"When my quest began [for food she could eat, after she became allergic to virtually every food in existence], I ate to survive, trying merely to stop my stomach from growling, my head from spinning in dizziness. Suddenly twenty pounds lighter, I was weak and faint, and it took all the strength I had just to procure three meals a day. I lived and ate alone, and although I tried to add variation to my diet by eating my mono-meals in a number of forms—an apple could be transformed into raw slices, a baked bundle, or a bowl of sauce, for example—I mostly just bore my way down and through another bowl of boiled parsnips, another dish of sweet potatoes. I clicked on the radio news and propped up the paper at the table, simultaneously blocking two senses, my lunch of steamed chard disappearing on my plate. . . .
"I was raised a strict Catholic, and from my convent school days was practiced in the rigors of self-discipline and denial. . . . The nuns themselves ate as they lived, in silence. In fifth grade, the year I thought I'd heard the call to join the order, I used to wander away from the crowded winter noon-recess-filled gym and peer through a window on one of the stairwells that looked out on a courtyard and into the cloistered convent. Through another piece of glass, I could see the nuns in their dining room, seated around a long wooden table, the skirts of their black habits sweeping the floor, heads bent over their food, their veils falling down smoothly around their shoulders. Respectfully, rhythmically, as if in slow motion, they lifted their forks in the air, the utensils becoming wands vanishing into the whiteness of their wimples, casting a charge across the table that seemed to connect these women not only to one another but to something more powerful . . .
"I now know that the nuns in their dining room were eating the same tuna-noodle casserole that we girls were served in the hot lunch line. Nothing sacred about the product but something hallowed in the process. One day I turned off the radio, put down the paper, and began eating as an act of meditation. I brought a plate of yucca to the table and sat with it for five minutes, focusing all my attention on the vegetable, clearing my head of any other thoughts. I blotted out everything in the room and took in its aroma, its white color, its texture. . . .
"My feet on the floor, back pressed against the oak dining chair, I stared at the chunks of yucca and took delight in their simple arrangement on the royal blue plate, the noon light bouncing off the snow outside and streaming through the window. I picked up my fork, and slowly, pleasurably, watched it glint in the sun. I lifted the vegetable toward my face."
--Mary Swander: "Out of This World: A Woman's Life Among the Amish."
How I reply to comments at this blog.
( I fell asleep, struggling again to breathe, and dreamt I was young. )( Health update )( Replies to the latest comments )![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
