our social engagements, so that I wouldn’t be put in the uncomfortable position of watching everyone else enjoy eating. I resented my co-workers microwaving their diet dinners six feet from my desk. I even began to resent my seven pound cat (who eats more than I do, and is considerably more vocal about it) and various inanimate objects (such as peanut butter Rice Krispy treats and salad bars and loaves of bread) for the audacity of their very existence.
But now, with Thanksgiving and Christmas fast approaching, I’m beginning to see food in a new light, and I can appreciate the important role it plays in social interaction.
In ancient times, sharing a meal was a means of sealing a covenant between people—not an insignificant purpose for a good dinner. Food has also served as a means of communication—an expression of welcome (wine for housewarming), a sharing of grief (bringing meals to the bereaved), a show of concern (chicken soup for the ailing), an expression of joy (champagne to ring in the new year).
Sharing a meal can also help us relax. Sometimes around a dinner table you’ll discover things about people that make them more real, more human. There’s a well-told story in my family about the time we had guests for dinner and my dad cut loose—when one of the guests asked my dad to pass a hot dog bun, he did—passed it like a football, and continued to throw the rest of the buns to everyone else in the same manner. My usually sober father had shown our guests a side to which only his family was usually privy, and thirty years later, those guests still bring it up with a hearty laugh and a wistful sigh.
Many of us have memories of meals we shared with people, and we can remember what we ate, how it tasted. My husband didn’t eat pumpkin pie for decades because he associated it with the night his brother was seriously injured in a car-bicycle accident. Homemade ice cream never fails to return me to childhood church gatherings, with twenty-odd ice cream makers lined up on tables, waiting for us to dive in. Recently some good friends of mine had a “coffee and Jell-O party”—the only consumables which I can tolerate without undue effects. And I’ll never forget the last meal I ate—dinner at the Mongolian Grill for my husband’s birthday last September.
So in spite of my yearnings for pizza and cheesecake and even a simple salad, and regardless of the resentment that I still often feel regarding food and eating, I am grateful for the place meals have in our society. And while I may still celebrate with the occasional pity party (the only party I have found that doesn’t involve food), I will raise my glass in celebration and thanks this holiday season.
And while you’re taking in the sights and smells of the holidays, stop for a moment and savor it all—the aromas of baking, the family and friends around the table, the champagne slipping lightly across your tongue on its way to warming your belly. Food is more than physical nourishment—it can, indeed, nourish the heart as well.
