It’s amazing how a simple thing can turn a particularly grumpy family dinner into something close to a fiesta.
Son: What’s for dinner?
Me
Son: Rotisserie chicken?
Me: Yep.
Son: You know I’m not crazy about that. It’s not as good as your homemade chicken.
Me
Then much grumpiness ensues and we’re all annoyed by the time we sit down for dinner.
But hunger generally trumps grumps and we are soon having a pretty benign conversation to avoid the topic of how Son dislikes rot-hisserie chicken.
Son: You know what this chicken really needs?
Me: Less protesting and more ingesting?
Son
All eyes dilate around the table and forks stop mid-air. Son runs to the fridge and rushes back with the bottle of Steve Bishop’s Nearly Perfect Bar-B-Que Sauce w/ Orange Marmalade.
Steve is a family friend and a nearly perfect human, if you ask me. He loves to make sauce. He prints his own labels on plain white copy paper and attaches them to his recycled bottles with a couple of generous strips of clear, wide packing tape. Recently, he was kind enough to give us a bottle.
And suddenly the conversation is much more sparkly. We’re all laughing. Even though there’s Jack Daniels in the sauce, there’s not enough to really explain the laughing. We’re all dipping into Mr. B’s sauce, making sounds of gustatory delight, and admiring how he calls it “nearly perfect.” Because it is. We’re talking about what the nearly perfect amount of sauce to use is and what the nearly perfect ingredient must be. Our family dinner becomes nearly perfect.
I am enchanted by the phrase “nearly perfect” and Steve’s brilliance at using it for his sauce.
How many ways do we make ourselves unhappy because we think things should be completely perfect?
What if we looked at all the ways things are nearly perfect instead?
The shift during dinner was dramatic. We went from tolerating each other around the table to genuinely enjoying each other’s company. My thinking shifted from “my family should be happy that we even have a chicken for dinner” to “I am happy to have this nearly perfect family for dinner.” All because of Steve’s prompting, taped to an old French’s bottle.
What feels broken right now?
How could you start to see it as nearly perfect?
What is your nearly perfect sauce?
How do you shift inside when you even think about this?
Is there a nearly perfect gift you could give someone else?
Please share your own sauce in the comments.
Photo credit: Arthur
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I love this post! Makes me remember it’s the small things in life that make the huge differences. And for cooking, it’s often the sauce, and better yet that it comes from a friend’s divine hands. There’s love in that sauce! I like your reminding us that we all have that nearly perfect sauce. It makes me ask myself: “And where’s the love in my nearly perfect sauce?” Hmmmm.
What a great post! I think we ruin a lot of things by wanting them to be perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Positively Present’s last blog post..things to make (other than money)
Maura – “Love in the sauce.” Yes! More of that sauce, please!!
Pos – The enemy, indeed. Thanks for your comment.
Laurie Foley’s last blog post..Tasting the Nearly Perfect Sauce
The best advice I ever received about parenting was: “You don’t have to be a perfect parent. You just have to be good enough.” This is pretty close to nearly perfect. Love this idea. And love the idea of letting myself off the hook of perfection Being enough, or whole, or nearly perfect should be the goal. Or maybe we’re already there!
Laura – You gave me goosebumps when I read “maybe we’re already there.” Thx!