right now

Right now, there's the smell of of popcorn and chocolate cupcakes and herring. She's fifteen and she has particular rules about eating. Her list of things she will not eat -- not even look at -- not even mention -- is longer than her list of foods she finds acceptable.


She doesn't eat breakfast food.

She doesn't eat anything between slices of bread.

She baked coffee/chocolate cake this evening, poured two thirds of the very liquid batter into baking cups and the rest into a loaf pan. She asked, "are these eggs from Edith's store?" Yes, they were. "Then I can lick the bowl. 'Don't we all want to lick the bowl?'" she quipped.

She made her own tacos -- fish tacos -- with kippered herring, hot sauce, and sour cream. She places them on a paper towel. She never uses plates. The lid was off the sour creame. She hid it behind the bowl of apples. She can not look at lids of things. She copes well. She manages. I don't know what she sees in all these things she can't look at, what she tastes in all these things she can't eat.

It was time for movies. One on her laptop and one on tv -- she is a multi-tasker. Cinderella Story on the laptop -- Georgia Rules on tv.

She needed popcorn. I pop it in a whirley popper, with just a bit of oil. She doesn't mind that this popcorn is better for her than the kind she sometimes makes in a microwave. She tops it with a bit of melted margerine and a scatter of brewers yeast.

The other major sound in the house is my husband playing guitar. He has mastered the art of playing meditation music no matter what other sound is going on. He goes into the music. Sometimes I hear voices singing among the strings in the songs he plays.

Outside, there is rain. The wind whisks through from time to time. There will be snow. The sky today scudded through gray and blue and sun and rain. Pale trees lit up with one ray of light that flicked across them. We drove a mountain road. We gave our town the benefit of the doubt and went inside a store. There is nothing I would buy. Most things I see remind me of poverty. We are thirty miles from anywhere anyone would want to be. But inside our house, we don't have to please anyone but ourselves.