"Part of me dreaded our separation viscerally, and I could feel the tendrils of that bit of my heart grasping toward my husband the way I can remember reaching out, panicked, toward my father, when he was teaching me to swim and slowly backing up, just inches beyond the farthest reach of my fingers. Another part of me was relieved that it was all ending - months and months of insomnia and misunderstanding and isolation and wounding on both sides."
"So, I showed him. Waxy red potatoes, unpeeled. Tony Chachere's in the water with a few garlic cloves. A stick of butter. A mayonnaise and sour cream slurry, sometimes with horseradish, sometimes not. When he turned up his nose at the thought of all the mayonnaise he'd unknowingly consumed over the years, we both laughed until we cried. The crying persisted for a bit,"
The night before leaving my husband, I taught him how to make my mashed potatoes while he prepared to stay elsewhere. He was leaving after falling in love with a man from work; the marriage of seven years was ending. I felt both visceral dread and relief after months of insomnia, misunderstanding, and mutual wounding. Teaching the recipe—waxy red potatoes unpeeled, Tony Chachere's in the water, garlic, butter, and a mayonnaise-sour cream slurry—provoked unexpected laughter. The laughter, mixed with crying, released something and made those final moments more bearable. Over twenty-two years, similar stories of quiet closure have appeared in friends and family.
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