Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a normal family that isn’t uncomfortable to be out with in public.
For some context, my mom has a recently resurfaced eating disorder. When I was in middle school she got really into Weight Watchers and joined and lost 50 lbs and maintained that for a very long time. She’s 71 now and has several longterm health issues (none related to her weight) that cause fluid retention and felt “big” and that bothered her. She can’t exercise because she has a spinal cord injury and breathing issues due to COPD. She goes to pulmonary therapy and uses oxygen at night. Walking is really the only way she can be active.
Around the holidays she began a very intense diet. She fasts all day and eats a small salad with chicken and tomatoes each night. She drinks water and coffee with zero calorie non dairy creamer. And that’s basically it. She talks about food constantly in a way that seems obsessive and like… I don’t know why you want to think about what you are eating and what you wish you could be eating so much. Feels like an awful lot of time spent obsessing over food. But she is pleased with her progress. I want to be clear she wasn’t overweight before she started this diet.
We had a brunch/lunch reservation today for a restaurant I’d wanted to go to for years. She’s the one who told me about it, it’s local to her and not us. I sent her a link to the website and their menu ahead of time. The website said they serve brunch and lunch at this time frame.
Sitting down and perusing the menu in the restaurant was a shit show. She wasn’t rude to our server, but she was difficult. He checked on us a dozen times and she wasn’t ready. The one thing she’d decided at home she wanted was on the lunch menu, and they were only serving off the brunch menu.
This is a “New American” style restaurant. It’s not very exotic except some things are served with a sauce or a dressing. They have 3 different burgers on their brunch menu. And 3 salads. And pancakes. And steak and eggs. And other kinds of eggs. And salmon. And chicken. And shrimp. And lamb, which she loves.
So then my dad asks the server if it might be possible to order the steak sandwich from the lunch menu? And the server says let me check with the kitchen, I imagine they can!
She says (to us, not the server) she can’t have eggs anymore because of her heart. She doesn’t want any of these other things. She doesn’t want the kitchen to make her something that isn’t on the menu. She doesn’t want to pick one of the fucking salads, the only things on their menu that don’t have a sauce or a spice or a protein that she doesn’t want. “I don’t want to order a salad. I eat salad every day.”
THIRTY MINUTES have now passed. I finally ask “Would you prefer to go somewhere else?”
“I guess I could get the croque madame without the eggs. I would NEVER pick this restaurant.”
Next time I send you a menu, just say that? Excuse me for thinking that between shrimp and chicken and burgers and lamb and salad, all things you have liked for the entire time I have known you, you would be able to find something.
Anyway my husband and I had a great meal. I hadn’t eaten the entire day so by the time the food arrived at 2:45pm I was stoked. I had a lovely spritz with hibiscus rose and along with my dad we shared bites of eggs, andouille, veggies, shrimp and grits, a creamy orzo with bacon, chicken tostadas, and matcha pancakes. All of the plates were “small” and meant for sharing. I thought it was fun!
