Friday, July 18, 2008

Why I love Linda Hessel or The REAL KEY ingredient


Chocolate is really important around these parts right now. Really Important.

I stopped to pick up XuMei at a friend's birthday party and was caught red handed in the kitchen eating spoonfuls of frosting right outa' the jar. Yeah, it's that important.

This chocolate binge I am on reminded me of a sweet post from an amazing woman who blogs over at:

Four Little Birds.

Here is the excerpt:


After helping me mop up the mess, Jake said, rather pointedly, “I think it’s getting to be chocolate season around here.” And then, when I didn’t respond to his satisfaction, “We need to go into town and get the key ingredient to happiness.”

I mean, really, I’m laughing just writing that out. Who could stay mad? Thankfully the kids got their papa’s sense of humor. Because clearly I take myself and my life way too seriously and occasionally need to be nudged back into the reality that these things don’t matter and that by giving them power I am causing my own suffering (not to mention that of those around me.) “With a little help from my friends”… in this case the ones I gave birth to. Yeah, chocolate is good, but I know what the real key ingredient is around here!

---Linda Hessel


Well, it is Chocolate Season here, too. And not just for me---for all of us. XuMei loves a good piece of chocolate as a soothing balm or a pick-me-up. And my Ma, who lives with us, and at 67 has decided she is deschooling herself , will indulge whenever the fancy strikes her. She points out that it tastes better "without all that guilt". When I was younger I used to wear a button that had a Sandra Boynton hippo on it that said, "If wearer is found depressed, administer chocolate immediately". In another life, I was depressed and I ate a lot of chocolate. Now I agree with Linda, chocolate is lovely, it is the frosting on the cake of life, but if life is shi!!y, it's pretty much just sh!t frosting.

Linda gets at something profound in her story: what really matters. The real key ingredient. And it ain't the chocolate!!!!!

5 comments:

hahamommy said...

Good friends, sage advice, delicious chocolate and a hot guy in a utilikilt -- damn girl! I'd think you'd have to die and go to heaven to get such a perfect life <3

Renee Cabatic said...

thanks for the reminder, Diana!
you made the "hot guy" and I laugh till tears came to our eyes.

lijhe said...

This post brings up different emotions for me. I feel touched at your sweet words. Admiring of your mom for continuing to question and search. But also dismay that your mom would have ever felt guilty about eating chocolate while ill and thin as can be. I hate what this culture does to our relationship with food, and how it makes our bodies a moral battleground.

More later (and perhaps in my blog, if I can get it together), right now we are going to pick cherries.

I miss you! Let's get together soon! xxoo

bright said...

I give chocolate to my students when doing safety training. My theory is that it makes the learning taste better.

Love!
Erin
(aka bright)


yefdmrr
yelling fad more

Mrs. G. said...

Uh, did someone say chocolate?