Jason's Untimely Thoughts

I’ve long had an aversion to cooking.  Basically, I’m completely content having a sandwich or a bowl of cereal for almost any meal.  When that doesn’t work, restaurants will.

With the onslaught of kindness since July, we had meal upon meal delivered to us, which fed my aversion well.  Although that stopped a couple of months ago, I’d still avoided the stove and the oven nicely (microwave doesn’t count).  Not even a frozen pizza in the oven by my hand.

Tuesday is Adelaide’s dance night.  Dance is at 6:15, we try to start the bedtime routine at 7:30, I normally get home from work about 5:15, so Tuesday is a mad rush day, normally resulting in a hurried stop at a restaurant on the way to dance.

This week I asked the kids what they wanted for dinner.  Adelaide said a turkey sandwich, which was very easily done.  Jack said “Cheese grill”.  Huh?  Adelaide informed me that meant a grilled cheese sandwich and “Oh, but you don’t know how to make that.”  So, for the first time in literally months, probably years, I turned on the burner and “cooked” a meal.  It’s an extremely trivial thing, but one that had much symbolism and meaning to me.  I’m not sure what the meaning was, but it was awfully hard to turn that dial.

Dinner Club is also this week, which also has much meaning to me.  Our group of seven couples was originally started by good friends of ours that have since moved.  We rotate houses and themes, trying to gather monthly but really fairly sporadically.  When the group first started, Jack was either nearly born or a newborn, so we missed the first many many times.  By the time we finally attended, our friends had moved to Texas, the other couple we knew had moved to Washington, and we sat down at a table full of people that we didn’t know and that weren’t quite sure how we came to be in their group.

Overtime, I’ve come to think of each person in that group as great friends.  Great friends.  We had them to our house for regularly scheduled dinner club almost immediately after Sarah’s surgery/diagnosis in May 2006, which was a welcome home, a welcome back to normal, and a welcome sign that things were going to be OK for us.  In ways the group could never have known.

We depended on that group for medical advice and were fortunate beyond all measures that we’d joined them for that reason alone.  Everyone had kids, so parenting advice.  Different circles, so just a great way to go out and be adults when the occasion allowed.  It is a happy gathering of happily married people.  We’d sometimes make a point (most times with direction from a specific clubber) to sit away from spouses…. would almost always make a point to sit boy-girl-boy-girl (again, most times with direction from a specific clubber).

Various of the group would have larger gatherings, where kids and non-dinner club people were also allowed.  One of the only specific things Adelaide remembers about this past July is that she missed two of her favorite July 4th events because we were in New Orleans… the annual Stewart Park parade and going to a couple’s family farm for revelry and fireworks.

It’s a rare group that Sarah & I only knew together.  No one was “her friend” or “my friend” first, they were simply our friends.  And they’re all still our friends, but I feel out of place any more.  So, at least for now, Friday night will be my last dinner club.  I hope to still be invited to the occasional larger gatherings.  And I hope I can attend those, where the reminders of my lack of coupledom are less obvious yet can still be around the new group of our old friends.