An Advent Calendar - 8. Door#8 - Que Sera, Sera

Que Sera, Sera

I knew exactly when it happened. I mean, sometimes you just kinda drift over into a new situation, a new part of your life. Small things change, lose their meaning, gain a meaning, become routine, or are forgotten. But you’re busy, with work and with life–doing laundry, taking the trash out, bringing the car to the shop, and whatnot. And things just accumulate.

Tom called on my way home from work to tell me he had a business dinner and would be late. And instead of feeling disappointed, I was glad. I knew exactly what I would do and immediately, happily, pictured the evening without my lover of seven years. I would make myself something special, such as oatmeal maultaschen with mushroom sauce. Tom hated mushrooms—and oatmeal. And savoy cabbage. So I turned the car around, humming ‘Do you Hear What I Hear’, to buy all the ingredients I needed for my dinner with me.

While roasting rolled oats, I mentally went through the movies we owned. Because I was going to have dinner on the couch, I could watch Love Actually, or The Nightmare before Christmas, or maybe Die Hard. Another thing Tom hated. Dinner had to be served in the dining room, at a proper table, with proper chairs, and no watching TV except for the news in the background.

Two hours later, I stuck the fork into a maultasche, cut off a decent slice, and swirled it through the light brown sauce. Closing my eyes, I savored its smell, before plucking the heavenly goodness with my lips from the tip of the fork. Hearty, roasted oatmeal and sautéed shallots, mixed with mild savoy cabbage, dipped in a creamy mushroom sauce. Perfection! I grabbed the remote to start The Apartment, sipping some Pinot Grigio, and I thought ‘I haven’t had such a nice evening in a long while.’

That was when it happened. How could I think of perfection when Tom was having dinner elsewhere? Thinking about it some more, I realized I had actually been relieved when he called. Because I could cook what I wanted, eat where I wanted, watch what I wanted? How was this suddenly more important than spending time with my love?

I wasn’t hungry anymore and pushed the plate away, fork and knife clattering noisily on the table. My heart was beating rapidly, and I had problems breathing. Frantically, I looked around our living room, searching for something that would reassure me everything was okay. It looked as it always did throughout the year. Only now it was the holiday season.

In the past, I would have made a batch of Christmas cookies on First Advent Sunday. Tom would have made his special spicy cocoa, and we would have gotten out the boxes with all the Christmas decorations. We had tons, because in the past, one of us would always bring a silly, kitschy something home every now and then, and we would laugh together, while discussing where to put our newly acquired atrocity.

Last weekend was Second Advent Sunday.

Finally, my gaze found the wreath hanging over the fireplace. I had bought it. Not on a whim, as I had our first one so many years ago. No, it was tradition now. I got it from the same stand near work every year. In the past, I always looked forward to buying it. I would go on my lunch break to the place where the stand was usually set up, wondering if it had already opened. This time, I almost forgot. I went by the stand one day, and the man actually had to ask me, “Don’t you want to buy a wreath this year?” I grabbed the first one I saw, not choosing carefully as I had done in the past. I’d been in a hurry.

Building a circle, a wreath stands for unity, for wholeness, for infinity. Ours was made from evergreens: Holly and pine mainly. They stood for renewal, constancy of life—even when it seems withdrawn in winter. To cast a circle around something means you want it to be protected.

Did I want it—us—to be protected?

***

Instead of going to bed, I simply stayed on the couch. I didn’t do it consciously, but I think I wanted to wait for Tom. It got later and later, and finally I went to the little storage room next to the kitchen and pulled out a small box labelled ‘The last of the Christmas stuff’. In there went all the things we had overlooked the first time we packed up after the holidays. We have so many decorations we never seem to get it in one go. When one of us finds a forgotten item, we drop it into this box until we think we found everything. Then we still wait a few more days until we close the box and put it away.

