memoir

666(X3) ≠ 42

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

The Instant Pot arrived with a blast. 

In nanoseconds, my social media feeds were filled with folks I respect singing the praises of the Instant Pot. 

Photo by Katherine Chase on Unsplash

I am no slouch in the kitchen; I own nearly every kitchen gadget in existence.  But after roughly 30 years of putting dinner on the table every evening unless I was hospitalized or had a pizza coupon, I was just over it. 

Even a viral new gadget was not enough to tempt me. 

Especially that one.

Near as I can figure, the Instant Pot is the New Millennium’s restyling of the pressure cooker my dad used for years. 

I was terrified of that thing. 

It started out innocently enough. A pot roast, some seasoning, and a few other secret ingredients were combined for a period much shorter than conventional pot roasting and turned out a plateful of wonderful.  But to get to wonderful, I had to get through the rattling brass regulator that, at a certain stage, would start screaming while the heavy pan rocked and rolled in jeopardy of falling off the stove.

My dad, an artillery expert in the United States Marine Corps, would tell us to step back using his Captain Kinsey voice when he opened the pressure cooker.

I didn’t have to be told.  Anything that made those movements and those sounds on a stovetop in suburban America circa 1971 was surely one of the demons released in William Peter Blatty’s runaway best seller, The Exorcist.

There was never a problem when my dad used the pressure cooker, aside from my stress response.  I had heard tales.  I knew facts. From where?  I have no idea.  Why or how a 12-year-old would be well-versed in pressure cooking cautions and disasters before Google is a mystery.

And so, my feed continued to be full of the awe of my friends who had received an Instant Pot for Christmas or Mother’s Day or their birthday, or because it was a doorbuster special on Black Friday.  They shared results with photos, noting the cooking time with squeals. They traded recipes they had adapted. Whole communities were formed around the appliance.

[Instagram was emerging at roughly the same time.  I kept calling it an Instapot.  I know for a fact that unintentional perversion of the appliance’s name grated on more than one person’s nerves, and she took every opportunity to correct me.]

My feed was soon almost entirely Instant Pot and Wordle brags.  (What happened to Wordle? I didn’t get into that either. I’m such a renegade.)

It was like a cult.

I stood back and tried to look interested and polite.  I was not interested. Not in the least.  I didn’t care that this incarnation of the pressure cooker could replace seven other needs: slow cooker, rice maker, Saturday night babysitter, warmer, yogurt maker, steamer, and bowling team sub. 

I still didn’t want an Instant Pot or Instapot. It was nothing but a gussied-up pressure cooker manufactured in an era marked by shoddy workmanship and planned obsolescence. 

I was afraid of the noisy monstrosity my dad used.  I didn’t even like cleaning the damn thing, it scared me so much. I’m told the Instant Pot is quiet.  That adds even more fear.  I could hear the demons in my father’s pressure cooker clattering for escape.

Terror accompanied by silence can be expressed mathematically as:

666 ( X3) ≠ 42

Silent terror destroys the ultimate meaning of life.

At every gift-giving opportunity at the zenith of its popularity, someone would get that gleam in their eye. I would say assertively, “I don’t want an Instant Pot.  I really don’t. I do appreciate the thought, but I will just return it.  Please. I’m busy, please don’t add to my to-do list.  I would prefer to receive nothing.”

So, of course, I was gifted an Instant Pot with no way to return it.  Four years ago now, I think.

It is still in the heavy brown box UPS uses for shipping.

I’m going to stack the 6-month-old unopened shipping box holding the air fryer on top of the Instant Pot box. 

I’m not afraid of the air fryer.  I might even use it someday.

[I hear tell the Ninja CREAMi is the next viral gadget all the cool kids will be clamoring about. I’m kind of interested in it, but at more than $200, it is not going to complete my trinity of unused, unopened viral kitchen toys anytime in the near future..]

I want to coin a new word

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

I want a word that means to feel it all at once. To include the cognitive dissonance with the revelation of divine knowledge. To embrace the sacred and the profane. I want that word to recognize that I can be at peace and at war within myself at any moment, either one or both simultaneously.

