Divorce can be ridiculous.<\/p>\n
My mother is a terrific cook, as was her mother<\/p>\n
before her, as they both taught my brother and me.<\/p>\n
My father\u2019s mother could not cook to save a dog\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
In leaving my mom, my dad knew what he was he was losing.<\/p>\n
To that end, he had his lawyer add a stipulation into the divorce<\/p>\n
agreement: He requested half of my mom\u2019s recipes!<\/p>\n
He made this request in writing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This request quickly became a family joke.<\/p>\n
How on earth was he entitled to even one of her recipes?<\/p>\n
Between gales of laughter, Mom would ask, \u201cWhich half<\/p>\n
of my recipes should I give him? He didn\u2019t specify.<\/p>\n
Does he want the ingredients or the directions?<\/p>\n
Or does he want me to rip them all in half? If I do that,<\/p>\n
does he want all the right side halves because I\u2019m a lefty?\u201d<\/p>\n
The jokes were relentless.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dad would feed the comedy with his own actions.<\/p>\n
Unable to get Mom to cooperate with his recipe request,<\/p>\n
the only time he had to copy recipes was when he stayed<\/p>\n
with us when Mom was out of town. He would sit hunched<\/p>\n
over Mom\u2019s recipe books and boxes while sitting on the high<\/p>\n
bar stools with the uncomfortable bars in the back of the seat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dad didn\u2019t know the names of the recipes, so his list featured<\/p>\n
items like \u201cMom\u2019s chocolate pie,\u201d \u201cGrandma\u2019s Meatloaf,\u201d and<\/p>\n
\u201ceasy chicken and rice.\u201d These recipes would not be easy to find<\/p>\n
by description within Mom\u2019s labyrinthine recipe organizing system.<\/p>\n
No one offered to help him. If we had cell phones at the time,<\/p>\n
I am certain we would have taken and posted pictures of him<\/p>\n
sitting on a bar stool in a sea of recipes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We know my grandmother was laughing with us.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Divorce can be ridiculous. My mother is a terrific cook, as was her mother before her, as they both taught my brother and me. My father\u2019s mother could not cook to save a dog\u2019s life. In leaving my mom, my dad knew what he was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139609,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139431\/revisions\/139609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}