Rudder Found

So, for a day or so, I thought, great!  I didn't tear any arteries in my neck.  I'm good.  I even used my physical therapy strap once again.  Once.

Because, morning after morning, I awoke with pain in my head and my blood pressure rushing through my neck like high tide.

The ER doctor and the neurologist had seen nothing on my CT scan. So, I had to think some more.

Sure, headaches can be caused by anything from an annoying coworker to a brain tumor.  The hospital had settled on calling my head pain a "migraine," their catch-all for headaches they could not find a source for.  Thing is, I've been lucky enough to never have a true migraine headache.  No history of that.

I couldn't pretend all was well.  I couldn't deny that the spot of referred pain in my forehead was the same as when I have had torn or bulging arteries in my neck, and at no other time.  And the pain wasn't just "in my head"--it was requiring me to take 800 mg of ibuprofen around the clock.  Either high blood pressure or a blood clot coming loose from an arterial injury could potentially cause a stroke, and I am not in the market for a stroke.

Because of an apparent cancellation, I was able to follow up with my primary care physician yesterday instead of in mid-December.  I pitched my theory to her.  Of course, she could neither confirm nor deny, but she did not discount it.  She said it made sense, and could explain my symptoms.  "I'm going to go with that, then," I told her.

You have to understand--I had been wrapping a strap around the back of my neck.  And then pulling fairly hard, as instructed by my physical therapist, while turning my head as far as I could in each direction, in order to help my neck free up space between my vertebrae and become more supple.  This was to prevent the kind of headache I usually get--from tense muscles in my shoulders and neck.  Tension headaches had been disabling me up to once or twice a week.

I think I bruised or irritated the arteries at the back of my neck by doing this.  I obviously did no structural damage that would show up on a scan, but I think I affected them just enough to trigger the symptoms.  Also, in the past ten days, I have been slowly healing.  Which, with my theory, I would. Blood pressure is back to normal.  Pain is intermittent and less severe.  So, that's my story, and, in the absence of more information, I'm sticking to it.

Rudder found.

Four People ahead of You

I bit the bullet Monday and returned to the emergency room to find out whether I had torn an artery in my neck. I’m not sure how I would have torn it, but I had been experiencing that same weird hollow pain somewhat off-center in my forehead that I experienced only when I had torn arteries in the past. Because of what follows, I won't say which emergency room, but it is associated with a major university.  

The first time I tore arteries, I had been coughing so hard it seemed my lung would come up through my throat. The second time, I had lifted something too heavy and popped a bulge. Lately, I have been wrapping a physical therapy strap around my neck in order to loosen it up. I don’t use a great amount of force, but it is my neck, and there was that peculiar pain showing up like a recurring nightmare.

After ignoring the quarter-sized pain a few days (in which it was plausible to think my COVID shot could have been a contributor), I cleared my afternoon and drove up the hill to where they have neurologists, CT scans, and the Stroke Center. 

The waiting room was busier than I have ever seen it. I thought maybe showing up straight from work in my business clothing might illustrate that I knew what I was talking about. Instead, it encouraged them to push me to the back of the line, over and over again. 

They did the initial blood pressure, fact gathering, and filling of three vials of blood in pretty quick order, then told me to go back to the waiting room, where “the longest wait has been three hours.”

They plopped a wheelchair-bound woman a few feet from me, who joyfully carried on a long conversation in a foreign language with great voice inflection and plenty of laughter. At ten minutes, I noticed she was talking too loudly. At twenty, I started to fantasize about politely interrupting her to ask if I were being too loud for her conversation. At thirty, I considered filming her and putting the video on Facebook as one of those “found this creature in the wild” videos. At forty minutes, I realized that she was not on the phone. She was her own good company. At fifty, an employee came up to her, crouched to her level, and announced, “We are going to drive you home.”

Good, I thought. Ah, but the fun was just beginning. 

As my third hour and phone battery drew to a close (I wasn’t talking on my phone, just reading it), I lifted my eyes in hopes of something happening soon. 