To feel it all at once is to glimpse the mind of the creator. Perhaps. I want the ennui and the exhilaration of my being to dance. A tango. Slow, deliberate, sinuous, winding about one another until the boredom embraces the joy reaching crescendo. And then there is silent acceptance of both when the music fades.

This is my life now. I don’t want to call it a new normal. I despise normal – always have. I have striven all my life not to be average. I’d rather be a failure than just fade to black.

This life, the one right here, the one that I call a trainwreck, is mine and I don’t want to shut down any part of it. It has become who I am.

I was in a trainwreck one time. Really. I hit a train. It makes for a great party story.

And that is my goal: to ferment all of this into a story that both bears witness to the tragedy and provokes laughter at having trried to overcome it all and only sometimes succeeding. I want to coin that word.

If we can’t laugh, we can’t cry, and both are necessary for either to have any potency. Any meaning. Any effect.

I want a word for all of this. These events and feelings and effects have shaped me and continue to shape me into a person I hardly recognize, but who is resolutely and most definitely me.

Childhood memories are potent.

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

The beach at the very end of what used to be Lawrence Road on the Kaneohe Marine base was one of Oahu’s less spectacular beaches. Unlike Waikiki, sand had not been imported from Australia to create a tourist-friendly spot to sunbathe. No. The beach was a gleaming black lava flow with large, jagged pieces of the black rock the Goddess Pele had tossed about, sitting atop the long-since-cooled lava flow of her anger that oozed across even earlier flows.

In this manner, the beautiful island was formed. The ancient path of Pele’s wrath was worn smooth by the eternal motion of the Pacific Ocean.  The water was a vivid blue that one can’t imagine until they see it for themselves — up close and personal.  The crashing waves were edged with white foam reaching for the sky. None of it looks real.

That shoreline smelled of plumeria and hibiscus. It smelled of coconuts lying on the ground in the bright tropical sun.   It smelled of salt and mildew and of decomposing small sea creatures trapped in the tidepools when the ocean receded.

I was a feral child crouched over a tidepool formed by smooth lava and the blue water of Kaneohe Bay. 

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The End Days

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

I have perhaps twenty more years of life left in me. Maybe less. Maybe a lot less.

The years have been kind. The years have been brutal. I have experienced great joy as well as great sorrow. Through it all, I hoped for a tranquil journey. Through it all, tranquility has been elusive. Fleeting glimpses here and there. Moments of contentment were rare.

But I had hope. I believed in someday. If I were organized enough, if I worked hard, if I was a good person, if… if…if… all would be well. Life would be like boating on a placid sea with a colorful sail rippling in the gentle breeze of deep summer.

I handled the chaos. The stress. The upheaval.

I was often overwhelmed, but I continued moving forward. I tended to my child, who was and is the love of my life. I tended to my house. I tended the garden that brought me glimpses of tranquility when hummingbirds fed at the trumpet vine. I tended to my job.  I was not so good at tending to my spouse. We divorced just shy of our twentieth anniversary.

These past twenty years as a divorced, perimenopausal woman have been chaotic and heartbreaking. I often quip that my New Year’s resolution is to be bored. I have been accused of being dramatic, but the drama invaded my life uninvited. I did not conjure it, nor did I encourage the spectacle.

When sent home to quarantine during the pandemic, I hoped for three weeks. Three weeks to hole up in my house and find my equanimity. Three weeks to figure out my life. Three weeks to decompress, regroup, and emerge again fortified and ready to take on the world.

The previous year had been eventful — much of it in not a good way. Still, there were things to celebrate. I turned 60, and my only child had a small destination wedding in Spain. I was the only person on my son’s guest list able to attend. His father had health issues, his grandmothers were too old to make the trip, and so on.

With some trepidation, I planned my first solo international vacation. I raided my 401K and gifted myself an epic two weeks on the island of Ibiza. It was my 60th birthday present to me. The expense was considerable. It was also my only child’s wedding. It was an escape from the stressfest that was my life, and I pulled out all the stops. Sixty! Who would have believed such a state was possible?

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