The cheeziest

Wouldn't you know it: the day I decide to finally bag the blog, something happens that absolutely must be documented.

Tonight when I got home from work, there were two boxes of Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese on my bed. This is one of them. Please note the printing on the little sticker on the front of the box: "Contains Darker Cheese Sauce Than Usual."

The other night we were watching Alton Brown doing a show about macaroni and cheese, and I shocked and amazed the boyfriend by confessing to a secret preference for this exact product, even over the healthy homemade baked kind that Alton was putting together on tv—the kind he likes best. We argued the merits of each side, ending up by realizing that what we were really doing was defending our respective mothers' ways of making this classic comfort food. This makes sense, if you think about it. After all, the whole point of comfort food is that it should be comforting, and what could be more comforting than comfort food made exactly the way your original comfort food maker made it?

I had unravelled the mystery of his mom's magic recipe last summer, when I was trying to decide what frozen food item I would be taking with me to share with the rest of my camp at Burning Man. He suggested I make a double batch of macaroni and cheese, and that I call his mom to find out how she made it, because her special baked macaroni and cheese was the best in the world. I did call her, and found out that it was not a secret at all. She just used the recipe on the back of the bag of macaroni. I used it too, substituting some groovier cheeses for the plain cheddar called for in the recipe. I particularly remember grating up a bowl of the horseradish flavored Havarti with mustard seeds that I was so in love with last year (mmmm, maybe I should track some of that down again one of these days).

Knowing that her recipe was right off the box made me feel better about loving my own mom's way, which was simply to cook the macaroni and then stir melted Velveeta cheese into it. It might not be haute cuisine, but it's what I grew up with and it's still my favorite way to enjoy this dish. It's so salty and cheezy and good!

Anyway, it made me smile to see those boxes on my bed tonight. It's nice to be remembered like that. He must've bought them at the Petaluma Grocery Outlet, a store that carries all kinds of perfectly fine but weird products—stuff that will expire in two weeks, stuff somebody bought too much of, cereal in holiday boxes from the holiday that just ended, giant bottles of an odd kind of juice it turned out nobody wanted to buy (except us—we bought their entire stock of it and have never been able to find it again), and Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese whose cheese sauce is "darker than usual." I can't wait to open the little silver pouch and find out how dark it really is. Will it be even cheezier than usual, too? One can only hope.

So, about this blog. I really am tired of what it's become lately. But that doesn't have to mean shutting it down. I'm thinking maybe what I'll do instead is give it to my dad for his birthday next week—tell him about it, and start writing it for him. And stop being such a baby about other people who are smarter than me, and funnier, and wittier, and more wry (wryer?), and cuter and happier and more interesting. People whose husbands are artists, or running for public office—people who have husbands—and kids—and houses—and parties I'm not invited to—and closer friendships than I've been able to maintain with people I've known a long time. I guess I'm just having another pre-midlife crisis. Or maybe I am, in fact, already in mid-life! What a thought. If I live to be 100, I'm still less than half way there.

And oh god, pretty soon there's going to be menopause to deal with. Am I perimenopausal? I did go to that doctor's appointment last week, and he told me I need to have a mamogram this year. Now that I'm, you know, FORTY.

The other night I was watching something on television about the bird flu, and how it could kill millions of people this winter because it's a totally new kind of disease that our immune systems are utterly unprepared to fight, and so on—and I noticed myself feeling, not afraid but (there is no other word to describe it) offended at the thought that I could get sick from some bird and in a matter of days, be dead. It's out of the question that something like that should never happen to me! This is the twenty-first century! I'm not poor. I don't live in the third world. How dare the bird flu presume to threaten my life? It's preposterous!

