A Well Thawed Out Experience
Written - April 11th, 2017 - 3:43 pm to 4:17 pm
I'm blessed to have a very loving father. I can share many examples of my father's expression of care for and with me.
One of my nice and special experiences with my father was when I was living with him. I was a teenager at the time that I lived with my father. My father cooked my sister and I mostly healthy meals on a regular basis. Both of my parents modeled their actions that I can reference. For example, they did what needed to be done. They didn't subscribe to gender or other roles.
I don't remember the first time that my father asked me to help him. But, at some point, we fell into a rhythm in which I would help him prepare a chicken to cook. My father cooked a chicken with herbs and I think vegetable oil. So, my father asked me to hand him the herb item and vegetable oil items when he asked. I handed him the herbs and poured them on the chicken. My father massaged the herbs in the chicken. He said that my help was appreciated because it saved his hands from getting his hands messy. I don't know how much or what was for him and how much or what was for me. But, it was a nice experience and another treat as an opportunity to be with him and help him. I know that I'm sensitive to a mess on my hands, face, and body.
The first night when I lived in an apartment on my own, (although I think with a roommate if my memory serves me correctly), I bought a chicken to cook for my first meal. I took it out of the freezer to thaw it out, like I'd seen my father do about 7 years earlier. Then I was getting ready to cook it according to the same timing from freezer to counter that I'd seen my father do. But the chicken hadn't thawed out yet. I think that my timing was to cook the chicken in time to eat at about 5 pm or 6 pm. But, since the chicken wasn't thawed out, I had to wait more. I was determined to cook and eat the chicken the way my father and I did as my first meal of my new apartment, being on my own, no matter how late it got.
I waited with great frustration and confusion as the chicken continued to be frozen. After I gained a little presence of mind, I called my father to tell him about the situation. He asked me the size of the chicken. After I told him the size of the chicken, my father clarified the size of the chicken that he cooked which was smaller than the one that I bought. So, both of us realized that the chicken needed more time to thaw out than the smaller one. I think that he guesstimated about how much more time the chicken needed to be thawed out.
So, logically, I knew that I had a choice to eat something before the chicken was cooked in which something else would have been my first meal. But, even as hungry as I might have been, I was determined to make the chicken my first meal in my apartment, living on my own. I think that I ended up cooking and eating the chicken at about 2:00 am.