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regret.
    Life is unpredictable. My mother’s life came to an end before any of us expected. She was seventy-two and, except for the lymphoma, which had only appeared eight months before, she had hardly been sick a day in her life. I miss her terribly, but every time I run across my pictures of our trips together, they remind me of a few of her dreams that I didn’t allow to die with her.
    Where is it that you’ve always wanted to go? What is it you’ve always wanted to do? Is there some place you’ve longed to take a loved one? Quit making excuses. Make plans, make the sacrifices, and do it!

    Life is made up of ever so many partings welded together.
—Charles Dickens

12

Gravy Is Not a Food Group
    It doesn’t matter how many deep-fried onion rings we’ve consumed over the years, how many pecan pies we’ve inhaled, or how much gravy we’ve allowed to dam up our arteries, when we pass forty, all of a sudden we become obsessed with eating healthy foods. We don’t necessarily change our diet, but we become obsessed with the idea of changing it.
    It’s all those public service announcements that start getting to us:
    Ben thought he was going to live forever. He believed he was invincible. He was convinced his fatty, cholesterol-filled, salt-laden diet wasn’t hurting him. Ben was wrong. At forty-three, he now has to work at home. His desk at his job wasn’t equipped to handle the life-support apparatus. Don’t be like Ben. Don’t wait until it’s too late to make those lifestyle changes you’ve been wanting to make. Unless, of course, you’ve got a bigger desk than Ben.
    We hear Ben gasp for breath in the background as he reaches for that last bag of potato chips. Gasp, crunch, gasp, crunch . It’s enough to drive anyone to the treadmill.
    Health food stores play on our fears, too. They convince us to buy extracts of vegetables we didn’t even know existed and make us believe that if pureed and blended together, they’re somehow going to taste better. They don’t. I’m sorry, but a rutabaga-leek-broccoli-cauliflower swirl is still going to taste pretty much like rutabagas, leeks, broccoli, and cauliflower. A blender and crushed ice isn’t going to make them taste like a hot fudge sundae.
    But we also know that our bodies need those vitamins, minerals, and, of course, the roughage. The older we get, the more maintenance our bodies require. After forty-plus years, we’ve had one too many medical tests that show exactly where all that fat we’ve been consuming over the years has deposited itself. We’ve seen the ultrasounds, the echocardiograms, the Post-it Notes on our medical reports. We know the blood in our arteries and veins isn’t flowing like it did in our youth. We’re not fools. Nor are we suicidal. We know if we’re going to make it to a ripe old age, we’ve got to make some changes in our eating habits. We’ve got to start thinking of that cheesecake as the enemy instead of our reward for doing those three push-ups. We need to start reaching for that bowl of stewed prunes instead of that leaning tower of brownies. And instead of ordering the fried mozzarella sticks, we need to take a second look at those alfalfa sprouts and tofu squares. (Maybe we don’t have to go so far as to eat them, but we should at least give them a second look.)
    We have to make a commitment to be kinder, gentler to our bodies. We don’t want to overwork our hearts or place any unnecessary strain on the rest of our vital organs. One way is to limit our intake of red meat. Cutting out red meat is no problem for me. Most of the meat I serve is black anyway, not red. Including more fish in our diet is a good way to become healthier, too. We should be filling our freezers with rainbow trout, mahimahi, orange roughy, and salmon. They sit nicely on top of the Ben and Jerry’s.
    You see, there are plenty of ways to improve our eating habits and insure a long, healthy life. But a rutabaga-leek-broccoli-cauliflower swirl?