THE

END OF GRATITUDE

A Creative Commentary

By

David A. Archer

02/15/1968

(r.f.p.p.s.h.)

10/24/2006

It never really occurred to me in the majority of my youth, but I have come to find out that a person should never prepare a significant meal for anyone other than their spouse and children. Maybe a prospective significant other would be alright, as the understanding is in the effort being a special effort for a reason... which usually entails getting them naked and all sweaty.

I would even go so far as to say that a person should never prepare any average meal in adulthood for anyone either, even and especially sibling and their families. Unless it is a contracted, catered service that a person is performing.

It just seems to present a situation which people shouldn't have to deal with. Either the meal is exceptional, and then makes other people envious for various reasons... or it is sub-par and everyone feels as though there wasn't enough effort and care put into the preparation.

Either way, it leads to useless conflicts at best, and internalized malice that a person could never even guess at in the worst situations.

Why would anyone suspect that preparing an exceptional meal for someone else would inspire such ill disposition?

They wouldn't. It is just that simple. Especially if it is that such a meal were a normal course of existence.

I know these things now from experience. I have spent most of my adult life as a professional cook and I have to say that it never even dawned on me... until of course I viewed the resulting social destruction and emotional carnage that presenting exceptional dining experiences seems to inspire.

It was a Thanksgiving and a co-worker or mine didn't have any great plans for the holiday. He lived with his sister, her soon to be ex-husband and their child. I didn't have any great plans either, being that it was one of the first Thanksgivings I had off from work in some time.

I suggested that we throw something together. It even sounded like a great idea being everyone else had already done their shopping days ago and there were bound to be some good deals this close to the holiday.

I should have suspected something as we walked through the store and I continued to place just this amount and that amount of certain ingredients and products into the cart... just knowing from experience how much would suffice, and what could be purchased at a better price in some other form.

I opted for canned cranberry sauce, but decided against potato buds given the ease with which mashed potato's are to prepare. I opted for bread stuffing for the bird... and boxed as an extra portion just to have for seconds.

The gravy and jus would almost make itself from the vegetable scraps left after the soup began to simmer, and the gibs of course, already included in the bird.

As we continued to "shop" for what I thought would be an average Thanksgiving meal... no really big frills, the individual I have mentioned began to get a bit shifty.... even repeatedly asking about difficulty level and complications he was obviously foreseeing in the preparation of the meal itself.

It really should have dawned on me then that he was becoming uncomfortable for some reason... some strange reason I would not realize for some years.

In my mind, it was going to be a piece of cake. Pleasurable even to lay down a simple, though adequate spread. Something everyone could enjoy that was inexpensive (I think we spent fifty dollars between us - including beers and the like) and good as well.

Just to put this in perspective, the previous years I had spent the holiday serving hordes of people similar meals which two or three of us did all of the preparation work for. I am talking hundreds of people in one service shift. Between six and ten people was going to be a walk in the park. Shits and giggles, even.

It went off without a hitch, and his sister even pitched in with some of the prep stuff as the day went along, but soon she was no where to be found in the kitchen... which was alright with me, as it was kind of part of the idea.... just a day where everyone could kick back and do nothing if they so pleased.

Including myself, as the oven and stove were doing most of the work.

As I said, it wasn't a complicated little menu. Turkey, mashed potato's, gravy.... cranberry sauce, veggies....stuffing... soup.. and pie for desert of course. I used easy, pre-made shells and a quick mix of canned pumpkin... the standard stuff.

It just never occurred to me that anyone would find reason for ill feelings. And it wouldn't for some time.

As our "friendship" dragged on, I made some advances in the local culinary scene and found yet another opportunity to kind of pitch in when his wife's parents were visiting from Japan.

I borrowed some plateware from work and made some purchases through the purveyors.. and put together several courses. It was that evening where I began to notice the surfacing effects of presenting such.

It was as if it were expected. As if somehow he was aloof instead of the communal potentials which were at hand.

It was rather peculiar to say the least, but I believe that is where gratitude ended entirely, between us.

I wasn't put out about it. As far as I care, it was his problem. Even the extended courses were really no sweat for me.

I just can't figure out how it somehow meant that I owed him something. At least as his demeanor presented.

I soon found that he isn't exactly the Lone Ranger about such strange personal twists. Even my own sibling displayed similar distance in social interaction.

It was some months later when I was at my brothers ex wife's house. I was staying there and wasn't working at the time... so it was even easier for me to put simple meals together.

It is just something that is a part of my life.

I distinctly remember when I began to notice it among my immediate family and former inlaws.

To me, it was just a simple meat loaf... but to them, I suppose it was something they never expected.

It was said that evening, to have been the best meat loaf any of them had ever had.

After that, any time I spent in the kitchen was regarded as some freakish moment. My brothers ex-wife even insisted on "just watching" as I prepared simple things like roasted chicken. Simple things.. just simple, good things.

Soon there was this air of competition. Unspoken, but present in some odd way. As if it had been my intention to compete... which really kind of was a let down in then knowing that even the simple effort put forward in a few good meals, was entirely missed. The good meal aspect, had been transformed into some reason to feel set aside.

It was somehow wasted.

I knew this when I got to the house one evening, and found a rather pronounced little drama going on about already having dinner taken care of.

This was incredibly strange as it was supposed to mean something... it was obvious that it was supposed to mean something to me, but I could not even begin to guess what that might be.

The meal was to be some concoction garnered from a magazine which entailed the use of boneless chicken breast, cream and a can of soft drink beverage all heaped together in a crock pot.

It was a great production as to how magnificent it was said to have been as it was being prepared. The reviews in the magazine raved, as it were.

So pronounced that I almost felt embarrassed for them. From out of no where was suddenly a need for affirmation. Affirmation through boneless, skinless chicken breast and a can of soda pop in a crock pot.

It may have been that very day that I realized, as I considered the bizarre display I was experiencing, that if it hadn't been for similar envies as had produced the soda pop chicken breast, non existent competition winner, I would probably have been in Paris at that moment. And with the time difference, I might have been sitting at a quiet cafe, studying notes from the day and working on my French in readiness for the next day at culinary school.

But, no big surprise as I began to notice - "they" sent the boneless chicken breast, soda pop guy instead.

Strange creatures we are.

There is no end to excuses and justifications in situations like that. Especially after they begin to be fueled with the fears of being found out.

Found out about anything that may be of their lives at that point... in the heavy atmosphere of their own displaced psyche... which I imagine begins with the efforts of insisting that a crock pot, boneless chicken soda pop breast in broken cream sauce... means anything more than a failure somewhere.

Whether it is in one's own perception of some non existent competition which would have been an outright loss if such competition were a fact.... or the myriad of crap needed to support it, were actually of existence in the degree of presented want for said support.

I could have been in France, but was instead trapped with levels of desperation I never knew existed. Exposed to them for nothing more than being able to present simple goodness with little effort.

Levels of desperation which seemed more fitting in the lives of those having produced them, than in the fact that others would have to experience them.

No reason beyond a type of want that was obviously not even understood by those seeking to fill it. A want with no reason, becoming more important even than the genuine opportunities being destroyed in the excercise of such want.

A want I can't ever see understanding, much less trying to fill with boneless chicken breast stewed in a corn syrup based soft drink concoction. Then insisting it victorious in regard to something that must be far and away beyond even the simple idea of the venue in which it is presented as victorious - being the culinary.

The life experience here seems to boil down to yet another common fact. For some reason things that should not even be perceived, manifest in the strangest ways without even being of relation to anything else. Then further, in a manner which would seem to promote some justification in the furtherance of such dispositions.