A Smiling Young Widow

This morning I woke up and decided today would be the day I made myself pancakes for the first time since Tom died. I cried, laughed, and thought of my Tom – the pancake master. He would offer to make pancakes for me at least once a weekend, and would add them to the brunch menu when we had company coming over. (He had his famous eggs too. Tom had this really good egg poaching pan – his specialty was doing perfect jammy eggs with a bit of smoked paprika, pepper, and a small slice of cheese.)

Tom wasn’t always so great in the kitchen and definitely wasn’t always a pancake chef. In our early dating days, Tom pulled an old box of pancake mix out of his pantry and was like hey could you make these for breakfast? I was all like, excuse me you don’t know how to make pancakes?! So together we made those box pancakes. It did not go well. They were crepe thin. The frying pan at Tom’s was meant more for steak than pancakes, so they were sticking on there real good. It was extra funny as I do tend to be pretty good in the kitchen myself. I was like ok, next time we go from scratch. None of these mixes. Tom got a lesson in making from scratch pancakes the next weekend (though he was aghast at my approximate measurements – he never would adopt that!) and the art of using a proper pan. Through the years he honed his own perfect recipe that he would follow to a tee. Always with some Greek yogurt and Aunt Jemima’s syrup to top them.

Tom taught himself Jack Johnson’s Banana Pancakes on the guitar while he was on the road once so that he could come back and surprise me. My jaw dropped ahh as he started to casually strum those opening bars with his signature twinkle in his eye. (Tom was pretty against any “crazy pancakes” though. The odd time banana was ok, but definitely never oats. Stick to the basics. Just like his favourite ice cream was vanilla, sometimes vanilla bean was ok too but only sometimes!)

There’s so many times I look at our kitchen island thinking how Tom should be sitting there chatting with me as I cook. Or how I would sit there as he would make something up for me or do a big meal prep, always with Frank at his side. It’s no wonder it can still be a struggle to cook for myself. I’ve made it to a point where I can cook for other people again and usually enjoy that. I have done a bit of baking, but it often doesn’t turn out like it once did so effortlessly. I have quick meals like bagged salads with frozen fish, if I’ve shopped, or just peanut butter toast. I’ll make myself eggs quite often (never as perfect as Tom’s, he was much more focused). I did make a pot of soup this week so I could freeze some.

It’s another question that I get asked often about how well I’m coping, “are you eating regularly?”. At first the answer was always not really, it was a struggle to eat. I can distinctly remember one day early into this where I was chewing on a salad at someone else’s house and was hit with how it was the last thing I wanted – my body did not want vegetables at all, and I usually like them, a Rice Krispie square was more what I was looking for.

My baseline for feeding myself and meal planning was pretty high. A big motivator in that was also planning for Tom. I would make extra of any dish so it could be frozen for him to take on the road. I would grocery shop thinking about how much he would eat or what sales I should stock up on. Grief turned me into such a mechanical eater, I still often have days where I eat because I know I have to. And I still have days where I realize oh I didn’t eat breakfast or oops I skipped lunch. Food is one of those things that has so much emotion wrapped up in it. We eat socially. We connect with people over food. It’s not just eating for nutrients (and I passionately don’t think it should be). Food can be a comfort but also a reminder. Another one of those day-to-day things that changes so much with the arrival of widowhood.