It’s about 6:38a on a Friday morning. I am in a hybrid of my post St. Croix morning routine (sun before screens / OMs and breathwork first thing / protein as king). It’s a little bit different as I am not walking the dogs today, or until their new harnesses come in, really.
David leaves this morning for some time down in Alabama. Once he returns, we have no travel scheduled until October – outside of some college move in dates. Three in college this year. We are here.
I don’t know if it was that thought of arrival into this chapter where the majority of our 5 kids were post high school or something else, but I found myself staring off thinking about Frozen Spaghetti. Imagining my 8th grade self finishing up her autobiography (a final project for our lit class) and coming up with a name. “Frozen Spaghetti”. And there you go – typed it on the word processor and the rest is history.
A little over ten years later, somebody asked me if I was a writer (I was writing in a moleskine on a beach) and I almost said “no, not really”. But I was a writer. I wrote all the time. So I returned home from that trip and started a blog… what should I name it?
Frozen Spaghetti.
In reflection, I understand the depth behind the name. At the time I wrote the autobiography, 1994-1995, my dad had just had a heart attack. Life changed tremendously – I remember being told that morning we weren’t going to school / would be late. I remember a lot of casseroles. I remember a box of movies being dropped off at the house with some in there that we would have NEVER been allowed to rent from Blockbuster.
It’s not new to me that Frozen Spaghetti was a nod to my mom’s resourcefulness for 5 kids and a traveling preacher husband. Big batches of homemade sauce, thawed out for a convenient homemade dinner on a busy night. Intention behind efficiency. A short cut, the long way.
But it is actually new in this moment that I thought to name Frozen Spaghetti the year after my dad’s heart attack when he was in his recovery phase, walking one lap around the dining room table to start exercising meaningfully. (He would eventually get up to power walking 5 miles a day.)
It makes me wonder just how much frozen spaghetti we were having, and it makes me feel more tender and supportive of my mom. How exhausting, really. But how exhaustion can be kind of sweet when you are doing all the things from scratch, with your grandmother’s recipe and great-grandmother’s bowl.
Looking at my era ahead with the majority of kids in college, the business growing, the upcoming travel and recording / writing projects… I am thankful for the reminder to be resourceful, to make something out of nothing, to save a little of the good sauce for a rainy day and to bring through to the present moment, gifts from my ancestors – traits from my matriarchal line, to help me see it through.
What can you remember to pull into your present moment today that connects you and resources you from your lineage?
Frozen Spaghetti 