The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: FOOD

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

In February: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.

Here are March's prompts: divorce, door, dream, emergency room, envelope, eyebrows, first apartment, first job, food, game, garden.

FOOD

I grew up with an obese father and a mother who was perpetually on a diet. My mother was also perpetually unhappy with my father's obesity. So, food – weight – has often been a focus in my life. It meant my father was not one of those active fathers... I remember Grandma Dykes saying “Kenny never did like exercise.” (Kenny was my father. ) “Kenny” also loved a big meal, preferably a meat-n-potato meal. He loved his steak medium rare. He also got offended if a server questioned his preferences.

Photo by Pedro Ribeiro on Unsplash

One time at a restaurant when he asked for ketchup, the server said, “you don't need ketchup with this steak.” My father was like, “don't you know sometimes I order a steak just to eat ketchup?”

He was funny.

He was also a snacker. I remember riding in his car as a teen and noticing (for the first time) all the snack wrappers – candy bars and pork rinds and coke cans.

One time he decided to diet, and he lost 100 pounds using SlimFast. It was weird, him being so small – I remember thinking he wasn't my cuddly Papa-bear anymore. It wasn't long before he gained it all back.

All this focus on weight – whether direct or indirect – made me hyper-conscious about weight and healthy. For many years I weighed myself every day, just to be sure I wasn't slipping. I no longer subject myself to that kind of intense scrutiny, but I still have body image issues that I know are linked to this family history.

One of the best things I've done for my health in recent years is banish the scale... and add veggie juice to my daily diet. My favorite recipe includes spinach, zucchini, celery, cucumber, and a lime. Put it all in the Nutriblender, and voila!