Back on the couch, I went through the odd mixture of last year’s forgotten items including a sparkling star that always found its place in the Yucca tree and a bright yellow and white porcelain house which could be lit with a tea candle. One year, Tom and I brought a different house home almost every day until we had a small village, which we put on the mantelpiece. I remembered this one had been sooty because of a bad candle. I had cleaned it and then forgotten it by the kitchen sink. On the bottom of the box, I found the last of three little angels. They would hang with their hands on the rim of flowerpots or glasses. Back when we still had a cat, he pawed at them until they fell down. Most of them shattered into pieces beyond repair, but this one had been saved. I glued it together and put it in bubble wrap. It looked all broken and fragile, but I never had the heart to throw it out.

I had the little angel still in my hand, when I heard the key moving in the lock of the front door. I didn’t turn around when Tom entered the room.

“Peter?” He came slowly over to the couch. “Why are you still up this late?”

I looked at him and smiled. He was so handsome in his three-piece-suit, even though, since it was so late, he looked a bit rumpled. His tie was slightly askew, and his usually neatly combed dark hair a little windswept. “How late is it?”

He fished his phone from his coat pocket. “A little after two.”

“Wow. How was your business dinner?” I emphasized the last two words, and he grinned sheepishly.

“We went to a few bars afterward to celebrate.”

Following a strange flash of intuition, I had to ask. “Er…some places I know?”

He nodded. “Gino’s…”, and after a short hesitation, “and the Pink Bow.”

I felt as if I had swallowed an ice ball. All I managed to say was, “Interesting.” One did not go to that part of town with their run-of-the-mill business partner, at least not at the bank Tom worked. He shrugged, and I just had to ask, “So, what did you celebrate at the Pink Bow?”

He heaved a sigh, threw his briefcase on the coffee table, and sat down on the love chair opposite the couch. After loosening his tie, he let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. “Okay. Why not? We may just as well do this now.”

My heart beat rapidly, and my hands trembled so hard I had to push them under my thighs so he wouldn’t notice. I wished I had gone to bed hours ago. I didn’t want to know what he was going to say, but I still asked, “Do what now?” My voice sounded too timid. I hated myself for sitting there, as if I were waiting for Judgment Day.

Tom rubbed his face with his hands, then finally looked at me. “I accepted a job offer.”

I nodded. “Okay?” Because that couldn’t be all.

“I have to move.” He didn’t look at me.

“Where?”

“London.”

I knew that still wasn’t all. “When?”

“Next month.”

I swallowed. And just like that the ice ball in my chest re-formed into a fireball. “And when, exactly, did you plan to tell me this?” I jumped from the couch. “Or did you want to surprise me with the moving van idling at the front door while movers swarm the house, packing stuff you secretly marked as yours weeks ago?”

Tom shrugged, again, and the casual gesture infuriated me even more. “Actually, I don’t need to pack much, just some personal things, clothes mostly.” He picked at a fingernail. “I’m moving in with someone.” I hardly heard the last part, as he mumbled it, turning his face away.

“You’re moving in with someone!? Are you fucking kidding me!?”

“Just as roommates.”

I nodded exaggeratedly. “Uh-huh. Sure. Let me take a wild guess here and say the guy you were celebrating the new job with is identical to the new roommate.” When he didn’t say anything, I insisted. “Am I right?”

He jumped from his seat. “Come on! You can’t tell me you didn’t notice we don’t work anymore. That the spark is gone.”

The spark is gone. I don’t know why those words hurt the most. “I noticed that we had problems. Yes. But unlike you, I wanted to work on it. Try to rekindle the spark. Not that it matters anymore now.” I glared at him. “You cheated on me!”

“I did not!”

I scoffed. Suddenly I felt bone tired. I went to the bedroom, but he came after me. “I did not cheat on you!” I ignored him, grabbed my pillow and a blanket from the closet, and left the room again. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sleeping on the couch.”

“Isn’t that a tad melodramatic?” He’d followed me again.

“That’s called self-preservation, Tom. If I have to lie beside your lying, cheating ass the whole night, I won’t be able to sleep, and I have to work tomorrow.”

“I didn’t cheat!” He touched my arm. “You have to believe me, Peter!”

“I may come across as a gullible idiot sometimes, Tom, but I really am not one. You visit gay bars with a guy you’re going to move in with. You can’t tell me nothing happened between you.”