It didn’t. 

The horse pill ibuprofen I’d taken at four-fifteen in the morning started wearing off.  My pain started to climb from the “two” I’d—stupidly, I was starting to realize—announced to the triage staff, to at least a four. Maybe they should know that?

I went to the front desk and told them my pain was rising.

“Where is it?” they asked. 

“In my head,” I reminded them, bringing my hand up to touch the spot of pain. 

It worked!  They pulled me right back behind the door and took my blood pressure again. “Do you still have the cuff we gave you?”

I pulled it out of my lunch bag. Heaven forbid they should charge me for two of them. They announced my blood pressure, normally on the low end, was 148 over 96, and sent me back out to the waiting room. I guess they wanted it higher, and a few more hours of stifling my breathing in their noisy, crowded, germ-infested waiting room was likely to do it.

I should have enjoyed and been amused by the humans out there, but, by then, I was far too crabby. There was the man who either crouched by, vigorously massaged, or practically lay on his tall, pretty wife, when he wasn’t loudly discussing her very private symptoms on a cell phone call to her regular doctor. And there were others. 

A couple of young women came back out of triage and sat down next to me in order to have the most banal conversation I have ever had to listen to. I should have taken notes so I could share it with you, but I was doing my best to shut it out. I remember thinking that I couldn’t believe anyone would ever talk about such worthless details. But here I am. 

Finally, I decided to make the ER a deal. I went back up to the counter. “Hi. I’ve been here four and a half hours. Could you please tell me how close I am?”

“Four people ahead of you.”

“That’s what it was ninety minutes ago.”  I told them, “I realize that my case isn’t urgent enough for me to be here right now. Why don’t I go home and come back in the middle of the night, when you’re less busy?”

“Totally up to you, but we’ll charge you again.”

“Why?  I haven’t been seen.  I’ll keep my bracelet on.”

“We’ll have to start all over again,” another employee told me. 

“You’re going to the throw away my blood?” I heard my voice rising on the last word like a crazy person, but the rest was measured.

“We'll keep your blood, but we’ll charge you again.”

“Why, when you don’t have anywhere for me to sit down, and you’re not moving me forward?  Why can’t I just go wait in bed, then come back at two or three?” I thought my proposal was honestly a win-win for both sides. 

I was told I could wait in my car, and they would phone me.  I readily agreed to that. 

Walking to my car in the parking garage, I totally intended to drive home.  But, as I got closer, I started to rethink that. I plugged in my phone and called my husband. Had a drink of water and munched on my cucumber snack. 

After an hour, I started to worry that they would call my name in the waiting room instead of calling me on the phone, so I walked back in.  I was really starting to resent the professional outfit I’d put on that morning and longed for leggings and a tunic. “Hi,” I said.  “I’ve been waiting in my car for an hour. Where am I on the list now?”

“Let me check. Oh, you’re really close!”

“Okay, I’ll wait in here then.” There were some chairs available. I sat down across from a couple that kept complaining they’d been there four hours. I was at five and a half. I was dismayed when they got called back.  They literally didn’t know how lucky they were. 

A man who looked like those mix-and-match cards kids play with--where you stack up sections of people--was also across the room.  His head looked like a regular old man--short gray hair with a large bald spot on top.  The next layer was a flowing floral blouse, backless.  Next level--men's cargo pants.  Last but not least, hideous glittery sandals (over socks) that no sane woman would ever wear, but that he seemed very proud of.  Bold choice, my man!  He was happy, and that’s all that matters. After making a big deal about seating himself, he played a song so loudly on his phone that a security guard came out from the mysterious backside of the doors we prospective patients had never seen and told him to turn it off.  He negotiated a lower volume, which he increased halfway back up again as soon as the security guard left.  Then, he opened up his huge yellow garbage bag, drew out his supper, and started to eat it.  Someone must have ratted on him, because the security guard came out again and told him to take it to the cafeteria.

