nourishment

I fell upon a beautifully written opinion piece in last Sunday's New York Times magazine and let's just say that it got me thinking. In Notes from a Dragon Mom, Emily Rapp writes about her 18 month old son, who is dying of a rare genetic disorder and will most likely not live past his third birthday. This little dying boy's mother writes with such candor, strength and assurance that you almost feel like she is trying to comfort you, the reader, while it should be entirely the other way around. 

I have since then only halfheartedly been thinking up ideas for my blog. Here is a woman whose child is dying. A woman who is parenting a child with no future. And here I am talking about Brussels sprouts and about how Autumn makes me feel vulnerable. It's embarrassing. The exercise feels irrelevant and highly narcissistic and I am unsure as to whether I really have a voice.  What is the point?

I wonder what I would cook for Emily Rapp.  What could I feed her that would momentarily make her forget her pain and her anguish? You see, nourishment has always been my antidote to pain, for myself and for the people I love. The need to nourish others, to take care of them; it is the only concrete thing that I can think of because I cannot - though I would - take their pain away and make it mine. I guess that is the point, for now?