Great Desire
No wonder so few of us had a weight problem. You had to really WANT to cook.
I hated chopping wood, most, of all the chores I had to do. Once, I chopped my hand, on purpose, to get out of chopping wood. I was 10 and it didn't take long to figure out I couldn't chop my hand everytime it was my turn. This was long before I knew anything about sporting wood. I digress. Anyone here surprised?
I enjoyed cooking with a wood stove. Every heat you wanted was ready and waiting. You just moved the pan further away from the fire box to get lower heat. I never found a cookbook, with illustrated cooking positions.
It wasn't the chores or the wood. It was that we poor and everyone knew it.
I was embarrassed everytime the school bus pulled up in front of our house. Every experience, in school continued to draw camparisons about my status and the other kids.
My friends were the other poor kids and the ones who moved from other places. The unwanted.
There we 27 kids in my class and it remained a static number until we went to high school in a bigger town. Our school was grades 1 - 8.
Kids are cruel because they don't know any better. The bad part is they repeat what they hear their parents say and that, is harder to walk away from.
Add to that, I was a fledging queer and didn't know it, loved appliances and cooking, made my father's stomach turn, got daily beatings when I was caught doing anything housewifish. The coup de grace was that everywhere I went and everyone who came to our house got grilled on the nuances of their washing machine.
I studied the mannerism, speech patterns and behaviors of every one around who I wanted to be like. I wanted to have manners, a vocabulary and my greatest desire was a house with a thermostat on the wall!
When I went to college, I tasted my first avocado, mushroom, seafood and was exposed to way of life I could never have imagined.
I have used many vehicles to support myself, but it was secondary to seeing the uniquness in each person I met and giving them the insight to see it and tools to nourish it. I helped them to rejoice in the individual uniqueness of who they were. Teaching brought me 230 new opportunities with each new year,
It took me 53 years to acknowledge I could participate as well. The honesty and healing, for me began and three years later,
I cannot begin to express how much I am enjoying life.
I finally found love, but to do it, I had to love me first, since that's where it resides.
Now do you begin to grasp what you all mean to me?
Kelly
