Fruit salad or Irish stew?
Entry posted by swilkinson
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Each week I do certain things, visit my old ladies, catch up with friends over coffee, do some housework, some gardening, maybe have some time reading in the sun. Officially I have days off from the church work Monday and Wednesday but that really is a fallacy. We are trying to set up a lunch group on Fridays to follow the Coffee Morning, a soup and a roll lunch for some of our church people but also people who come to us for welfare. So three Wednesdays in a row I have attended one of those meetings. Of course there is a roster and looks like my name was all over it...sigh. But then it is an outreach program to our community and I can see the benefits of those. The community around the church neighbourhood is a working class community but many are poorly paid and in the position of paying off a house or paying rent so their level of income often leaves a short fall as far as buying food goes, so we do a food handout on Fridays. A bag of food which is probably enough just to tide a family over for the weekend, nothing more.
It has got me thinking about the significance of food in our lives. When I was doing my Lifeline training (Lifeline is a Suicide Counselling Service) as a telephone counselor as part of the training course we had to describe ourselves in various ways. What would you be if you were a flower, or a dog or a house. That sort of thing. Our answers and descriptions told the trainers a lot about how we saw ourselves. It seemed odd at the time but the 80s were like that, we were supposed to be conscious of how we appeared to others. I was thinking about that today as I talked to a friend who asked: “How do you see yourself now?” I think I mumbled something about being a senior citizen, a widow, a church worker etc. If I had to write down now what I would describe myself as as a food I would have to toss up between a fruit salad and an Irish stew.
Why am I a fruit salad? Because a fruit salad is a mixture of fruits, sweet and sour, fresh and bright and nourishing. My life is like that sometimes, a bit of everything but hopefully nurturing and refreshing and bringing something enjoyable into people's lives. Instead of sugar and spice and all things nice I think we do need a bit of tartness in our lives too, the zing of lemon and the lingering aftertaste of passion fruit, and I can be both of those. I guess because I am English as well as Australian I am polite and people pleasing but also truthful and honest and that can be seen as sharp sometimes, like that touch of lemon you find as a contrast to the sweetness of strawberries and peaches. Anyway that is why I think I am like a fruit salad.
I did a bit of pastoral counselling this afternoon. I met an old couple from church ( he is also in my Lions Club) and she is going through a bad patch with many small ills that the doctor's say are beyond anything they can do something about. She is very depressed about the way that is impacting on her life. I guess it is a build up of many small breakdowns of bodily organs, illnesses she has been able to overcome before but her body is not coping now. She was almost in tears as she told me about them. I hate to see my good older friends deteriorate but it is inevitable. This lady has given a lot to the community through one of our leading Women's organisations and it is sad she can no longer contribute in the way she had previously. She is helping to run a convention for the organisation locally and says she is overtiring herself. Of course I do see myself in that situation in the future. At the end of our chat she told me how glad she was that we had met today.
Why do i think I am like an Irish stew? Well an Irish stew is what my mother would serve up in the days when we were poor. We were poor because we came to Australia from England with very little, were paying off a block of land and trying to build a house on it at the same time. Dad had some savings and with that he built the house to lock up stage so we moved into a house without internal walls, just sheets spread around for privacy. Mum grew vegetables and Dad worked and they bought cheap cuts of meat and a sack of locally grown potatoes and with those two as the main ingredients Mum made an Irish stew. It was warm and nourishing and filled us up. Of course my ancestors were Irish on my Dad's side so I guess we loved that traditional Irish dish. It was something that reminded Dad of his own childhood. I think those connections are what made me as I am, all the people who influenced me for the sake of good over many generations. So I relate to the Irish stew as being an ancestral dish and a part of my heritage.
Ray was a meat and potato person too for some of the same reasons but he had a step father who was a fisherman so he was definitely fish and mashed potatoes. He also worked in the Fish Market as a Fisheries Inspector so he was a good fish cook as the Inspectors at the Fish Markets would cook their lunch in a small kitchenette and teach each other new recipes. Funny how you think of things like that sometimes. He actually taught me to cook fish in a lot of different ways, and make gourmet meals of calamari and lobster and crabs which he bought when they were cheap at the Markets. Being on my own I hardly cook these days but fish and a sauce is easy to prepare so still features in my weekly diet. I loved oysters and his last district was an oyster district so got my fill of them there. Ray often took me with him when visiting oyster farmers and I would "taste" their oysters and hazard a guess at where they came from. I was pretty accurate (well I knew where they had leases) and got a reputation as somewhat of an expert. So maybe I am a bit like oyster soup too.
Sometimes it helps to sit down and think of who we are, what our purpose is in life is at this stage of our lives and whether we think we are using what we have in the right way. I know here there are many calls about charity, I get my share of those, and I would love to give money to every charity that rings me but I can't. Through Lions I help to raise money with our BBQs and Christmas Stocking and other fund raisers. In my church I help out in many ways. With my other commitments I do the same, not always as much as I would like to do but what I can. I know as I age I will not be able to do all I do now, talking to my old friend today was a warning to me. I know some who read this will be mourning the life that was, the skills they have lost and be wondering what they can do now. I want to say a smile can make a difference to someone's day and a kind word can ease someone's pain and if that is all I can do later on in my life it will have to be enough.
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