Weekend Meditation

Weekend Meditation: Eating Yogurt with a Fork

Dana Velden
Dana Velden
Dana Velden's first book, Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook (Rodale Books) is available where ever books are sold. She lives in Oakland, CA.
published May 29, 2011
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Every one knows that moving is no fun, so those details will be spared. Let’s just fast forward to a post-move scenario, one where you’re still living in your original place but all your stuff was taken away the day before and while you thought you had organized things down to the last salt shaker, it turns out that you forgot the fact that there are still a few last meals to be eaten here. Like breakfast.

So rising up from your air mattress-on-the-floor sleeping nest, you rummage around in the kitchen, a disaster area of last minute packing chaos, digging out a lone container of plain yogurt from the fridge and a little strawberry jam, too. So far, so good. There’s the coffee mug you had remembered to leave behind and score! a dusty fork wedged in the back of a drawer. Breakfast in hand, you wandered back to your bed which has been neatened into a makeshift couch.

Sitting there, your eye travels to the arch above the doorway. How many times had you gazed at that arch while talking on the phone, or considered that crack in the wall while thinking through a problem? You notice the sliver of sunlight that makes its way across the floor at this time of the year and the crooked drawer in the built-in cupboard that you had always meant to fix. And without intending to, you realize you are saying goodbye. Not with the words so much, but with a feeling, a mix of sadness and sweetness and appreciation. You realize this is your last breakfast here.

Forks made lousy spoons but you manage to scoop most of this delicious last breakfast into your mouth. Just like your feelings and just like this situation, the taste is a little sweet and a little tart. Grateful for it all, you eventually abandon the fork and scoop up the last of the yogurt with your finger, and lick the cup clean.

(Image: Dana Velden)