Ok, so I wrote this story in the early summer of 2008.  And I just had a repeat of the same incident. Except all three of my children were in attendance. I was still annoyed…but I didn’t end up throwing myself onto my bed and weeping. So I guess I’m making progress in the grieving/healing department.  Phew!

HEY!  Who ate my damned sausage??!

by Sandi Amorello

This is a story about a sausage.  One, single, crummy little sausage. Not even a really good sausage…like you might get from the butcher department at a place like Whole Foods.  No.  I am talking about your mass produced, garden-variety sausage…out of a box from the frozen food aisle at the local grocery store.

This tiny sausage unknowingly became a painful reminder of something missing in my life as of late.  NO….not sex.  Consideration. That tiny sausage and the events of a certain Sunday morning in June were a reminder of the fact that I no longer have someone in my life (at least on a consistent basis) who is concerned with my personal happiness.  No one who is mature enough and who loves me enough to…GASP!…consider my needs.

Sometimes one of the worst things about being alone is having no one there who is thinking of your well-being.   And when you are responsible for the care and feeding of three children, the fact that there is no one there thinking of YOUR happiness and well-being becomes even more disheartening.  There is this huge missing piece of the puzzle.  It doesn’t matter how much you love yourself.  It doesn’t matter how many friends you have.  How many family members who care about you. You still no longer have someone there on a daily basis.  You no longer have that connectedness…that built in understanding…that unspoken promise that says something like, “If there is a sausage left…I will not eat it without asking if you’d like it.  Or at least I’ll offer to split it with you!”

So it was a lovely Sunday morning.  My children were relaxing. School had just ended and summer was officially upon us.  I can tell  you right now that I am not the type of mother who cooks her kids some labor-intensive breakfast every morning.  But, I do try once in a while to put forth the effort, so they won’t walk around someday proclaiming such things as, “I don’t ever remember my mother making us breakfast.  I think I ate goldfish crackers every morning.”  So I had offered to make one of their favorites: scrambled eggs, toast….and sausage.

Now, my daughter was away.  I only had with me two children.  Boy children.

I had my music on…bopping around the kitchen, enjoying the summer sunshine, making scrambled eggs and toast… and heating up the frozen sausage.  It smelled good.  And it was gong to taste good. School was out. I was happy.  Drew was still dead…but I was at the point where I could keep that in the recesses of my soul and still be happy cooking breakfast for our kids on a Sunday morning…solo.  I was not weeping into the frying pan.

What happened next, however, changed my state of mind completely.

I went from happy to sad in the blink of an eye. Or, rather, in the time it takes one 12 year old to eat a 2.5 inch previously frozen sausage.

My two boys had eaten…and eaten…and eaten. I had gone the distance.  Cooked for them, plated it for them, served them.  I was happy to do it.  Which was unusual for me.  I am not all that domestic sometimes.  It was a beautifully sunny day, and I loved hearing them as they sat on the bench outside our kitchen door…talking boy talk.  I thought, “Life is not so bad, Sandi.”

I then commenced making my own breakfast. I thought, “Hmmm…I deserve something yummy.”  I decided to scramble a couple of eggs for myself…pop an organic whole grain English muffin into the toaster….and as I caught a glimpse of one last lonely sausage still sitting in the little frying pan, I said to myself, “I know those things cannot be good for me…but that would taste so yummy this morning.  I am having that sausage!”  I could taste its imitation-maple-injected goodness, already.

I picked out one of my favorite plates…one of the blue and white patterned porcelain ones that had been part of my grandmother’s kitchen when I was a young girl. I treasure those plates.

I put the sausage on the special plate.

I put the plate down onto the counter.  It sat there happily waiting for me, while I had my back turned to it and was at the stove, preparing my perfectly yummy gently scrambled eggs.  I had made myself my favorite coffee in my new French press contraption.  Sunshine was streaming through the windows.  As I said, life was not so bad.

Until I turned around to grab the plate with the sausage, so I could add the eggs and perfectly toasted organic whole grain English muffin as its companions.

I turned…and I saw my paternal grandmother’s blue and white kitchen plate.  But it was, somehow, naked looking.  There was no sausage.  Where was my damned sausage??  I glanced around the kitchen.  For a brief moment in time, I even wondered to myself if I had eaten it and somehow forgotten.  But, no.  That wasn’t it.  I knew I was not going out of my mind.  Not on this particular morning, at least.  It was then that my 9 year old son came strolling through the kitchen. I stopped him in his tracks. “Did you eat my sausage??” I implored.

No, he hadn’t eaten my sausage.  “Well, someone ate my sausage!  It was sitting right here, on this plate.  Now it’s NOT on this plate!  What the heck happened to my sausage??”  I was clearly losing it…and my 9 year old, being the intelligent and sensitive child that he is, could obviously sense that his mother was about to blow a fuse.

“Did your brother eat my sausage??  Where is he??!!!”  As I stood in my kitchen, transforming from Ms. Perfect Mommy into some vision from Dante’s Inferno….I heard Cole out in the driveway: “HOLDEN!  Did you eat mom’s sausage????”

My 12-year-old son came into the kitchen…his usual easy-going self.  “Oh…I didn’t know that was YOUR sausage. I just saw it on the plate.  I thought no on was eating it, so I ate it. “

Okay.  This made perfect sense to a 12 year old.  Lonely looking sausage.  Pre-pubescent stomach sends direct order to eat loner sausage.  Brain is not connected to stomach.   It made no matter that he had already consumed 8 of the 10 sausages I had cooked that morning.   Cooked?  Who am I kidding.  The word is reconstituted.  We are talking about those frozen things that are already cooked.  This is not gourmet fare, as I already mentioned.  Which made the loss of my one crappy, cheap little sausage treat all the worse.

WAS I NOT WORTHY OF ONE CRAPPY, CHEAP, FROZEN RECONSTITUED SAUSAGE???

I recall babbling something about “consideration” and something in regard to the fact that a singular sausage would generally not be found just hanging out on a brand spanking newly washed plate unless it was meant for someone’s breakfast.  MINE.

Then I just lost it.  The next thing I remember was walking up the stairs to my bedroom, feeling as if I had just been newly widowed.  I fell limply onto my bed….and just sobbed.  And mumbled obscenities into my pillow.  For a good 15 minutes or possibly even longer.  I sobbed and swore until nothing else was left to come out.  It was a familiar laundry list. “I am so f-ing tired of being all alone.” “I am so f-ing tired of taking care of everything and everyone all by myself.”  “I am so f-ing tired of having no one who is here for me.”

And….a new one to add to the list:  “I am so f-ing tired of no one caring about my happiness! All I wanted was that one damned sausage!”

Okay.  That last one does sound a lot funnier in hindsight.  But, the message is still the same.  It’s lonely at the top….when you’re alone.  Sometimes you just want someone there to save a sausage for you.

© 2008 Sandi Amorello/Silver Crayon Studios, Inc.  All rights reserved.

The Irreverent Widow, Silver Crayon Studios and the SC Studios mark are all trademarks of Silver Crayon Studios, Inc.