Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Absence make the heart go wander.
Both, I suppose, are true.
I’m thinking about deprivation—absence—because I have been on a vegetable juice fast for over 48 hours and am deliriously hungry for something I can chew, something with texture and flavor, something buttered. My husband, Michael, has juice-fasted with me these past two days and we are preparing to break our fast. I peeled an assortment of white and orange sweet potatoes, cut them into rounds—cut their fat middles into half-rounds—put them in a casserole dish with plops of butter, and slid them into the oven while it was still preheating.
Years ago, when Michael and I hadn’t had sex for two months, we sought counseling. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to have sex, we just weren’t having it. It was too risky, to vulnerable, took too much energy. It was intimidating, easier left undone. I had a cognitive desire to partake in body-to-body intimacy, but my emotional and physical self was highjacked, under the control of an exhausted mommy-brain and a litany of fears that I would never be enough. The counselor’s advice? Abstinence. Set a period of time in which we would not allow ourselves sexual intimacy. See if our desire found space to rise up and write the story. I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t remember if it worked. One way or another we got back into a rhythm of intimacy.
After 20 minutes I returned to the kitchen to stir and fork the potatoes. The smell drew me in. I began almost to feel the potato on my tongue—the texture, the saltiness, the butter and warmth, even the way those sweet potatoes would feel in my stomach, a meal of substance. My fork couldn’t pierce the potato chunks. I set another timer and returned upstairs to my bed, where I lay devouring a book about writing.
I went to a MOPS meeting once and listened to a woman talk about having sex daily—or more—with her husband. It appeared to be an intentional stress-management technique: stop in the bedroom before a stressful meeting, and return there after the stressful meeting. Was this couple addicted to sex? Maybe. For better or worse, I have been more addicted to abstinence than indulgence. I am better at not relating, not watching, not eating, not sexing, not reading, not cleaning. The one exception, my most joyous indulgence, is sleep.
The second 20-minute timer on my phone made me jump. This time the fork sunk into the potatoes. I speared two chunks and returned the rest to the oven. With vigor I blew on the procured samples, fearful of burning my tongue in my excitement. I felt almost guilty eating those potatoes by myself in the kitchen—like candy Michael didn’t know about—first one piece, then the next. How quickly it became pedestrian, the tasting, the chewing, the swallowing—I have done it a million times. How rapidly I moved from fast to feast. Yes, absence made the heart grow fonder, but it wasn’t a new fondness; it was a remembrance, a desire to return to what nourished me. So if absence makes the heart go wander, is it because the thing that it left was not nourishing?
Motherhood subjected me, unwillingly, to sleep deprivation. Did my heart “grow fonder” or “go wander”? It got bitter. Seethingly bitter. Now that I sleep most nights uninterrupted, do I appreciate sleep with greater depth? Yes. But I also hold it more loosely, because I experienced the pain of losing it when I held it with passionate desire and commitment. Honestly? I wish I had let myself “go wander” during those years of little sleep—drink coffee, ask for help, eat chocolate, binge on a TV show. Loyalty can be a real drag.
I fetched Michael from his office with the promise of “real food.” He nearly leaped from his chair. A few minutes later we sat behind a white plate piled high with the entire contents of the baking pan, Michael’s arm around my shoulders, each with a fork in hand. We ate in satisfied silence, broken only by exaggerated mmmm’s, and an occasional thought from the day.
Motherhood also pried rigidity from my desperate, clinging hands. Unwillingly, I abstained from control. This was the worst kind of deprivation. Eventually I grew tired of dwelling on what I couldn’t have, so I wandered over to the “flexible” aisle and shopped there. Did I sometimes miss the old feeling of having control? Sure. Would I return to the way I was before? Hell no. These days I can be late, forget an item at the store, give a friend wrong information, leave the dishes in the sink and the laundry in the washing machine for days—and come back around to it when I have the time and capacity. Sometimes a forced absence is the only way to move forward.
At this moment, I am more grateful than usual for food. I am grateful for farmers and shippers, grateful for money to buy food, grateful for peeler and knife, oven and spices, and perhaps most of all, tastebuds—proof that pleasure is God’s idea, and food Her sensual offering.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Absence makes the heart go wander.
Absence makes the heart glad it left behind what it didn’t need.
Try absence sometime. See which way your heart turns. Maybe you will become grateful for something plain. Maybe you will discover a new love. Maybe you will leave behind a person or habit you don’t need.
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