A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

Author:Molly Wizenberg [Wizenberg, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781416551058
Google: 49M3lAEACAAJ
Amazon: 1416551050
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-03-02T18:30:00+00:00

Yield: 8 servings

WHATEVER YOU LOVE, YOU ARE

My ex-boyfriend Lucas liked a band called Dirty Three. I was always fond of that name, especially for a kind of melancholic, unshaven trio, which is what they are, but they had an album title that was even better. It was called Whatever You Love, You Are. Isn’t that perfect? That album title is probably a good part of why we got together—he told me about it on our first date—but I figure it’s as valid a reason as any. I mean, think about it: whatever you love, you are. I want to believe in that.

I think about it a lot when I remember those weeks after my father died. More than anyone else I know, he was what he loved. He went after his life with both hands. He swallowed it in gulps, right up to the second they took the plate away. He never apologized, not even when I wanted him to—not for being stubborn, not for the silent treatment, not for leaving us behind. He did what he did, and he was what he was. For his memorial service, he wanted an Episcopal priest, a Catholic priest, and a rabbi. It was so weird and perfect. It wasn’t so much that he really believed in any religion, I don’t think, but more because he loved little bits of all of them. He was a little bit of all of them.

I wish you could have seen that service. We held it at All Souls Episcopal Church in Oklahoma City, and more than five hundred people came. They filled the place like football fans at a bowl game. They filled the pews from front to back, and then they stood along the walls and in the foyer. My family processed down the aisle, twenty-seven of us in all. I wore my favorite pair of fishnet stockings. My mother wore four-inch heels. We did the best we could. It was a cold, sunny day, very clear, and afterward, when the church bells rang as we filed out the doors, the air almost shook with the sound.

The service was led by an Episcopal bishop named Shannon Mallory, a family friend who my father had, in those last weeks, named his “holy man.” That he even had a holy man is hilarious—a contradiction in terms, really, since I never once saw him go to church or synagogue, and he didn’t even believe in global warming, much less Jesus Christ. But Shannon was a former patient, one of the ones my father cured, and over the years, a friendship had grown between the two of them. They’d even traveled to Israel and Jordan together once, when Shannon led a tour. When Burg was sick, Shannon came by every few days, and the two of them would tell dirty jokes while Shannon drank Scotch. At the end of each visit, he would ask my father if he wanted to pray. I’d never seen my father pray before. But

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