Dinner

A phrase has been going through my mind for several weeks.  Especially as I made dinner for Dennis and myself.  

"It's been quite a while since Claire Ginsburgh fixed dinner"

My mother; died almost 11 years ago.  She has not made dinner for a long time.  She did make a lot of dinners in her time.  So have I.  She was a reasonably good cook.  Some things I never did figure out how she made it.  In her later years, she didn't cook so much.  I know when I went there or when she came here, she would have a whole list of things she wanted me to make.  I learned to stir fry in her soup pot.  But making dinner was part of her everyday life, what she did.  Now gone, never to fix dinner again.

Dennis' mother Lanaya had a sadder fate though.  She was always a crack homemaker.  And very proud of that too.  But, in later life, dementia got her.  After my life cleared a little, we invited them over every Sunday night.  As time went on, it became increasingly hard for my father to get her there. I cooked things that could sit awhile.  At first, she knew I was cooking dinner and would try to help a little, bring dishes to the table.  But eventually, she lost the idea of making dinner altogether.  She could sit at the  table and the dinner would be served.  But she had lost the idea of the construction of the dinner, where it came from.  And what she used to do so proudly.

So we all cook dinner, some of us, most of us.  But not forever.

Our dinner tonight.  Tacos.