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Dec 26, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

I am so glad you were able to be home with family and wonderful traditions :) Thank you for sharing that, and I hope that the good spirits continue this week and through the New Year celebrations!

This prompt is such fertile ground, because food is a huge part of how my family experiences the holidays - and really, many moments in time. Unfortunately I've missed out on a lot of those cues this year due to a covid quarantine, BUT, Zooming into the family Christmas Eve dinner I learned about a really touching coincidence that had taken place at my mother's dinner table. I wrote this prompt response from the perspective of our family friend/relative Rocky, a jazz musician in his '80s who now lives in Reno and wears the best desert-cowboy-rock outfits I've seen.

It’s Christmas Eve 2021, and I am in Santa Barbara with dear friends of my wife. We call them family, actually. The group’s a little small this year, actually, with one of the family working in Colorado and another quarantined in LA with the COVID. But my wife’s friend, Heather, she’s this fabulous cook, fabulous woman, my god, and just the most wonderful host, so we’re sitting down to dinner and they’re pouring the wine and bringing out a salad and I’m handed this plate of pasta with a creamy red sauce and heaps of seafood. You know, scallops and shrimp and mussels. And everything just, stops, for me. I’m back in Detroit, 1940s, I'm a kid, and my mother, she was an Italian immigrant you know, she’s serving up the Christmas Eve dinner of pasta with fish and sauce and it’s the most delicious special kind of meal you can have on a night like that. Not to mention she was quite the cook! My god. But you know I left home when I was young, was on the road a lot as a musician, and she passed away kinda young, actually. I haven’t had a Christmas Eve dinner of pasta and fish in probably 60 years but as a kid, it was the only dinner on Christmas Eve, it was special. And now here’s this plate, in Santa Barbara, California, after all that time, just taking me back all that way.

You know my wife, she has the cancer, she’s doing well but it’s been a tough year so this trip, this Christmas, was really special. Heather always makes my wife’s mother’s gingerbread cookies so that was real special, but she didn’t know about my mother’s dish or how I grew up in that way, I mean I don’t even think I’ve mentioned it to my wife, she’s no cook and I only cook a little and haven’t even thought of that meal in I don’t know how long. My god, it was just something, getting that plate on that night.

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So glad to hear you were able to go home and spend precious time with family. I have been thinking of you often during the holidays and sending love. Thank you for posting a prompt from Annie Campbell, she’s amazing! What a gift. Thank you for all you do Suleika.

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Dec 27, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

Thank you for being such an inspiration. Your willingness to be open combined with the ability to express your most precious thoughts are a treasure. I fell more in touch with my own vulnerability each time I hear from you. God Bless!

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Dec 26, 2021·edited Dec 27, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

I was told to not touch it.

So I touched it.

And I paid dearly for it.

While everyone else was slurping up their spaghetti and meatball dinner, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my three middle fingers on my right hand stuck in a glass of ice water. I was right handed and that’s the hand I used to touch the red hot burner. The “take your skin off”, the “turned up to high” front burner.

My injuries were already transforming into big bubbles of blisters while I struggled to twirl spaghetti around a fork in my left hand. This was my favorite dinner ever and I was unable to eat it left handed. I had been waiting for it all day. My mother was giving me bites when she could but she was not at all happy with me.

She told me to not touch the burner right after she took the pot of boiling spaghetti noodles off, and I immediately, I mean immediately, stuck my hand right on it. I heard her warning, her command, and I consciously decided to ignore it. She heard my scream and quickly put my hand under cold water. I kept it there as she was putting dinner on the plates. I was in pain, but my 5 year old self loved spaghetti and meatballs so much that I wanted to eat dinner too.

I guess a three finger burn couldn’t stop my hunger for my favorite meal, albeit one that I wasn’t able to slurp up on my own.

That spaghetti dinner was the night before I started kindergarten. It was a special send off I think. My mom had my first day of school outfit picked out already, complete with a cross body little matching purse. A big girl plaid dress… for a big day, even with big blisters on my fingers.

She took pictures of me standing outside of the front door that next morning and then off we went to start my formal education. And then off my mother went to the doctor for an appointment.

It was there that she and my dad were told that she had 6 months to live.

She had breast cancer and there wasn’t much at the time that they could do. Chemo was still an experiment. Radiation was all that was offered.

My mom lived past that 6 month mark. And another year and another year. She died when I was 12 and when she was only 37. She was gravely sick the entire time.

I have lived a life now without her, the person I feel I’ve needed the most.

I still love spaghetti and meatballs, but every time I twirl some around a fork, I think back to that night of innocence. I was 5. She was 30. I didn’t know my fingers would burn if I touched the burner and she didn’t know it was her last night of “not knowing”.

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Dec 27, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

Your beautiful book lives within me...I gifted my favorite girls with it this Xmas.

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Dec 27, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

How lovely to be with your family for the holidays! Hoping you have peace and love in the new year.

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Dec 26, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

Eating Wendy’s Friday nights is a memory I hold dear. My dad loved to watch the planes go by and would make us go outside and eat while he marveled at the planes. It’s a memory I cherish, maybe because my dad wasn’t the loving type but those moments made us all feel connected.

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Dec 26, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

Your post fills me with joy. It’s so good that you and your family could have a normal-ish, low-key holiday. I love your brother’s quirky sense of humor! What a gift he is. And of course your love, Jon, gentle and as thoughtful as ever.

I hope that you feel the love and care emanating from around the globe, from your expansive TIJ family. You are held in the biggest loving embrace. Lots of good wishes to you & your bubble!

I’m going to need my own VW van & an airplane to meet all of the new friends that you have blessed me with through the miracle of writing and sharing.

Fun to come from your TIJ family soon. 😘😘😘 Love you, dearest Susu!

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Dec 26, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

Suleika, I prayed you could be home for Christmas. May light and love always shine upon you. ❤️

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Dec 26, 2021Liked by Suleika Jaouad

It fills me UP to know that you had this rich, beautiful day with your beloveds. Love, love, love!

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