Split Pea Soup

Well, well, well. Look who decided to finally come back from the dead—or at least the super-busy-and-stressed-so-I-might-as-well-be-dead. Working an 8-5 job when your job actually consists of a job an a half and simultaneously trying to maintain some semblance of a social life isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Oh God, I could totally go for one of those right now.

Trying to juggle life and work and family and consequently having a panic attack in a crowded bar on Halloween has taught me a few things about stress and anxiety: it’s not worth it. I realized this while devouring an overflowing bowl of my mother’s famous split pea soup and vegging out like a stoner at a Dead concert last week. (Sidenote: by “famous split pea soup”, I mean one of my friends asks to be warned two days in advance of when it’s made so she can clear her schedule and devote her full attention to it—it hasn’t, like, been featured on the food channel or Martha Stewart or the Today Show or anything [but Jesus, it should]).

I sat in the TV room, thoroughly exhausted from my week—which was only halfway over, by the way—trying to unwind from the expense reports and spreadsheets and legal waivers and family politics, waiting for my soup to come to some ingestible-appropriate temperature. When it finally did, I took a spoonful and was transported, Proust style, to a calm place, a happy place where unicorns frolic with cheery little leprechauns under double rainbows.

Now, my mom’s split pea soup doesn’t look or smell particularly wonderful. My mom’s split pea soup may wreak of farts and resemble something Reagan upchucked in a circular fashion, but by God, does it have special-super-amazingly-awesome powers.

You kind of forget everything that’s going on around you when you’re eating this soup—my friend has good reason to devote an entire evening to it. I wolfed it down in a kind of sick, totally unhealthy, cathartic “girls who eat their feelings” sort of way (I’m totally that girl, and I have a LOT of feelings, believe me). Everything melted down around me, and I forgot all about deadlines, grudges, and broken baking promises.

I went to bed early that night, calmer and more peaceful than I had in a while.  The past few weeks have been really stressful, and I’ve been overbooked. The lion in me was just trying to conquer too many parts of the jungle, and the panda couldn’t get out. It was trapped inside, just sitting in a corner, too tired to complain or make a modicum of an effort to get out. It peeked its head out every once in a while as if to say, “is it ok if I come out now? I’m getting kind of lonely and I think I’m developing restless leg syndrome.” And then the lion came out and bitch slapped it and was all, “RAAWWR GET BACK, PANDA! I HAVE TOO MUCH SHIT TO DO TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR MELLOW ASS! YOU CAN COME OUT WHEN I’M DONE SLAYING THIS WILDEBEEST AND BALANCING MY CHECKBOOK!”

But the pea soup was like Popeye’s spinach to the panda. Suddenly he was imparted with all the knowledge and strength necessary to vanquish the lion and roar back (well, sort of—I mean, this is a panda we’re talking about, after all) “Fuck you, lion! You can take your wildebeest and shove it! I’m gonna get me some pumpkin ice cream! And I want a raise, goddammit!”

And like that, the lion was gone, leaving only a confident, yet still nearly comatose, panda in his place. The panda doesn’t care about work after 5 or on the weekends. The panda doesn’t care about family drama that doesn’t need to be cared about. The panda doesn’t worry about not participating in every single social event going on in a twenty-mile radius because the panda is smarter than that. The panda makes mistakes and learns from them. The lion just barrels through the jungle fucking shit up. The lion’s favorite food is fear and weakness and stress. The panda’s is split pea soup.

It’s amazing what that one meal did. The world is a shitty place—the economy may be in the crapper, terrorists may try to blow us up, Tom Cruise may never stop making movies… but my mom will always be making her split pea soup.