“A few kisses.”

“Yes, right.” I went into the bathroom for some sleeping pills. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise. When I came back, he was still standing beside the couch.

“It’s not cheating. Unless you’re in high school, that is.”

“If telling yourself this helps your conscience.” I rolled myself into the blanket on the couch and turned my back to him. Luckily, the meds kicked in fast, and I slept dreamlessly until the alarm from my phone woke me the next morning.

After that, everything went pretty fast. Tom moved out the next week. As he had said, he only took his clothes and some toiletries. When I realized I couldn’t stand to look at them any longer, I packed all the stuff he left for me to use as I saw fit into boxes, and donated them along with our assorted Christmas decorations. I only kept the broken angel.

Then I did what I had wanted to do for years. I booked a flight to New York City and spent the last days of the year at the city that never sleeps. She and I had that in common. To distract me, I did all the touristy things one does. It wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. Discovering a place alone with no one to share my experience was empty. Therefore, I finally called King, a friend who lived here, whom I had only ever talked to online.

He showed me a few things I would have missed otherwise. We went to little restaurants, which served the most awesome food, and to some which served the most gruesome, at least to me. He showed me a clothing store where I bought some this-is-the-new-Peter pieces. And on a very cold Sunday morning we saw a poet, who recited poems in a wintery park while serving mulled wine. And some nights, he showed me his bed. No strings attached.

I flew home on January the third. In March, I moved into a new place. In July, I got a promotion. In September, Tom was back in town, without his new man. I’d been in Spain on vacation then. In October, I celebrated my birthday with a few friends sans Tom, whom I hadn’t seen since the breakup, at my new favorite restaurant, and then went home to celebrate with King via Skype. It was a good birthday.

Sometimes, I think Tom and I could have saved our relationship, but more often I think he was right. The spark had been gone. I am happier without him.

Right now, I’m at the airport waiting for King. He’ll be here with me for the next two weeks during Christmas and New Year. I can hardly wait to see him again.

Will there be more between us eventually? I liked New York City. Maybe he’ll like Berlin. In the immortal words of Doris: Que sera, sera.

The recipes:

Oatmeal Maultaschen (dumplings) with mushroom sauce

Ingredients:

10 g dried morels,

120 g oats,

1 egg, two yolks,

1 tablespoon of olive oil, sea salt,

1 tablespoon of diced shallots,

60 g butter,

200 g savoy cabbage cut in small stripes,

50 g all-purpose flour,

1 egg white, 250 ml whipping cream,

200 g mushrooms,

100 g leek cut in stripes,

Chervil, 4 cherry tomatoes

Wash the morels and soak them in 250 ml lukewarm water. Roast the oats in a pan without fat until they are light brown, then grind them. Knead the oatmeal, the egg and yolk, olive oil, salt, four tablespoons of water into a soft dough. Let it rest for thirty minutes. Sautee the shallots, then add the savoy cabbage, and chopped morels, cover and leave the entire mixture for ten minutes on a small flame. Salt and leave to cool.

Knead 30 g of all-purpose flour into the oatmeal dough, roll out to a thin sheet. Use a glass (Ø 10cm) and cut out circles. Brush the dough with egg white, fill with savoy cabbage mixture, fold the circles to halves, and close the maultaschen by pressing the edges together with a fork.

Cook the maultaschen 10 min in salted water. In the meantime, mix the steep water from the morels with the whipping cream, boil down, season with freshly ground pepper, salt and a hint of garlic. Roast thin sliced mushrooms in 30 g butter, salt. Steam the leek, add the last butter.

Serve the maultaschen, mushrooms, leek and creamy sauce with chervil and the halved tomatoes. Voila!

Spicy Cocoa

Ingredients:

1 1⁄2cups cocoa powder

1cup white sugar

1cup brown sugar

5 teaspoons cinnamon

3 teaspoons ginger

3 teaspoons nutmeg

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons chili powder

Marshmallows or whipped cream are optional

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Scoop into a container. Directions to make hot chocolate: Place 2 tablespoons for every 8 oz of hot whole milk.