Slice of Life: 'Twas the Night Before Leaving...

 On Tuesdays, I write slices of stories from my week! All are welcome! Join us at Two Writing Teachers!

It had been a nearly perfect week. Family meals, evening games, conversations... we'd had a lot of people in the house, and sisters, notorious for snapping and overreacting, had laughed and related. Everyone felt like friends instead of people I had to manage. 

Until...

On the almost last night, the dog got into a container of vitamins. (Winnie has been known to do that. She loves to chew the crotches of underpants, leggings, and even jeans, and she is a canine magician when it comes to getting tops off of anything. Fortunately, she seems to have a stomach of steel and a highly functional digestive system.)

"They weren't mine," Larkin snapped when Garth came down with the bottle. 

"No one accused you," I said. 

"Yes, you were," she said. 

We continued with a dysfunctional conversation that mattered much less than how worried we should be about Winnie (who, spoiler-alert, was fine). Finally, we stopped, but tension fogged the air. 

Then, at dinner, the comment between the sisters about driving. 

"I'll go with you," Clare said to Larkin, "but as long as I drive."

Background info: Clare is younger than Larkin, but has always regarded herself as the better driver. At 16 and 19, that probably wasn't the case. Now, at 22 and 25, I get more work done in the passenger seat when Clare is driving. Please don't tell Larkin. 

With the boyfriends in the audience, Clare's comment lit a fuse. Garth and I worked to change the topic. Quickly. For the moment, the fuse fizzled, but didn't go out. I don't even remember what set it off again later that night during a card game, but something did-- this time between Larkin and me. 

"It's the night before you're leaving," I said. "Can we just let it go?"

Neither of us could. Neither of us did. 

"Why do we always have to end my visits in a fight?" Larkin asked once we settled back down. "It's such a pattern."

At least this time, it wasn't exactly her last night with us since we were all together again for a night in Rhode Island at our house near the beach. And, as it turned out, that night was great. 

Maybe the fighting makes it easier for her to leave. Maybe it helps me miss her less. Maybe it helps both of us handle being a half a country away for most of the time. 

Maybe next time I'll make sure this doesn't happen. 

Happy Slicing, 

Slice of Life: A PSA About Cheese Selection

On Tuesdays, I write slices of stories from my week! All are welcome! Join us at Two Writing Teachers!

For months, we've been waiting for the new Whole Foods to open, and Garth and I arrived at the new and finally open store, excited and hungry. 

With some out of town guests expected the following day, I headed to the cheese section. Sticker shock is a regular reality at Whole Foods, but I was ready to splurge. After all, we were celebrating a new store opening, having guests, and not going out to dinner, which costs a whole lot more than any cheese possibly could. 

As I perused the cheeses, resisting the urge to touch them unless I was sure I was going to purchase them, I watched a woman who was also involved in the cheese-deciding process. I didn't mean to stare, but I stepped back to allow her space to make her selections before I made mine. She picked up a cheese, turned it over in her palm, looked at it closely, then returned it. I was relieved that it wasn't one I was interested in at all. These days, who wants to buy a cheese that someone else has touched? She picked up another one and again went through her process. I made a mental note to avoid that particular one. And then... she picked up a cheese, looked at it closely, and tried to smell it through her nose-covering bandana (not a mask-- a bandana). I guess she couldn't smell it enough so she pulled the bandana down, brought the cheese right up to her nose, sniffed it, and then returned it to the shelf. 

Maybe guilt inspired her to turn and look at me. Maybe my wide eyes magnetized her. In any case, a single "Really?" slipped out of my mouth. Really?!?!?

There was a lot more I wanted to say. Don't sniff the cheese until you're buying it. Or better yet, until you've bought it. Or better yet, when you're home and about to eat it on a cracker!!!! I've developed a phobia over the last eighteen months and I don't want your nose anywhere close to anything I'm going to touch and eventually consume! 

"What?" she snarled back at me. (My one word, really, had been out loud...)

I decided to take a break from selecting cheeses and headed to the olive oil aisle without any further interaction with the bandana lady who liked to sniff cheeses. 

Consider this a PSA if you share any of my phobic tendency, and choose your cheese from the far back or extra high shelf!