I’ve started ordering pizza almost every Friday night, partly because it seems like the thing people do on Fridays, a family gathered around the pizza, sharing it and their time together (I know I romanticize things…).
I don’t necessarily have a strong craving for it each week, but I often don’t know what else to do for dinner. Mom sleeps a lot, oftentimes at dinnertime, so many nights I don’t know if she’ll want dinner or not. That leaves me trying to figure out if I prepare something just in case and then just have the dinner alone if she isn’t up for it or not preparing anything until she gets up later and I scramble to figure something out. Making dinner for one has never been easy for me, so I tend not to bother if it’s just me. “Friday” gives me an excuse to order pizza- no work required, easy leftovers if I eat alone. I order her favorite with mine; usually, I end up eating it on my own…
I’m not sure how it started, but many years ago Mom and I had a Friday night tradition of getting a Red Baron pizza. I don’t know why that was our choice (yes, I do- it was the cost!). Like clockwork, we ate it together in the living room every Friday. That changed over time, starting with us both joining Weight Watchers. On one hand it doesn’t seem that long ago, and yet it feels like a million years ago too.
When I first moved away to go to university and Mom spent some time there with me (I was living with her sister), we had a brief pizza tradition on Fridays then too. I was commuting on the train from downtown Montreal, so Mom would meet me with the car at a train stop a few before my usual stop. It was near a Pizza Hut that we’d go to. I think the first time we did it we saw “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” or “Tuck Everlasting”. We definitely saw both of those movies after dinner at that Pizza Hut on one of those Friday nights! We may have only done it those two times, but our little rendezvouses are some of my fondest memories! It had a sort of redemptive quality to it for the years when Mom was a single, working mother and we didn’t get to have experiences like that of her picking me up from “school.”
That was exactly 20 years ago, almost to the day. Fall 2002. Wow! It’s really hard for me to grasp how time has passed sometimes!
I am immensely thankful for the friendship I have had with my mom. I know I am fortunate for that…. It also makes these days so much harder. I miss having her to pal around with. To share my day with. To have Friday night traditions with. I miss my mom so much. Especially on nights like these Fridays when I eat my pizza alone.
Just Write, Jackie! 