It’s time to clean out the refrigerator. For me it’s that time every time this time of week. I’ll be getting ready to cook.

Perhaps I should start in the middle. When I was in the hospital, because of why I was there my sister naturally was also in the hospital. That took two members of my immediate family out of daily activities including, among other things, cooking. The other two spent much of their time at the hospital while were inpatients, limiting their available time for daily activities including, among other things, cooking. But friends and other relatives eased that burden by creating food chains or meal trains. When it became evident that I was destined for a much longer than anticipated hospital stay and recovery period, those friends and relatives along with friends of relatives and even relatives of friends presented us with the modern equivalent of hot casseroles, gift subscriptions to meal services. So many in fact that this Sunday we will be preparing the last of the gifted meals.

We in this case are my daughter and I. We’ve been spending a day a week almost every week since mid-June, first in her kitchen now in mine, preparing the following week’s meals. This is hardly unique. Much of the working world preps and even pre-cooks the upcoming week’s meals. Even when I was part of the working world I would do some manner of advance preparation. Then it was often a matter of my daughter and I chopping, seasoning, arranging, and storing in a suitable cooking vessel that day’s dinner before I went off to work and she to school each morning. Sometime after her return in the afternoon she cookrd and plated as I dragged myself in from another day at the rat races. (I always bet the #7 rat to win the 7th race by 7 lengths but he never came in.)

So you see, meal prepping is in our blood, or at least on our resumes. Little things like my daughter’s own entry into the working world and my entry into the limited lifting and standing world, coupled with the fact that we no longer live in the same house, make daily prep pretty inconvenient. But the once a week plan has really made life much easier for me.

Something else it’s made me is it’s made me think how fortunate I am to have a daughter who is willing to give up one of her two free days each week to spend with her father. It’s also made me realize that if there are a few others like her out there maybe this world isn’t destined for global annihilation as soon as the last of the Baby Boomers leaves it. The few hours it takes us to chop and season, arrange and cook, store and clean up make for some pretty quality time. And so does the eating and sitting and chatting and re-bonding after.

A family dinner really is a gift. Even a bunch of them all at once.