Member-only story
What’s For Dinner?
How I managed to become a short-order cook in a house of five
A year and a half ago, we blended households with my nonagenarian in-laws. As with so many people who lived through the Depression, the experience had a profound effect on how they managed their life post-WWII.
It is little wonder then that we bumped up against what the modern age calls “hoarderism”. There was very little these dear souls wanted to give up as they downsized from a 2500 square foot home to sharing a house with three others: 20+ photo albums detailing their various world adventures, books (sometimes in duplicate), birthday cards, and letters from people they didn’t remember, cups, statues, clothes not worn in decades, and the like.
We managed to help them separate the necessities and valuable memory items from things that were really not that important, and life settled in.
In all the potential pitfalls we discussed before embarking on this new life, I never imagined that meals would be an issue. My spouse, a physician, never had regular hours, and our children grew up rarely having an evening meal with him. So I had been pretty used to a meal schedule…
