Tag divorce

Le Creuset: A broken skillet and a whole lot of memories

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Last week, my Le Creuset skillet affectionately known as Baby fell off the kitchen counter and the handle snapped off the pan.

For our tenth anniversary, my husband and I bought each other Le Creuset at Williams Sonoma in lovely Marseille Blue.

My husband got a tea pot, as we had struggled to find a decent one for his evening peppermint tea and my Traditional Medicinals Valerian Nighty Nite.

My daughter melted the tea pot.

The skillet means a lot to me. Always has. This skillet was one of those purchases that I splurged on and wondered if it would be worth it.

I also have some Lodge cast iron cookware I picked up at Target for a fraction of the cost. Is Le Creuset worth the extra money? I honestly don’t know. But I do know my Le Creuset skillet never disappoints me.

I’ve been cooking in it since 2009.

So I filed a claim with Le Creuset. They got back to me and said the injury sustained by Baby was not a manufacturer’s defect and therefore not covered under their warranty.

But they offered to send me a new one if I destroy the old one.

And I realize… one can’t destroy a cast iron skillet and it seems very wrong to relegate to a landfill. And I can’t throw it out. I can’t.

Some of the best times of my now defunct marriage revolve around that skillet and I told the customer service rep that.

Your claim does not fall under our Limited Lifetime Warranty coverage. Our warranty only covers manufacturer defects. The damage to your item was caused by falling onto a hard object or hard surface. What we would like to do as a one-time courtesy is to offer to replace the item for you at no charge.

Samantha, customer service, Le Creuset

She says a new one is in the mail. I am so surprised at how upset the idea of “losing this one” makes me.

Invisible: At the intersection of disability and childhood trauma

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This is the next in a series I tend to run indefinitely on my quest to understand my mind, body and disability and how they interact as I age.

Also: This post is merely me pondering “out loud” and based on my experience. I might be completely wrong with some of my ideas. That is why I consider this a quest and not something I can answer with a quick internet search or “Hey, Siri” request.

Finally, please understand that I am hesitate to discuss this topic as I don’t want my family members to be hurt or feel responsible. Especially my parents. My parents have some wonderful qualities and their flaws because they are, after all, human beings. My parents experienced their own hardships and traumas and they have both dealt with issues with their own parents, alcoholism, etc. Plus, my childhood encompassed much of the 1980s and they were young adults in the seventies. The world, as they say, was different.

As I have mentioned in early posts, disabled children of my generation and the one prior were the first to escape institutionalization or being kept hidden away at home.

Many parents of disabled children (like Marie Killilea of the Karen books) focused on raising their children to master independence and to “pass” as normal when possible. This can lead to a desire to not call attention to oneself and in many cases avoiding (instead of attempting) activities where our difficulties become obvious.

Instead of talking about our ailment(s), we try to fit in and not be a burden. We want to seem worthy of our place in a society where if the conversation turns to eugenics, we’ll, we’d be the first people edited out of existence.

But add childhood trauma to this mix and I wonder, do disabled people with this type of trauma exponentially feel more of a need to be invisible?

Mommy and Daddy have trouble getting along and sometimes hit each other when Daddy gets home from the bar— I don’t want to be another problem for them.

Am I a victim of sexual misconduct because I was a good kid who would listen to her elders or because I was already broken?

No one wants to see me cry. They get upset when I fall down and cry. Mommy teaches me to laugh when I fall. Does this cheapen the legitimacy of the pain, the bumps and bruises.

None of my childhood trauma happened because I have a disability, but it’s another truth no one wants to talk about.

All good thoughts to ponder.

A Daffy Charcoal BBQ

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

There are often silver linings to difficult situations, and that is true even when marriages end. Once upon a time, my husband and I were the couple that everyone thought would last forever and that expectation— and the shock I often see when I say we’ve split up after 20 years—makes the separation hard.

I still know everything I once loved about my husband, the teenager’s father, my first love. And I will always cherish those memories and I will miss those feelings we once had for each other. As I’m sure he has similar nostalgia and good-heartedness.

It was he who told me no matter what happened we would always be family.

And we will.

But there are some parts of this process that are uplifting. New beginnings. New traditions. No more compromising.

Ending family curses.

I mean that. You see, my household had a curse that involved grilling.

You see, every day time we tried to grill, it rained.

Today, I decided to grill. We have a couple of portable charcoal grills. I even sprung for the instant/match light charcoal.

But I decided to keep it vegetarian.

That way if I didn’t get everything cooked properly I didn’t have to worry about the internal temperature of meat.

And since I paid for about ten years of Girl Scout summer camp for the teenager, she should be able to cook on a fire.

So first I weeded the yard and cleaned up the grill.

Got the hose and some Brillo pads.

And the teenager reassembled the grill (and we lost some nuts and bolts— oops). I wrapped a sweet potato in some foil to toss in the coals and also some apples.

I put carrots and fingerling potatoes in the basket.

And I planned on making some chickpea Bubba vegetarian burgers once the grill got good and hot. Sadly, the burgers were freezer-burned beyond a level that could be salvaged.

So the teenager got some chip steak and I put it on my cast iron griddle.

Now if you note in the photos that there are two grills, that’s because once my grill fell apart, we transferred the hot charcoal into the other grill.

But hey— at least it wasn’t raining.

To make matters interesting, the sweet potato was half-cooked. The teenager thought the potatoes and carrots too crunchy and charred. And the chip steak overcooked. But it was a meal we laughed a lot over and we didn’t starve.

The teenager used my small cast iron pot to make tea on the grill, which she will tell you was the best part of the meal. I got a little ice cream so our hot apples could go in it.

When the teenager would come home from Girl Scout camp, she would talk about sugared apples on the fire. I thought I’d surprise her and recreate a beloved summer childhood memory.

Except I didn’t know to core the apple. Obvious now. And we forgot to turn them so they were only hot on one side.

I really had a lovely evening barbecuing with the teenager at the helm of the fire, but sometimes I think my family life might be the script for the next movie in the National Lampoon franchise.