"Will I have time?  Will I miss being called?"  Not a chance.

Then, I noticed that a woman talking to staff had been a client of mine. I was wearing a big, paper mask and my readers, and I hoped she wouldn’t notice me.  I can’t acknowledge her unless she talks to me first, and I just didn’t have it in me to deal with anything more than enduring to the end.  But it made me very quiet and still, especially when she came and sat right next to me. I knew that, if they did call me, I would have to state my full name right in front of her.  And then she'd know. I kept my head turned away and played solitaire until my phone battery ran out.

Then, I approached the desk, yet again.  Four people ahead of me. I told them I was going back to my car. 

At six and a half hours, I decided to go in and plead my case again—to a supervisor, maybe. It made so much sense for me to get out of their hair and get my hair out of there that I thought maybe someone with some authority could be reasoned with.  I took two steps and my phone rang. 

“We have a room for you.” 

Great!  Half done. I figured I would probably be allowed to leave the hospital by three a.m.  (It was actually midnight.)

Honestly, by then, I felt like a celebrity who had won some grand prize!  I had a room!  I was walked so far back into the depths of the hospital that I thought maybe it was no longer part of the ER. I went to the bathroom and put on a hospital gown. I told the nurse the chest pocket was ripped at the seam, and what was below it was playing peek-a-boo. “I need another one.”

“They’re all like that,” she explained.  What else.

The nurse was nice, but she scoffed when I told her I had a blood pressure cuff in my lunch bag and she didn't need to use another one. I started to hear a cash register sounding in my head.

When the ER doctor on my case came in, the first thing she said to me after introductions was, “Your face is asymmetrical.”

I started laughing.  Everyone’s is, to some extent. I thought it a hilarious place for her to start.  Of course, she was trying to determine if I’d had a stroke.  She got out her personal cell phone and reversed the camera so it was like a mirror for me.  “See?  Does your face always look like that?”

Before or after seven point five hours of torture?

“See?  This side of your mouth when you smile is not quite as high as that side of your mouth.”

“I just have a permanent smirk on my face.” I honestly could not take this seriously.  I had most definitely not had a stroke.  Yet.

She asked to see my driver’s license, to compare my lopsided-to-her smile with it. 

“I guess you always look like that,” she said. 

She put me through numerous neurology tests, which I expected. When I was able to read through a list of very simple, short sentences, she complained I was passing everything too well. 

I got the long-awaited CT scan, and waited a couple more hours. The ER doc said it didn’t show any damage to my neck arteries. And then she started to propose that I might be coming down with a condition I had never heard of that involved inflammation and blurred vision. 

I didn’t think so. 

“But you said you had blurred vision.”

“No, when you asked if my vision was at all altered, I said I wasn’t sure.  This pain in my forehead makes me feel diminished.”

Even though I was trying to be nice, she got tired of me real fast. “But at your AGE. . .”

I got a little tired of her, too, although I knew she was just doing her job. I really did keep trying to be polite.

She sent someone in to get more blood so she could test for the strange disease she had settled upon. I had more questions. She said she had a responsibility to make sure I didn’t have it, because, if I did and it wasn’t treated, I could experience vision loss.  If I left before the neurologist saw me, it would be against medical advice. 

At that point, I had not eaten for eleven hours, not counting some cucumber slices.  I had taken the huge ibuprofen my husband had run up to slip me, then added to my empty stomach the three Tylenol the ER doc had insisted I take. I told her I was getting nauseated and asked if I could eat something. She agreed to bring me a snack.  I never saw her again.  

My heroic husband left the room to hunt and gather, and came up with two bagels and a brownie, which we shared.

I did want to stay for the neurologist. I wanted to know if he could see any damage to my arteries on the CT scan (he couldn’t), or thought I had the mysterious illness (he didn’t). 