Did people take it that personally a hundred years ago? How have our attitudes and behaviors as a society changed, now that it's no longer commonplace for people to die from the flu, or consumption, or whatever people used to always die of, that people don't die of anymore. (In the Emily Dickinson biography I'm reading, her friends and acquaintances are always dying! Their privilege did not protect them. Will ours?) One thing I know has changed is the concept of mourning. Apparently, it used to be allowed. You wore black, you changed your schedule, people gave you a break. Now it's three days' bereavement (if you're lucky) and then chop chop, time for the "healing" to begin! Don't want to use up all your vacation days moping. Imagine wearing black for a year after a loved one has died! At the very least, I think it would make the people around you very uncomfortable if they knew it was actual mourning and not just some kind of gothic fashion statement.

Over the weekend I re-read Wuthering Heights and was fantasizing about turning it into a modern movie a la Romeo+Juliet or that Hamlet where everyone's these corporate scions in Manhattan ... and then I realized that the story line just wouldn't translate, because it's so dependent upon people dying in ways they would just never die nowadays. And things are so much better for women now. You'd have to take major liberties with the plot to make it work.

But the point of all this was just to say that I've been thinking about sickness and health, and life and the end of life, and really kind of feeling my own mortality lately in a way that feels new. What will be left of me when I die? This blog? And what good is that if none of my family even knows about it?

My dad sent me the transcript of the letter my great, great, great grandfather wrote, describing the days around the death of his second wife, and her burial under the kitchen table. To read the story in his own words is just so poignant and heart-opening. After a week and a half, he says, a neighbor dropped by and he told him he could stick around to "see the coffin put down" if he liked. The neighbor went to get her son, who wouldn't come because he "was sick over it and could not stand it." Then some other friends tried to convince him to bury her outside, but he "said it was settled in my mind for years that if she went before me, she should never leave the house." He says they "did not say much" after that but did talk about the children's feelings being hurt and what public opinion would be.

He responds, "I said I care nothing for public opinion, we are in total opposition in everything. Did I think [she] would like it if she were here. I said she was not here and she was the only one of my family who respected my opinion and conduct."

This is the part that I find the most interesting. What did he mean, in total opposition in everything? It appears he may not have been a completely conventional kind of person. His first wife, my great-great-great grandmother, had some kind of title in Europe (he didn't emigrate until later) but was disowned when she married him, an artist and master weaver considered "out of her class." She ended up drinking herself into the ground before dying suddenly of a heart attack. He must have gone through some pretty intense emotional scenes with her before that happened. And obviously there was some heavy stuff going on around his second wife's death, as well. How do people survive such things?

Someday I'd like to try to write this up into a story. I could take it from the perspective of a neighbor, someone with a little distance. I could write it this weekend while I'm finally (hopefully) able to spend some time recuperating from this lousy cold I've been fighting all week. It wouldn't have to be long. It wouldn't even have to be very good. The great thing about a story is, you can write it again later if you need to. It will be different every time you write it, and it can still be true each time.

There's another story percolating somewhere in the back of my brain, having to do with this theme of health and disease and hubris and the cult of modern medicine, tying it in with the controversy that's raging in my town right now over where our new hospital should be built. This is something I care about for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the proposed site is only a half a mile from my house, and building it there would destroy everything I love about this part of the valley. Not to go into that here ... but that's another story waiting to be written.

Finally, I will record that I am still making a point of keeping my social life in a condition resembling "alive." This is important because I've really been having to fight my hermitizing tendencies lately, as witnessed by my last post before this one. But I'm trying. In the last month I've organized two outings to the city and two parties at the garden, and allowed myself to be drawn into the center of at least a couple more. People have been being so kind and solicitous of me lately, it makes me feel kind of silly for wanting to hide. I will also clarify: I want to hide, but I'm not doing it. Well, not much. I did screen two calls tonight. But I'm sick, and I'll call them back tomorrow.

Anyway. Once again I've spent an entire evening in front of the computer, after already having spent an entire day in front of a different computer. I need to stop writing now and cook up that lovely dark orange macaroni and cheeze. Or just go to bed. That sounds even yummier.