This recipe is inspired by the Emotional dimension of wellness.
Emotional wellness is about feeling and being in touch with your emotions. It's about managing your emotions so that your life doesn’t fall apart each time something doesn’t go your way. It involves controlling your reactions when disaster strikes and learning that your response is a choice you make but one that takes time to develop.
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” - Leo Tolstoy
MY MISSING SOCK
THE STORY OF MY GRIEF
My father died when I was fifteen. I stayed home from school that day, not because I was ill, but because I felt out of sorts. My mother was at a Bible study, which she regularly attended, when the phone rang. Reaching for the phone, I saw a pair of my father’s socks sitting on the coffee table. My mother had left a clean pair for my father, freshly laundered and carefully folded as she had always done. The caller was a nurse from the hospital. She said,
“Don’t worry, your father is fine, but would you please have your mother phone us when she returns?”
I distinctly remember being bothered by this phone call. My father had been in and out of the hospital for most of my young life, sometimes for weeks at a time. It was not unusual to get an update from the nurse, but I had a sense something was wrong. When my mother returned, I informed her of the call, and she immediately phoned the nurse. The events that followed would change my life forever, but first, let me take you back to the beginning.
I was born on November 4, 1966, the last of four siblings. Some would say I was much like an only child due to our vast age differences. Growing up in a blue collar town in Illinois, life was still; people would sit on their old front porches, conversing and drinking lemonade. My father was a telephone repair man who was strong and self-assured. He wore neatly pressed flannel shirts and khaki pants. He was struck with a blood disorder which necessitated weekly trips to a blood clinic for transfusions. He also had crippling arthritis which made him look old. He walked with a cane and wore special shoes that made his strides more bearable.
My mother, a God-loving woman, always quoted Bible verses and sung hymns, which I suppose was the source of her strength to be able to care for him. I really loved my father, but as you can imagine, I was embarrassed by the old man that he had become at the young age of forty. During the next ten years, he became a patient of my mother and I. My siblings, being so much older, had moved out of our home and started their own lives, which ultimately left his care in our hands, but I do not regret the one on one time I had with him. He was a great story teller and had a wonderful appreciation of music, which he passed on to me. The image of my father sitting on the couch, tapping his cane on his foot to the acoustical brilliance intensifying from the walls, represents my memories of him.
My father was always trying to educate me with PBS specials about world history, but I was becomming a young woman, wanting to be with boys and fall in love, so I wanted no part of that. In hindsight, I know that he just wanted me to be a well-rounded young adult with many interests. He seemed to have this knowledge that he would die young, and thus emotionally, was much older than his years. Sometimes, I would come home from school to be greeted with my father smoking a pipe. I remember the aromatic hints of vanilla that permeated through our home as I opened the door. He would be so happy when I would return. We would sit on the couch nestled against each other as I eagerly told him about my day.
Gradually, as the years passed, I began to notice how frail he had become and how his physical ailments were making him a more trying companion for my mother. Each morning before school, I remember putting on his socks. The arthritis was eating away at his bones like rust corroding a shiny piece of steel which was causing excruciating pain. My father never complained, but I could see it in his expressions. His socks were especially difficult for him to pull up, so I would carefully put them on for him, but his feet and ankles were so swollen that it would take me at least fifteen minutes to put them on along with his shoes. I remember how we would talk about what our days would bring, and he would ask me when I would return to remove his socks.
That phone call my mother made to the hospital was on February 16, 1982. I always remember this day because it was so close to Valentine’s Day. Just two days earlier, my mother and I had gone to the hospital with homemade Valentines to decorate his very sterile room. I remember his smell as I kissed and held him - it was very medicinal and smelled a lot like metal. I am not sure why I remember that, but I knew the days of holding him were getting few and far between. That day, I was so excited to tell him about my driver’s education class and how I wanted him to come home soon so we could practice driving.
I remember how my mother shouted as she slowly fell to the floor with the phone dropping by her side. “Holly,” she cried. As I came running, I knew that daddy was gone. My mother had never been alone and had always taken care of this loving man whom she had devoted her whole life and soul to. Now, she would be a widow at the young age of fifty. I remember running to her. As we both held each other, I wiped my tears with the socks that had brought my daddy and I so close together. To this day, as I open my sock drawer, I am reminded of him. I always seem to have a single sock, the one that’s left behind, dependent on and missing the other. Undoubtedly, I will forever remember the man who gave me so much time and love while teaching me patience and kindness as I was putting on his socks.
Recipe of the Day: Chicken & Spinach in Paprika Sauce
INGREDIENTS
For the Chicken:
4 Chicken Breasts (boneless & skinless)
1 tsp Smoked Paprika (for seasoning chicken)
1/4 tsp Salt and Pepper (each for seasoning chicken)
2 tbsp unsalted butter
For the Creamy Paprika Sauce:
1 tbsp butter
4 cloves garlic minced
1 tbsp flour (sifted)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup chicken broth (sodium free)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tsp fresh lemon juice (juice of squeezed lemon)
2 cups fresh spinach
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp paprika
INSTRUCTION
Cook Chicken: Season the chicken with salt, pepper and paprika, rubbing it evenly over both sides. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet (I used cast iron skillet) over medium high heat and cook on the first side for about 3 minutes. Flip, and turn the heat down to medium and cook for another three minutes. Remove and set chicken aside on separate plate.
Make Creamy Sauce: Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the now empty skillet. Add garlic and cook stirring frequently for about 2 minutes. Add flour using a sifter until well mixed. Add wine next and cook for 1-2 minutes to allow alcohol to evaporate. Stir in chicken broth, heavy cream and lemon juice. Add salt and paprika. Mix well. Simmer for 2 minutes. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning (if necessary) at this point.
Add Spinach: Add in the spinach and cook for additional 2 minutes until the spinach has wilted.
Add Chicken Back: Return the chicken to the skillet and cook covered for 2-3 minutes if your chicken breasts are thin; or for 5-7 minutes, if they are thick.
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