Dickens Christmas

This was lunch yesterday.  Three kids and a bowl of pho.  Freestone, Ptolemy and Tziporah were sharing one rice-and-honey-glazed-pork dish until the kind server noticed.  She clucked her tongue and brought out two more heaping rice plates topped with more succulent meat.  We felt so loved!  It made me feel even warmer than the pho did, to be the recipient of a mother's tender care, even if it was a different mother than the one I'm used to!  

We had all gotten hit hard by the flu Saturday night, all of us lying around like so many Salvador Dali clocks.  By Monday, it was business as usual, except that Freestone still wanted to run away with the littles and me to Oh Mai, the Asian market and the children's museum.  I almost wish every day was school-free.  Almost.

Today's lunch was a little different and required the kids to be in school, studying or at Coco's while I indulged in preparations for my Dickens Christmas Shelter Lunch.  I think all the Shelter girls have our specialties, and mine has nothing to do with food.  I can get carried away with a theme and then wonder, "What are we going to eat?"

Dickens Theme:  Oh yeah.

Everyone got a Dickens book to take home.

My mom has the complete works, so I had to borrow all of them and make a little vignette.

For the food, I googled, "Victorian Christmas menu" and came up with stuff I had either never heard of or had no intentions of ever eating.  Consumme?  No.  I settled on Cornish game hens, rustic veggies, a salad and bread pudding.  Last night I told Ruby, "I have to pick up some Cornish game hens."  She rolled her eyes and said, "Mom!"

"What?  They're cute!"

She reiterated her original postition:  "Moooooo-om!"

"Ruby, what?  They're cute and yummy."

"Oh, cooked?  OK, I thought you were getting some live chickens to, I don't know, roam around the yard or be in cages for decoration or something.  You never know with Shelter!"

Ruby is right.  You never know with Shelter.  What you do know, though, is that it will be heavenly whether there's decorative poultry roaming the grounds or not.  Those two hours every week reaffirm my desire to be a better woman, wife, friend and mother.  The better part of the nourishment is the sisterhood, not the food.  It reminds me to be aware of my interactions with everyone I come in contact with throughout the week, in hopes that I can lighten someone's burden.  At the devotional Sunday night, Elder Nelson said, "Imperfect people share planet Earth with other imperfect people."  That's true, but it shouldn't stop us from trying to make our corner of planet Earth a little less imperfect and a little more like heaven.

After all, it does say in Tiny Tim's Song from the Muppet Christmas Carol, "Bless us all that as we live, We always comfort and forgive.  We have so much that we can share 

With those in need We see around us Everywhere."  

You know you can't go wrong following the Muppets' advice, right?  And if you don't trust the Muppets, you can look to Charles Dickens himself as a guide:  

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of it for anyone else."  So let's go do that.