The Consummate Christmas Dinner — at the Hospital
When I got the call, complex advance plans were being formulated for Christmas dinner, including accommodating Mom’s craving for cornbread dressing. Mom was in the hospital at Seton Northwest with an undetermined, but very serious, gastrointestinal ailment. After days of tortuous tests that revealed nothing, it became apparent that she would still be in there for Christmas, and all of our dinner plans went out the window (including the dressing).
Christmas day arrived and I found myself at her bedside, watching while a $1,200 bag of nutrients and electrolytes (sans cornbread dressing) dripped agonizingly slowly into the tube that snaked from her arm. She was drifting in and out of lucidity, framed by a sea of scarlet poinsettias and jinked up on morphine, while the aroma of turkey Christmas dinners being distributed to the patients that could eat wafted in from the hallway. It was lunchtime, and I was determined to have a turkey and dressing dinner on Christmas Day, even if it meant consuming dreaded hospital food.
Among local hospitals, Seton Northwest is known for the quality of its food, but regardless of how good it is, they still feature institutional food designed for tastebuds of the lowest common denominator. It is nutrition meant for sick folks who aren’t hungry and can’t taste much. The seasoning is so subtle it’s almost not there.
I sat down at the table and attacked the plate of delicious turkey and dressing (with all the trimmings) like a man possessed. It was perhaps one of the best holiday dinners I’ve ever had, simply because of the situation in which I found myself. The mind is said to be the ultimate taste receptor, controlling our perception of what we consume. In this case, what was surely a bland, mediocre repast seemed to me the consummate Christmas meal, and it sure beat the hell out of the bag attached to Mom’s arm.
This article appears in December 21 • 2001.