So, too late to make a long story short, there is nothing wrong with me. Except that old, familiar referred pain in my head that no one can explain. (They wrote “migraine” on the discharge papers.) And galloping blood pressure, also not explained. “We expect it to be high in the ER," the neurologist said. (That makes sense.)

And, I feel I have lost my rudder.

It's a Small World

I made a comment on an online news story today, and used the word "heck."  As in, "Heck--it's still before noon."  Someone named. . .okay, I'll use a made-up name--Ron Madrigal, commented on my comment, "Who says "heck?"  (I add the punctuation here for him, because I'm nice like that.)

I saw that and let it go.  But, later, a woman added a comment saying that a lot of people say heck.

Taking that as encouragement and support, I replied to the heckler, "Are you the Ronald Madrigal who went to Liberty Elementary?"

Not too long later, he said, "Yes."

So I said, "I remember you.  That was a heck of a long time ago."

Ahhhhhhh.  That felt good.

Attend Your Reunion

Recently, my long-since-closed high school had an “all years” reunion for anyone who had ever attended it. This is the second year they’ve done this, and my husband and I went. Back when he had golden curls and I had hair down to my waist, we met there. 

I hoped more people I knew would be there.  A couple weeks ago, I posted about it on Facebook.  When I asked one person if she were going, she said no. “I don’t want anyone to know how fat I am, and that I’m a failure.”

I was stunned.  She's one of the best people I know.  “How are you a failure?”

Basically, she hasn’t written a best-selling novel, invented anything, nor cured cancer.

“Neither has anyone else,” I said. “And we've all passed through just as many years.”

I have worried about similar things, too, in the past. Well, okay, and now, somewhat. My overall experiences with reunions, though, is that no one’s judging—they’re just glad to see you. Everyone has grown up, and it’s not like when you couldn’t say hi in the hall to one of the cool kids. 

At least, not with the high school I attended, which was not snooty. You didn’t have to have a hot-shot dad who made a lot of money to be someone at our school.  I liked that so much about our school that I bought my first house inside its boundaries, so my kids could go there.  Then, they closed it down.

So, Mark and I went to the reunion, and we comprised forty percent of those who attended from our class. I wish there had been more than five, but I did meet some people who grew up in my same neighborhood. They had been older than me, but I remembered some of them. I really appreciate knowing the things they told me. Like, that my sister, Linda, had played the violin so well that she had been idolized her for her talent. I had known she had played, but I didn’t know she was that good. In fact, I don’t remember ever hearing her play. 

One older guy that I do remember told me he has a twin that I was never aware of!

Even though we only saw two people who had actually been my friends, I enjoyed myself and was enriched by talking with people. Given that I now read with old-lady readers, it was harder to read their name tags as I passed them than it was to strike up conversations. That’s what I’d like people to know about attending a reunion. And I do wish more people would give it a try. 

There were tons of people there from my sister’s class--too many for it to have been random. When I got home and looked at Facebook again, I saw that one woman from that year had posted, calling out her class: “Be there or be square. We are all old and fat.”

Amen.  Just go.  No one cares about what you think they would care about.  But I bet they'd sure like to see you again, or meet you for the first time.

Sweet Relish

For the past year and a half, I've been doing all the cooking at home.  All the shopping too.  Which has not been a problem.

(That my children are relieved to have me doing most of their cooking now is a sweet secret I smugly savor, like having a chunk of the best chocolate to enjoy in private.)

The only problem I've run into is this: we've had this no-sugar-added pickle relish as a staple in our home for years.  I would say, ever since we gave up sugar as a regular part of our diets almost thirteen years ago.  We went to Disneyland that summer, and the lower-than-in-the-house mirrors in the hotel revealed to me what I didn't want to know. So, we decided to try the Sugarbusters diet my sister-in-law had been having great results with.

As part of our sugar purification, my husband had found a pickle relish that was made with Splenda instead of sugar.  We've been using it ever since.  It's gone on hot dogs and hamburgers, into tartar sauce and tuna and egg salads.  We've just always had it around.  I took it for granted that I could keep getting it.

