i was good enough
My heart raced in my chest. I didn’t feel good enough to be reading these words aloud, but yet there I was. I held the microphone in my right hand, my palm clammy and damp, while my left hand held the page I was reading from. The paper quivered as if it, too, had heart palpitations, making my already messy handwriting all that much harder to read from. I stumbled over my words, looked up and saw a reassuring face and then another, and I started over.
I watched him move in the kitchen, pulling his wheelchair-bound body along the counter’s edge, hand over hand, until he reached the bowl of warm, boiled potatoes. I stood in the doorway, observing him quietly from the other side of the wood-paneled kitchen. He moved awkwardly but deliberately, wanting to do this for himself. This was the first time since his stroke that he had tried to cook. He was making his famous mashed potatoes recipe, the one filled with butter and cream and cream cheese, the one that was a staple on our holiday table. If I had known then that this would be the last time he would make these potatoes, I might have paid more attention.
Make eye contact, I reminded myself. Stop fidgeting. I heard my voice and cringed at the shakiness of it. I looked out over the room, bright with sunlight, into the faces of my fellow food bloggers, into the faces of my friends. I kept reading. And then I was done, and I remembered nothing that I had said.
It’s amazing what we’ll do when we have the support and love and encouragement of our friends.
