short grain rice

It's the little things that are important.

Today I am going to make rice pudding.

A few nights ago, forgetting dinner as I worked, I was hungry at 11pm so I made banana custard, using my precious Edmonds Custard Powder from New Zealand. It tasted just as good as it did when my mother made it fifty years ago.

Last year I brought a few small things from New Zealand. One was a teapot. I couldn't find a teapot I liked here, or if I liked it it was expensive and china and I imagined it in pieces on my tiled floor. My NZ teapot felt so out of place here that I was almost uncomfortable using it. I said so. My happily married friend said "If you can't integrate things from your past then you still have a lot of healing to do". I thought, "what do you know, it's perfectly healthy to want a completely new life". I said nothing.

But somewhere inside I knew she was right. Back then I couldn't even put photos of my children up, it hurt too much to admit that there was no unified happy ending for my dream "and they all lived happily ever after". I looked at the photos, but always put them back in the drawer.

Another friend gave me a photo frame, and the first photo of "the kids" went up. In the glass cabinet certainly, but it was a start.

A few days ago I put a photo of myself, with my husband, up on the mantelpiece. He is a huge part of my history. We share our wonderfully interesting children. I felt good about being comfortable with that photo.

What has that got to do with short grain rice? Today, for myself, I am making his favourite. Rice pudding.

Banana custard, rice pudding, favourites from my childhood, from my middle life, and now in my future. I think things are integrating all by themselves.