So, as the last jar has run out, I have searched for no-sugar-added pickle relish at the grocery store. No luck at Fresh Market or Costco.  I went out of my way to visit all the grocery stores I know he used to shop at.  He could make a whole weekend out of shopping at five or six stores, but I was pretty sure I knew the names of them.  Albertson's. Dan's.  Smith's.  Sprouts.  Looking for that relish, though, I bombed out at every one of them.

I NEED this relish.  Honestly, avoiding sugar is no small feat.  It's hard enough to avoid desserts.  I don't want it in my regular food.  If I'm going to eat sugar, give me a chocolate donut.  Don't hide it in there with my fish.

I took a good look at the nearly empty jar for the brand name.  Mt. Olive.  I went back to all the stores, inquiring about Mt. Olive brand. My regular grocery store has a whole wall of pickle relish.  Not a Mt. Olive in sight.  Not any other type of no-sugar-added relish, either. After I spent the better part of an afternoon reading each and every pickle label, the manager took down the information and said he would get it stocked.  The other stores said, basically, "Nope."

So after waiting a polite amount of time, I went back to my regular store and still didn't find it.  I talked to a different manager--the one who does the ordering.  He pulled out his flip phone, saying, "Don't judge," and called the person he orders from.  "It's not on the list," he said.  That was his whole answer.

I guess it can't be put on the list.  But, honestly, if they would put it on the list, I would come back to that store, faithful as an old dog, every time my relish got low, and buy some more.  For the rest of my life, which should be decades.  He and his flip phone were long gone, though, before I could get all of that out.

I looked up the brand name online.  Couldn't find out where it's sold locally.  Took the lid off the last, empty jar standing forlornly on my counter until I could figure this out. Took it to work with me. Called the 800 number in North Carolina.  Was told that she can't see where their products are sold in my state.

"But I know it's sold here.  We've always had it."

So she told me that Target and Walmart are two large chains that "don't participate" in their "store locator."

Bingo!  I thought.  Unless my ex was hiding more about his true thoughts than I've discovered he was, I know he wasn't shopping at Walmart.  No need to look there.  But Target--that sounded like a ray of hope.

I shop at Target but don't think of it as a grocery store, even though I know they have groceries.  I determined that I would stop in as soon as I could swing it, and finally claim my very own jar of Mt. Olive Sweet Pickle Relish.  Before I heated up any more fish sticks.

I know what you're thinking.  Why didn't I just ask him where he's been getting it?

Well, it's complicated.  I tried to keep things friendly.  I really did.  I even let him come into my home on a nightly basis to say goodnight to the children.  For half a year.  But he's made it clear, in more ways than the number of years of my life that I gave him, that he is no friend of mine.

I'm not going to ask him.

Most of the time, he pretends I don't exist.  If I texted him, "Hey, where did you used to get the relish from?" I would get this response:















It's the same response I get when I try to talk to him about the kids. I'm not going to assume that he would consider my ability to procure relish to be more important than they are.

Saturday was my next opportunity to get myself to a store that was not already on my way home from work.  My teenaged son came along with me.  He wanted new ear buds.  (When does a teenager NOT need new ear buds?)  He was sympathetic as I told him all about my relish woes. After some time walking around in the grocery section, looking carefully among places where other condiments were stocked, we finally found the relish inch.  Looking at the one or two options, I remembered.  I had looked at Target before.

So I said all the same things about it to my son again.  I know it can be found locally because we've always had it.  I've tried all the stores I can imagine.  But I supposed I would have to order a case from North Carolina and pay the shipping charges.

I didn't have all these genius kids for nothing.  He asked simply, "But which Smith's have you been to?  Just Smith's or Smith's Marketplace?"  I had assumed they were one and the same.  I had.

So on our way home from Target, we stopped in at a Smith's that I've only frequented when I've forgotten to pack pantyhose before my pre-work workout.  We parked, walked in, located the condiment aisle, and found ourselves face to face with a WHOLE WALL of Mt. Olive products!  I almost wet myself.

