Eating Tabbouleh

I cut my hand once making tabbouleh years ago.  I was foolishly holding the lemon in my hand when the knife slipped through the lemon more easily than I had anticipated and cut deep into my palm.  There was that brief moment that it takes for the nerve impulses to get to your brain and back, the one where your eyes tell you the truth before your body, where you have time to wonder why that didn't hurt more.  Then it all catches up.  The cut, the pain, the lemon juice trailing into the gaping skin.  The cut was painful, but it was the exquisite pain of the lemon juice in that open wound that I remember.  

I still cannot eat tabbouleh without closing my fist protectively against that remembered pain.  


That was intended to be the piece of writing for the day, but something in there stuck.  I circled back to the computer thinking it was something that needed oomphing in the text.  But no.  That wasn't it.  I liked the imagery and the poignancy of it as is.  I finally recognized what it was and walked away from the whole thing, only to circle it like a buzzard for another hour or so.  

I have tried to move the blogging bits away from things that feel preachy to me or in anyway I-know-better-than-you voiced.  I most certainly DO NOT know anything of the sort.  When this wouldn't rest, I had to weigh those two things against each other: seeming preachy v just remaining silent.  Somehow I knew that the buzzards would not leave it alone.  

It's not about the tabbouleh (which was delicious btw even though there were bits of me in it).  What it was about was the reflexive protection that remembered pain brings.

Being a caregiver to my mama with AD means we live in the past a lot since that is the place she remembers best.  For her it's a happy place, for me not so much and I find myself curling protectively around those painful memories lest she jab one inadvertently.  The thing is, I don't want to be a closed fist with her.  I want to be an open palm, able to stroke her cheek or draw her into my arms.  Can't do that with fisted hands.  So there is that to think on today.