Embrace the Chicken

    So…I’m trying to get back into my work routine but unfortunately, I’m having the exterior of my house repainted at the moment. The good news: I have a very conscientious painter who is sanding everything—and I do mean everything. Our shrubbery is coated in an inch of sawdust. We look like the before pictures in a termite commercial.

     The bad news: I feel like I’m living inside a dentist’s drill. I can’t get any work done. Nada. I can barely sit on my office chair without the vibrations knocking me off. I don’t have a laptop (gotta sell that book before I can afford one). So today I decided to be a good daughter and spend most of the day helping my 94-year-old father do his chores.

     Don’t let my dad’s advanced age fool you; he’s a Russian. And just like vodka, he is no less potent with age. He reads dozens of books a year, still has a full head of hair and knows to the penny what he has in his bank account. 

     But that said, spending the day with a very elderly person (which I try to do once a week) can often be an exercise in extreme patience. This morning, I found myself inside the A&P supermarket for an hour (longer than I would ever be there myself) while my dad debated the merits of various cheeses.

     I wouldn’t have minded so much but the market was freezing. Outside, it was 85 degrees. Inside, we were hovering at Siberian winter. Of course my sturdy Russian-stock father didn’t notice the cold at all. He just kept debating the merits of Swiss cheese at $7.99 a pound versus Cheddar at $5.99 while I slowly turned the color of the Roquefort. Have patience, I tried to tell myself.

     I wanted to feel compassionate.

     I wanted to feel my toes.

     In desperation for warmth, I grabbed a pre-cooked oven roasted chicken from the warming counter and clutched it in my arms like a baby.

     This is not exactly how I want to picture myself at this juncture in life, standing in the middle of an A&P, embracing a Perdue oven roaster while my dad decides whether he’d prefer the spreadable brie or the pre-diced pepperjack and my painter slowly reduces my house to a toothpick. But hey, sometimes in life, you just have to go where circumstances lead you.

     Sometimes, you have to embrace the chicken.