Drenched in the sudden luxury of endless Mt. Olive products, I feasted my eyes along the rows until I found pickle relish.  I picked up a jar.  Then another.  No sense being skimpy about it after all that. Laughing with my son about our good, though long-delayed fortune, and how fun it would be to blog about this adventure, I paid for the relish and we left the store.

I stopped dead in the parking lot.

"Wait," I said.  "I don't think I checked for no sugar."  I drew out one of the jars and examined its label.  "Mt. Olive," it said, and "Sweet Relish."  It did not say "Splenda" nor "no sugar added" anywhere. Anywhere!  And, yes.  In the ingredient list, I did find enough dreaded words to make me hastily avert my eyes.

Moaning, we headed back into the store. Right back to that Mt. Olive aisle.  I scanned the shelves. You're not going to believe this, but I could not find "no sugar added" on any of the Mt. Olive pickle relish labels.

I did find some no-sugar-added house brand relish, and I picked up a jar of that.  My son asked, "Are you going to get two?"  So I got two.  But it wasn't exactly the right stuff.

I mean, it was sugarless pickle relish, thank goodness for that, but it looked different.  I exchanged the sugary Mt. Olive relish for it, and I took it home.  I'll use it in tartar sauce next time I feel like having fish.  Not saying when that will be.

But it all makes a good story.  And maybe I can get a kickback for the free advertising?

Being Okay

So, here I am, on a lonely Sunday.  I went to church and came home.  I'm chilling out until the time when my kids will come home.  I tried to take a nap.  It didn't work.

I feel restless.  There are things tugging at the corners of my mind.  Vague shadows, like monsters in the closet or under the bed.  There are things bothering me that will never go away.  There is work to do that I don't feel up to doing.  I'm stuck in a kind of neverland between the busy I was yesterday doing everyone's laundry, et cetera, and the busy I'll be as soon as everyone is home.

It's silent.  No one is expecting anything of me at the moment.  These are the moments I yearn for when everything is noisy and I have five or ten demands on me.  But this doesn't feel like a moment I yearned for.

I should be enjoying it.  I should be able to sleep.  Or maybe I should stop trying to sleep and get my outfits for the week set up.  Maybe I should cook dinners for the upcoming week, do something to make the time ahead of me easier.

Will the time ahead of me ever be easier?

I feel like I've lost myself.  I am always older than I've ever been.  Will I ever be the same again?

I keep going to the gym and cutting what I eat, but I keep gaining weight.  I want to write, but I'm allergic to the imaginary voices finding fault with whatever I might have to say now that my life is upside down.  I keep cooking meals, cleaning the house, tending to the household, but it seems to keep falling into disarray anyway.  I keep taking care of and protecting my children, but they seem to keep spinning farther away from me.  It's their job to do that, I know that.  But who am I now?

I keep going to church, paying tithing, praying.  I keep fasting when it's fast day, and even sometimes when it is not.  I read my scriptures most days.  I still believe.

I think I still believe, but where are the blessings I need?  Where is the promised land I've been trudging toward for at least forty years?  Are my prayers actually piercing the ceiling, or are they just bouncing off like soft billiard balls, making endless arcs and curves throughout my empty bedroom?  I know I'm loved, but where are my friends on a quiet day like this?

The invisible arcs of the billiard balls curve through my bedroom, hitting the closet door, the wall, the floor, the light switch, the ceiling, the blinds, the bed, my chest.  All the thoughts and questions and images and restless feelings just keep bouncing all around me like waves.

I try to catch one and pin it down.  What on earth is really the matter?  What can I pin down?

Yes, my life is different; I wanted that.

What is wrong?

Are the people I love still out there in the quiet somewhere?  Has God forgotten me?

I sit still on the bed for a while, just waiting for the arcs and curves of the balls to form some kind of pattern, to settle somewhere, for heaven's sake.  To spell something out.

