Something You Are, and Something You Do

Today’s Word of the Day, according the email I receive from Merriam-Webster, is “durable.” It means, “able to exist for a long time without significant deterioration.” Durable comes from the Latin verb, “durare,” which means, “to last.” In English, it’s an adjective. Since its meaning is used in two different parts of speech, one could conclude that durable is something you are, and something you do.

I am thinking about being able to exist for a long time without significant deterioration as I pull out the cast iron skillet from our kitchen cupboard. I am making a bacon and onion tart with a balsamic honey reduction and also fresh thyme is sprinkled in it, except there was no puff pastry only shells at the grocery store, so I bought phyllo dough.

I could’ve made individual tarts, but I didn’t feel like it. It’s stupid and juvenile to stand in the frozen dessert aisle and stare down the Pepperidge Farm box of puff pastry shells, but that’s what I did. Then, as if the box cared, I flung the freezer door open and rolled my eyes at it while I picked up the phyllo dough. “I’ll show you,” I thought as my knees cracked and I had to adjust my back as I stood up and tossed the phyllo dough in the grocery cart.

Now, unwrapping it, I realize one sheet of phyllo dough is the equivalent of Kleenex. As a matter of fact, I bet I could use Kleenex and no one would know. I decide against that and unfold every piece of dough in the box. There are about 40 of them. I will use them all.

What’s supposed to happen is the dough goes into a pie plate. I have this red pie plate that I bought when Harper was still on my hip, and there is something about serving a pie, or in this case, a tart in a red pie plate that makes me feel like a capable person – perhaps a person that’s able to exist, to make something out of her existence, something that lasts.

But phyllo dough, at least the kind I bought, won’t work in this situation. It’s rectangle and you don’t manipulate phyllo dough like you do puff pastry. Phyllo dough is Mediterranean, isn’t it? Figures. You never tell a Mediterranean – especially a woman – what she ought to fit into. I know better, so I pull out a jelly roll pan and place all the sheets on that.

Hadley and Harper are in the TV room fighting over who gets to sit on the couch even though there are at least three other places in the room to sit, but Corby is on the couch, and they want to sit next to her. What they do is move Corby so there are about two inches at the end of each side of the couch and then they fight over which side of Corby they will sit on.

“I hope Corby farts in your face,” Hadley says, and Harper returns, “I hope she bites you in the butt,” and I am amazed at the things available to fight about all day long and at any given moment.

“Make a salad, pour a glass of wine, and call it a meal,” the woman who wrote the tart recipe suggested. She is wearing an apron and her hair is pulled back so that it looks like she’s saying, “Oh! Let me pull my hair back casually and also beautifully so I can make this here bacon-onion tart I just now dreamt up.” Probably as much as the red pie plate, and the bacon, it’s the picture that made me want to try this recipe, but I pull my hair back like that and I look like a before picture.

Jesse walks into the kitchen to find me sitting on the counter looking out the window. Everything is done, I just have to pour what’s in the skillet onto the dough.

“It smells delicious!” he says. And then, “What’s wrong?”

I want to tell him that I don’t feel durable; that I am concerned about significant deterioration but that seems like a lot to unpack just before dinner. So instead, I tell him I need some magazines to read. “You know, like HGTV or InStyle. I need something to put my mind in neutral,” I say rubbing my temples. “My brain and my heart hurt.”

“Take a break,” he says, turning toward the stove.

I nod and hop off the counter. I pull a mug from another cupboard and then fill the kettle with water. It’s my Grandma’s mug, part of a brown and white dish set I inherited when she died. Lately, I’ve been having tea in this mug. It’s my own concoction – cubes of fresh ginger, a squeeze of lemon, a dash of cayenne and then I pour boiling water over it. It stings and it’s sweet and my grandma’s mug is the kind of mug I have to hold with both hands. I can’t do anything else but hold on.

My grandma was a fierce hugger. I mean, I had to brace myself for them. I’d barely gotten out of the car, and she was a-comin’ for me and my brother, her arms outstretched and ready to capture us. Her hugs stung and were sweet, too. The difference was we didn’t have to hold on. She had us. All we had to do was be held.

I think about whether the willingness to hold on and the willingness to be held are characteristics that could make one durable, while the tart bakes in the oven, and my drink is almost gone.