My mother has a knack for making things look beautiful. She has a very strong creative side. One of her favorite mediums is food. A salad is not just a salad in my mother's house, it is a work of
art. Carrots and yellow peppers placed just so, eggs hard boiled to perfection, and no green ring around the yolk.
One thing I didn't anticipate after my
surgery was how difficult it would be to eat. Because my head was sliced open from ear to ear all of those muscles needed to heal as well, and I didn't realize how much the temples are involved in chewing. Unfortunately, I surrendered to a liquid diet once
again.
My mother refused to believe that she couldn't create some kind of food art that I could eat. I was still in the ICU and my mother came in to see
how I was doing. I saw in her hand a small Tupperware with beautifully cut up fruit. She had cut small cubes of honeydew and cantaloupe, halved grapes, slices strawberries, it was lovely. But, I still couldn't eat it. I tried a piece of honeydew, but I couldn't
physically chew it.
Did this stop her? No. The next morning at about 6am one of my nurses came into my room to do vitals. He was a tall black man with a
very deep voice. He came in and I saw in his hand another Tupperware. This one had raspberries and blueberries in addition to the melon. He held it up for me to see and said with a chuckle, “Guess who was here?” I shook my head at my mother's stubbornness.
Not only was she so determined to get me to eat her edible art, she got up before the sun to prepare it.
It took a couple weeks before I could chew anything
solid. By that time I was already out of the hospital. I think my nursing staff was sad to see me go, not because of my winning personality or anything, but because they inherited all of the beautiful food that my mother brought. They probably never ate so
well.