Salmon Two Ways

It’s finally dinner, and I’m already at the table when my youngest daughter joins us. A serving plate sits at the centre, heaped with the bright orangey red of tandoori salmon. 

“Looks delicious–” I tell my husband, who’s just brought over a bowl of yogurt and cucumber, flecked with red chili. “–it’s been ages since we’ve had this.”

My daughter looks thoughtful, and a little surprised: “Don’t you remember the last time?” I don’t. It could be months – years.

“It was last Spring. The day I broke my wrist.” Then I remember: that long drive home from cottage country, my daughter in pain and her arm in a rough splint. Yet on arriving home we ate the tandoori salmon anyway – it was dinnertime and we were hungry, plus we couldn’t face sitting in Emerg for hours with empty stomachs. 

More trouble

Then a few days later my husband fell and broke his wrist, too – and I felt like our family had entered a different dimension, bound to a repeating pattern. We got through the next few weeks by relying on lessons learned through years of family life: people get hurt, bad things happen, but you still try to meet the demands of each day. It was mainly up to me, and intermittently my oldest daughter when she was home, to keep the wheel of domestic chores going around.

But that was months ago and here we are again, eating salmon. Arms on the table and none of them fractured or recovering. I tear another piece of naan and put it on my plate. The potential for an enjoyable summer lies ahead of us, not so far away. 

PERSONAL ANECDOTE