Rock Island, IL

Or, rather, Bar Jester Style.

At any rate, we’re into it.

I don’t mean March Madness, though that’s coming (and may the teams that God and I despise lose early and often).

I don’t mean spring, because winter hardly made a showing this year (though the cruelest month is not yet upon us, and there’s always the strong possibility that it will strike like an avenging demon).

I mean the period of bright sorrow. I mean Lent: that season that seems to go on and on and on, that interminable time of year from which a certain annoying pink bunny might well have taken its clue. This is a journey that can make folks meatless in Seattle, cause men at sea to lose their beerings, turn Cheeseheads into NonDairyCheeseSubstituteheads, Big Macs into Boca Macs, buttered toast into toast. Were it possible, the bright sorrow would convert Bourbon Street to “Street.” Lentil soup gets promoted from “inedible” to “gourmet,” while the orphans in Oliver stop singing “Food, Glorious Food” to intone that mournful seasonal substitute, “Tofu, Pukeable Tofu.”

It’s no fun. And, although there are many reasons this is so, one reason stands out above all the others: it isn’t meant to be fun.

But be of good cheer. There are ways to make it worse, and there are people who can help you do it.

You Westerners especially need help, what with that wimpy forty-day deal you do. The smudge that makes everyone so self-conscious has barely been absorbed into the forehead and poof! You’re half-way to Chocolate bunnies. What you need is something equal to what in the East is called “Clean Monday”—plus the resolve to do what, frankly, few of your Dox bruthren and sistern do, which is observe the day by using your mouth for breathing and speaking only (and maybe a little water).

Now that’s not much fun if you enjoy preparing food and eating it, which, I confess, I sometimes do. But it can seem like a decent idea if, like me, you opened an eye on the couch at 11:45 Sunday night, a book resting on your chest, became aware of your situation, sprang to your feet, and raced to the kitchen to make an emergency plate of nachos. Then Clean Monday can seem like a really good idea, for it is very easy to say to yourself as you lick fingers eight, nine and ten at the stroke of midnight, “Clean Monday: here I come.”

But Monday has ideas of its own, and it isn’t long before you’re pining for the fleshpots of Sunday (or Fat Tuesday, take your pick).

So the thing to do is increase your misery. When it’s time for the Monday evening meal, when it becomes clear that the kids must be fed even though you’ve determined—and so far succeeded—to use your own mouth for breathing and speaking only (and maybe a little water), do this to yourself: chop some onion and toss a little butter in a pan over low heat. You can drizzle some olive oil over the butter if you want to. This is for aesthetic purposes mostly.

Now the kids must be taught to fast, but they must be taught piecemeal and with intelligence. You’re not going to hold them to your standards and you’re certainly not going to make them even more miserable than you are as the hour of homework, that Great Intruder, approaches.

So you treat them to something you’d really like to sink your carnivorous incisors into: dead pig. Mind: you must speak to them as you all sit down to eat (or not eat) about their own askesis, but you can’t starve the children. Plus you’re increasing your own misery, so that’s good.

Into the buttered pan go the onions and then, after about five minutes, a pound of sweet Italian pork sausage. Break it up and toss it until it’s no longer pink. Sprinkle in … no! Wait! There’s another way to make yourself more miserable.

Pour a glass of water! Ah, see how it doesn’t catch the slant of evening light? Behold how, when you swirl it, no tempting aroma rises to your nostrils! Take three long pulls off the thick tumbler. Wait. Feel that? Feel the collision of Nothing and gray matter? That’s your brain not reacting to ETOH. That’s the water not elevating you a hair’s breadth above the earth. It’s a wretched way to spend a Monday. You feel much better about feeling much worse.

Now back to the skillet. Sprinkle in some chopped garlic and maybe some sliced mushrooms. Stir briefly—long enough to release the scent of the garlic and multiply your dolors. Be good to yourself and take another hit of water, neat.

Into the skillet go about two cups of chicken stock and cup of cream. For the sake of your own miserable soul you are letting the kids break the whole damn fast on the first day. (Someone must think of the children.) Bring this to a boil for a few minutes and then reduce the heat to simmering.

Italian seasoning? You’re not having any, so why not?

And now about 12-16 ounces of penne pasta: in they go. Cover. Set the timer for five minutes. After five minutes, uncover and stir. Cover again and set the timer for five more minutes. This is going to be awesome, and, best of all, you’re not going to get to eat a single bite of it.

You think about pouring yourself another warm transparent water but remember that moderation is the desideratum here, so, difficult as it is, you resist the urge. You are in control of your desires and appetites.

The timer goes off. The children assemble. They notice that the table is one place-setting short.

“Daddy, who’s not eating?”

“I’m not.”

“How come?”

“Because I want to eat.”

You let them puzzle this one out and offer up their gratitude, which they do. Then you spoon onto their plates this dish that looks and smells for all the world as if it might have been the main course in Babette’s Feast.

“Daddy, isn’t it Lent now?” asks the older boy.

“It is.”

“Then how come we’re having pork?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“No.”

“Because of the state of my miserable soul.”

This is where the oldest one can be a bit of a pain. But pain, remember, is the point.

“So let me get this straight,” she says. “You’re giving us a cream-based pasta dish with pork—pass the parmesan, please—on the first day of Lent for the sake of your own, what do you call it, ‘spiritual well-being’?”

And here is where your own barely-superior intelligence and slightly-greater powers of dialectic come in handy.

“No. Actually I’m doing this for your ‘spiritual well-being.’ See, I want you to have someone to imitate. I want you to see what a great guy I am, all high and mighty and holier than thou. My belly’s gurgling like a busted sump system with a conflicted float switch, and still I make you this nice delicious aromatic meal only to watch you eat it. Behold my restraint, my discipline. You should grow up to be like your old man.”

And here is where your oldest child’s moral superiority proves inconvenient, to say the least.

“So you’re using Clean Monday in an entirely self-serving manner to thwart any chances you might have at humility?”

“Who taught you to use the word “thwart”?

“You did.”

“Not on me, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t specify.”

“Specify?”

“Daddy, you’re losing. Admit it.”

You think for a second. You’re hungry. A forkful of that plus an inky wine would go down splendidly right now. It’s time to turn misery to good account.

“Okay. You’re right. Tomorrow you can have vegetable stir fry.”

“And what about you?”

You think it over and decide one more day of Nothing might give you a fighting chance.

“The same,” you say, thinking the word won’t hang ambiguously in the air. But she’s too smart for you, and a much better person.

“I think you’d better have something.”

“Why?”

“We can’t take much more of your humility.”

“Nice supper,” says the youngest one, who’s been ignoring all this. “Thanks, dad.”

“What do we say?”

“You’re the best that ever was!”

“That’s my boy! No how’s that Prayer of St. Ephraim coming along?”

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Tagged as: Clean Monday, fasting, lent