Home Delivery: Chapter 23

I spent most of the next day, watching videos and sleeping. Before I went to the hospital I checked out some videos out from my library. I brought home both fiction and non-fiction. I thought, here is my chance to lie around and watch movies all day, something I have always wanted to do but felt guilty about doing, you know Protestant work ethic and all.
I looked over the videos and realized that feeling as lousy as I did I was in no mood for heavy drama. I surprised my self by my choosing a travel video to watch. I spent my first morning home visiting Yellowstone Park; I spent the afternoon in the New Zealand countryside and that evening enjoying a train ride across Canada. I found the travel videos very pleasant to watch, another good thing about watching travel videos was when I fell asleep for a while I didn't miss any important plot points.
At about 4:45p.m. I s-l-o-w-l-y make my way down the stairs.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Mark asked.
“I want to say hello to who ever is bring dinner tonight.” I answered.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do!” To me it was very important to greet the person who was bringing dinner to our home; I felt it was the polite thing to do. Mark did not agree, he wanted me back in bed. Diane had asked me if I wanted to know who was bringing us dinner each night, I told her no, that I wanted the surprised of each visit. I stayed downstairs and met our first post surgery cook.
It was amazing that for four weeks friends, church members and co-workers would stop by each day to bring us dinner. I never realized how much time I spent keeping my family fed until someone else did the work. It is not just the cooking the meal and its clean up that is so time consuming, it is also the time figuring out what you are going to eat and all the shopping.
Growing up the pre-dinner time was a little stressful in my house. My mother would be thinking about what to make for dinner all day long, then sometime around 4:00 or 5:00 o’clock p.m. she would go out and buy what she needed, this could entail several stops; such as the butcher and baker and so on. As we got older and my sisters started to drive, my mother would give them list of items to go and buy. Valerie would be sent to the bakery to buy bread, and my oldest sister Joan would be sent to the butcher the buy some meat. This would happen almost daily. We would eat anytime between 6.00pm-8:30pm. My mother use to joke that one day I would come home from school and find her hanging from the ceiling with a note pined to her saying;
“I COULD NOT THINK OF WHAT TO MAKE FOR DINNER TONIGHT!” I knew she was joking…but still. Any way when I moved in to my own apartment I followed the same pattern. I would start thinking out what to make for dinner when I first started to feel hungry, then start thinking about what to cook, which is why I make a really great grilled cheese sandwich. When you live by yourself dinner is grilled cheese, popcorn or take out. I once had a boyfriend comment that my cupboards were even emptier than his. So you can imagine my shock when I married a man who’s mother planned all her meals in advance, shopped once a week and had dinner promptly on the table every night a 5:00p.m. Sharp. Our first few months of marriage were very…interesting. Like every happy couple we compromised, over the weekend we both work out what meals to make and we wrote a shopping list. On Mondays I went grocery shopping, and dinner was on the table anywhere between 5:00 and 7:00 depending on our schedules and my mood.
So you see a lot of time and effort goes into feeding a family, and to have that pressure taken off from us was a great gift. Mark still had to food shop once a week to get what we needed for breakfast, lunch and snacks, but we found that dinner is what takes up most of our time and energy. What a relief it was to have someone show up at our home every night with a meal.
This led to Mark’s and my second disagreement (hay, I am the one who told him, not to baby me or treat me differently just because I had cancer. And he took me at my word). I thought that the table should be set in advance, so everything would be ready for when the person showed up with our dinner. He thought that it was rude, and having the person who was bringing dinner see that table already set was like saying that we were just sitting there in the kitchen waiting from them (which we were). Anyway we really fought about this, and I lost. Every night Mark helped me down the stairs so that I could welcome who ever it was bringing us dinner and the table would not be set until they left. I still think that I was right.
We got and interesting variety of food. Diane asked us about what we liked, so we never have a meal that we can not eat, for some reason that I don’t understand I have a great craving for salads, and Diane makes sure that I got plenty. Now my kids are typical picky eaters and many times they ended up with sandwiches or eggs for dinner, but Mark and I liked every meal that we were given. The only problem was most people brought enough food for four adults, not two adults and two picky little kids. First we started to eat the left-overs for lunch, but even with that we ended up throwing food away. What we did was ask Diane to arrange for dinner just Monday through Friday, we told that we wanted cook for our selves over the weekend. But the reality was that we needed the weekend to finish up all the wonderful food that was being brought.
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Each day I felt a little bit stronger, enabling me to spend more time with my children. As much as I love my daughters I found myself missing adult conversation. So I looked forward to 5:00 o’clock because I knew that I would get to spend a few minutes talking to a grow-up. I had one of the strangest discussions with a parishioner named Rebecca.
Now I knew Rebecca before she and her family joined our church, her daughter Jennifer was in Leah’s pre-school class. Rebecca, Jennifer, Leah and I had done the pre-school birthday party circuit together, at that age many her class mates have birthday parties, and invite the whole class. So the moms find themselves sitting at a "fill in the blank" (Chucky Cheese, candy making store, jungle gym place etc). Many of these kids no longer play together, but I still have a nice friendship with a few of the moms. I was really happy when Rebecca, her husband and two children joined our church. Anyway Rebecca and Jennifer stop by with our dinner one night and we start talking, Rebecca starts to tell me some story about an annoying dog in the neighborhood.
“…Then the neighbor’s dog came onto my porch and peed on my milk box, so I had to get another one…”
“Your what?” I ask her.
“My milk box” she stated.
“As in a milkman, the kind that delivers milk and eggs right to your door?” I was fascinated because I didn’t think that there were Milkmen anymore.
“Yes, as in the Milkman who brings milk and eggs right to your door, I have milk delivered once a week.” She told me that there was a dairy company who had the milk contract for many of the local schools, and they were willing to deliver to private homes also. I know this sounds trite, but I was thrilled to find this out. She called me later with the dairy’s phone number and I made arrangements right away for milk delivery. Over the length of my recovery many people have come over to my house to help or just visit, many would ask.
“What is that gray box on your front porch?”
“A milk box.” I would smugly answer.
“As in a milkman, the kind that delivers milk and eggs right to your door? Can you give me their phone number?” I should get commission.