My Compliments to the Chef

(Or, Coming A Long Way)

If you have never spent Thanksgiving with a chef, you should try it at least once. The food is outrageous in the best possible way, and the invitation to stay, eat, and be exactly as you are feels like it is always waiting for you. That has been true with my chef.

Last year, I spent Thanksgiving with him too, but I cannot remember sitting at a table. I probably ate on the couch. After brain surgery, almost everything happened on the couch.

His close friend, also a chef, was with us last year. We were fighting different battles, but we were equally exhausted. We drifted through the holiday the way sick people do, trying to stay upright.

This year, that same friend came back a day early. Not for the meal, but to help me move furniture, hang art, and rearrange half the house. The living room became the dining room. The library became the living room. A strange room between the bedrooms became an upstairs den. It was chaos, especially with three large dogs following us in circles, confused that none of us could sit still.

Dogs are good at reminding you to sit down. They do not need a reason. They just know when you should.

While we were taking the legs off a couch, the chef friend stopped, looked right at me, and said, with complete sincerity, that I had gotten a lot of my strength back.

I lit up. I told him he had too.

He laughed and said that last year neither of us would have been able to do any of this. He was right. I said we had come a long way. He agreed.

His words hit harder than I expected. Maybe harder than he even intended.

I am not proud of how I speak to myself. I am still quick to point out how far I have fallen, and slow to notice how far I have come. I stay loyal to habits that no longer serve me and resist doing the deeper work that would change the way I see myself.

I am always a work in progress.

Being a Cancer Shark has taught me something I never wanted to learn. Sometimes the bravest thing I can do is stay down. Rest is not weakness. Rest is survival. Sleep belongs to the living.

My gratitude list is long this year. It always is. But I keep coming back to that moment, disassembling furniture. Look how far we have come. Someone had to say it out loud for me to hear it.

And I did hear it.

This is why I raised a glass to my chef, who made dinner again this year. He creates space for the people he loves to regain strength. He feeds us. He watches us rise. He names the victories we might miss on our own.

And this time, I finally recognized mine.

That’s my chef, in the black zip-up, and his friend, the chef in the baseball cap.