I finally get a coherent thought.  It is this: Will I ever be okay again?

I stand up and look for something to eat.  I close the fridge.  I already ate and don't need anything.  I pick up my pile of laundry and smooth the bed covers.  If I do something, maybe I will feel better.

Will I ever be okay again?  I want to text my best friend and ask her.  But I hesitate.  What is she supposed to do with a pregnant message like that?

Will I ever be okay again?  I pick up a newspaper to move it off my bed.  My eye catches the headline to an article I had meant to read.  "Senior LDS missionary back. . .from Belgium."  I start to scan the article.  This is the man, older than I, who was blown up by a bomb but has lived to tell the tale.  And there, like a ball that finally found the pocket in the table, is my answer.  I read, "The first blast broke Norby's left fibula and left heel and sprayed him with shrapnel.  He also suffered second-degree burns to his face, ears, sides of his head, leg and the backs of his hands.  He later suffered an infection while hospitalized. . . ."  All of this happened almost four weeks ago.

I shake my head at my self-pitying self and get up to write.  There is nothing so wrong with me that I cannot proceed to be me.  Maybe writing will help someone else.  Or maybe it will help me.  I have to keep being me.  That is what being okay is. 

Spanish Rice

Several coworkers commented on my lunch today.  I often get a "That smells good" or "Whatcha eating?"  But I had more comments than usual for this very ordinary lunch. It's a dish I grew up with.  My mother used to make it.  It smelled and looked good, and it generated interest.

"What's that?"

I stifled my impulse to say, "Well, I call it Spanish rice."  It was not easy to stifle that, which I'll explain in a minute.  I forced myself to just say, "Spanish rice."

But then I added, "My ex-husband would say that it isn't really Spanish rice."

"Why is that?"

Because I don't make it the way he makes it.  Because it's not "authentic" Spanish rice.  Because real Spanish rice would never have meat or something as Anglo as canned tomato juice in it.  Because, he regularly asserted that the things he did were superior to the things I did.

He is a good cook.  He is a better cook than I'll ever be.  I'll give him that, no problem.  I always have.  I don't know where my mother got the simple recipe she used for her Spanish rice.  I don't care.  That's not the point.  And maybe it's true that he had learned somehow how to make "authentic" Spanish rice from some region of the Hispanic world.  I'll give him that, too.  But it occurs to me that Spanish rice in Spain could be different from Spanish rice somewhere else.  Is there even only one authentic way to make it?

I'll even concede that there's no way my mom's Spanish rice could be "authentic."  Sure.  She grew up in a white family in an Anglo state during the Depression.  She raised her family in the fifties and sixties in an Anglo neighborhood.  And she used ground beef and tomato juice.

That's not the point, either.

I once had a little boy who dubbed his red plaid pajamas his "Spider-Man pajamas."  There wasn't anything remotely Spidey about them, other than the red.  But who was I to tell him they weren't Spider-Man pajamas?  To him, they were.

It's work being around someone whose truth always trumps your truth.

He could have opened his mind to the possibility of there being at least two kinds of Spanish rice that had value.  What he considered to be authentic had value to him; the comfort food from my childhood had value to me.  He could have allowed himself to see that those two options could have equal, if different, value.  It shouldn't have been a problem for me to make it that way.  Even to call it Spanish rice, like my mother did.

So there I was, fully separated from this person by law, a parade of negative experiences, and more than a dozen months, still struggling to not qualify the name of my Spanish rice in deference to his opinion.  Still feeling, even though I knew all along that his ways did not necessarily surpass my ways, like I had to say, "It's not real Spanish rice--that's just what I call it."

Gah!

There could be fifty ways to make Spanish rice.  This is my way.  It's delicious.  It's comfort food.  My children love it, and one always asks for it for his birthday dinner.  My mother raised me on it and kindness.   It attracted the interest and compliments of a handful of people who work with me.  There is nothing wrong with it.  I'm eating it.  And it is Spanish rice.