You’re Just Some Appliance That I Used to Know

By Lisa

There are joys to empty nesting, and they increase as the nest gets emptier.

I just realized this the other day, when I was walking through my kitchen and there was a large object on my right that I barely recognized.

My oven.

It’s big and boxy and has four burners in the top, and I remember standing around it, doing something called cooking.

But that might be a thing of the past.

Because right now, I can’t remember the last time I cooked.

I looked at the oven and wondered if I could yank it out and replace it with a TV.

Or better yet, another refrigerator.

In other words, an appliance I really love, instead of one that I used to love.

I think I broke up with my oven.

It might have become my ex-oven.

In fact, we have found Thing Three.

It wasn’t always thus.

When Daughter Francesca was growing up, I used to love my oven very deeply and I really did enjoy cooking.

I’m not Mother Mary’s daughter for nothing.

Cooking is part of my DNA. The Flying Scottolines have tomato sauce in our veins.

And in the early years after Daughter Francesca flew the coop, I had fun cooking hot meals for myself, at least twice a day. I made a goat cheese and spinach omelet for breakfast, a nice arugula salad for lunch, and I always cooked fish, veggies, rice, or whatever for dinner, even though it was just me.

I made a point of this, for my own psyche.

I was proving to myself that I still mattered even though I lived alone, which was completely true, and I believed that somehow the trouble I went to for myself was proof of my self-worth.

What a bunch of crap.

I’m at the next stage of life, which is when you stop proving dumb stuff to yourself.

You stop proving stuff altogether.

You officially have Nothing to Prove.

You don’t do anything unless you want to.

You decide exactly how and when to spend your time.

You stop doing things out of obligation, even to yourself.

You realize that salmon is not related to self-worth.

I think this is called maturity, and I wish it hadn’t taken me fifty-nine years to attain.

Better late than never.

Anyway, it’s not like I made a conscious decision to stop cooking, but all of a sudden I started thinking that salad would make a good dinner, or yogurt and honey, or a cheese sandwich.

Now the way I see it is, I have so much self-worth that I should not put myself to the trouble of cooking for myself. It’s a strange thing, considering that cooking was so much a part of my life, but on the other hand, I have more free time at night to read, work, or watch TV—mainly, the Food Network.

Now that I’ve stopped cooking, I watch more cooking shows than ever.

Watching other people cook is the new cooking.

But I watch the cooking shows differently than I used to. I don’t try to remember the ingredients they’re using or the things they’re doing, because I have no intention of ever making the recipes.

I’m not taking the course for a grade anymore.

On the contrary, I’m barely auditing.

Yay!

The only downside to my new life is that once you decide that you don’t have to cook a proper dinner, then all bets are off.

If there’s a slippery slope, I’m sliding to the bottom.

Last week for various dinners I had Fiber One cereal, Honeycrisp apples, roasted red peppers, leftover Stacy’s Pita chips with cheese, and a massive bag of popcorn. Dessert was Hershey’s Kisses with Almonds and gummi vitamins.

Yum!

But not exactly healthy eating.

Hmmm.

Somebody needs a mother.

But I’ve flown my own coop.