Artichokes

An artichoke is a laughable object. Roughly the size of a softball and deliciously edible, it nonetheless tries to ward off such eating with spiky ends to succulent leaves. There’s a joke that goes something like “I pity the poor hungry sod who looked at this spiky ball of green stuff and was hungry enough to try to eat it anyway.” My momma and I used to steam one up and she’d teach me how to peel the leaves, dip them in butter or mayonnaise and scrape the tender flesh off the husky handle. These were a treat, purchased sometimes as the center to a Saturday night’s entertainment while we watched bad B horror flicks on Tom LaBrie’s Waterbed Warehouse-hosted run of films.

Shopping the other day, I thought I’d pick one up for Dan and I. It sat in the fridge while we did something else that Tuesday night, had band practice on Wednesday, met friends for beverages and conversation on Thursday and then was still there when we got the call Friday that our young friend had lost her bout with cancer and that it was time to go North to pay our respects. There was only one problem. Connor was sick with a stomach virus and plane travel for him was out of the question.

So we sent Dan up to grieve for us while Connor and I struggled with his bad belly and a sore ear that was quickly turning into a bad ear infection. I held him while he fussed for hours, made meal after meal for him that he wouldn’t eat, fed him rounds of juice and water and little containers of yogurt while we watched Finding Nemo again and again. Finding Nemo is an underwater adventure and soothing to our boy, a Pisces. And every time I went into the fridge to get another carton of yogurt for him, there sat the slowly darkening artichoke, a testament to shabby handling of produce and missed opportunity. Saturday night I seated Connor down with his dinner and steamed this artichoke. It seemed a decadent thing to enjoy with a sick baby on one hand and grievous loss on the other, but had I waited much longer, the thing would have dried and rotted, no longer been good to eat. I tried to scrape a little of the green off the leaves to give to Connor, but he wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t interested. So I ate the whole damn thing by myself, but saved half the heart for Dan.

Ah, artichokes. They’re a wonderful, easy, cheesy symbol of a rich life – sometimes spiny on the outside but tender and succulent at the heart, where most of us love and have the richest dialogues with the essences of our selves and the ones we love. You always eat at a funeral and I hear that there’s something about the confrontation with death that often raises the libido. It’s a matter of proclaiming the vibrance of life in the face of loss, a thumbing of the nose and flash of the ass to Mr. Death. I can’t say that my illicit artichoke eating was anything near that, but rather not wanted anything else exquisite to go unappreciated. I had been complaining that my little boy was growing too fast, that he doesn’t stop moving much and that I don’t get to hold him much. Well, that weekend he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be put down. At the end, I didn’t mind much. Everything was moving way too fast and the best way to confront our loss for me was to hold onto one of my most precious people as if for dear life, eat artichokes and wait for his Daddy to come home and hold me.