Category Archives: hunger

Thank you for the overcooked omelet

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English: An omelet with ham, cheese, and a gar...

There’s a diner near my apartment that overcooks the omelets. My cheese omelet inevitably has that tell-tale brown crispiness on the edges with burnt blisters splotching up the whole thing. There’s a bit of a crispiness and a certain unusual chewiness to this omelet, and I love it! Every single time that omelet lands in front of me in that shape I smile and dig right into it.

Recently, it occurred to me why I like my omelets in this shape. Though I was often hungry as a child, my grandmother always made sure I had something to eat when I stayed with her. She would pour copious amounts of vegetable oil into the pan prior to pouring in my scrambled eggs. I had crispy, greasy eggs that were like no other eggs I had consumed prior to that time. I only knew powdery fake scrambled eggs and my grandmother’s version.

My grandmother was the poorest person I knew, but she always made sure I was fed, and never hungry. She’s the reason I love my eggs overcooked.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scary day

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I know from experience that meeting with Doc right after he has wrangled with my insurance company is usually Bad Idea 101. Strangely, I always forget until the next time he has to fight with them.

And so it was Bad Idea 101 …

To summarize, Disinterested Insurance Company denied Doc’s request for extended length sessions. I think they also gave him a hard time about my prognosis, but he did not elaborate extensively on that, for which I am very glad because as mad as it made him I’m sure it would have bothered me immensely.

After a few minutes of ranting and venting on Doc’s part we start the session, and from the start, it’s a difficult one with frequent interruptions from him where I have difficulty completing a thought. I also felt like he wasn’t getting what I was trying to say. In the midst of a sentence where I was trying to explain myself he cut me off and said we had to stop the session as we were out of time. Usually, in the past, he gives me a warning that the session is about to end so that I can get to a stopping point. There are no clocks in his office that are visible to me so I do need his warning. And then the abrupt manner in which he stopped me in the midst of my sentence upset me.

I left the session just steamed, and I started to think about not coming back to see him. I even convinced myself that I didn’t need anyone to treat me at all, least of all him.

I stewed and marinaded in this feeling for two days until my next session.

The morning of my next session I woke up with that cloudy fuzzy feeling that I had not had in quite a while upon waking. I felt pinned to the bed, and the world felt dark and out of reach. I managed to find my phone on the dresser, and called him to cancel.

“Doc … I’m not coming. Charge me what you want, but I’m not coming.”

“Does this have anything to do with our last session?”

“Uh … uh … uh … yeah … but I am NOT coming.”

“Please come. It does not matter how late you are, please come so that we can work this out.”

“I’ll be at least 20 minutes late …”

“It’s okay, please come.”

And so I drove there. Somehow, I was able to get myself there.

I don’t recall the beginning of the session. At one point, early on in the session, he apologized to me for being so curt when we last met. He admitted that the interaction with the insurance company had him riled up, and leaked into the session. I do remember that at the start of the session it was Letty who was doing most of the talking.

I became aware of what was going on at the point that Letty said to Doc, “We wanted to quit you Doc!”

“I’m glad you came back …” His voice cracked at this point, and I realized he was teary. This turn of events was effective in getting me more present in the room. He then said, “I am very sorry for what happened last session …”

I could feel Letty jump into action. “Doc! Doc! You’re good inside! You’re good inside! That’s why we came back Doc! It’s okay, Doc. Don’t be sad.” The sound of that little voice just moved me, the way she was trying to make him feel better.

And then I faded out again at that point, but I could tell from the tone in his voice that he was grateful and apologetic.

The next thing I became aware of was Letty crying. It felt like I was tuning in late to a tv show. From what I could gather, Letty was upset because the whole mess with Doc was a reminder of being rejected by my mother when my father disappeared.

“I can’t find my Dad, Doc! I can’t find him! Help me find him!” She cried and cried and cried.

“Letty, you are stuck in a flashback. It’s the past. It is not happening right now. You have me and Beatriz to help you.”

“I just want my Dad! My Mom don’t care about me .. She don’t care, Doc … she don’t care … nobody cares … She make us three girls share a little pizza. We gotta share it, but we still hungry .. always hungry … hungry … every day. I see the cafeteria ladies always have extra food, but they don’t give me any. I ask every day … every day … they always say no … always. They throw the food away instead of giving it to me. I always hope that maybe today God will tell them to let me have some food … but it never happens … never … I always hungry …”

And with that, I finally realize why getting hungry sends me into a tailspin, even today.

I kept eating burgers

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A cheeseburger.

I went to a party today, and had too many hamburgers. They were nothing like the picture above. They were the smallish homemade burgers that remind me of burgers at Stuckey’s. I’ve no idea what burgers are like these days at Stuckey’s, but back in the day (the 1980s), burgers at Stuckey’s were small and oddly tasty to me when I was a child.

As I bit into the first burger at today’s party I was instantly transported to that very abbreviated time in my family when things were okay. I wouldn’t say they were great, but they were okay and certainly tolerable. Perhaps that’s why it’s one of the few childhood memories I recall so well.

The discovery of Stuckey’s occurred on a car trip from the Southwestern United States all the way to the Northeast. We were on a month long car trip to visit my stepfather’s family. Stuckey’s burgers were exciting for me and my sisters because we had never known a life of eating out. A cooler full of Sunkist soda and Big Red was a boon for us as well. We felt rich, and carefree with all these new conveniences and treats in our lives.

Then there were hotel rooms! Who knew such a thing existed? All of us piled into one hotel room with a rollaway bed for me. It was pure fun, even with my sisters stepping over me in the rollaway to get to the bathroom. It was like we finally stepped in the realm of Middle Class America.

Stuckey’s burgers were cheap, and my parents would buy them by the bagful for us. To go from a life of true hunger to having a bagful of burgers on demand was mind blowing at times. It’s amazing that a bagful of burgers and a cooler of soda can make a child feel like they’ve arrived in life. We learned all the Beach Boys songs and listened to them ad naseum, but it was an ideal soundtrack for that summer trip. It’s wasn’t a beach summer by any means, and we came nowhere near California. But the cheery cheesy songs were fitting to the dreamy and jubilant experience.

For the first time in our lives we had some consistency. If we stopped at Stuckey’s we knew we were getting burgers. The cooler always had soda. In the hotel room I always slept on the rollaway bed, and Beach Boys tapes were all we listened to in the car. We had never had any consistency of any kind, and innocuous things such as this made me and my sisters feel an odd sense of safety and stability that we never knew before that trip.

The dark period in our family started up again later after that summer, but during that trip all was mostly well. And just as I never wanted that period to end, I didn’t want the memory to end today. I wanted to hold on to it, so I kept eating burgers.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)