Fast Thursday

So here I sit thinking of nothing but food, now that I can not ingest anything but clear liquids until tomorrow following my colonoscopy. There is food all over the house, brownies, potato chips, oranges, bread for toast, eggs in the fridge on and on and on. I am clear liquids until six o clock this evening when I start drinking the concoction which Dianne mixed last night and refrigerated. The concoction must be chilled so it can be drank—what the hell does that mean? The concoction can only be tolerated as a cold beverage? I don’t like the sound of that—but until then I can drink as much broth and other clear liquids as I want.

This fasting thing should not be that big of a deal, after all I can still take in liquid! I mean I was raided doing Mormon fasts. Mormons regularly fast two meals the first Sunday of each month, Fast Sunday! I always thought that Fast /Sunday was ill named because the lack of food seemed to make the time drag by there was nothing “fast” about the day or actually weekend. I don’t know about other Mormon house holds but we celebrated a ’hard fast’: no food or water from the Saturday midday meal till the Sunday midday meal. Granted, mom usually made a fairly large lunch to start the fast with but still not matter how much I gorged out I started feeling the pain of the fast by seven or eight o clock Saturday evening, usually just as Gun Smoke” was starting. I never did get used to having my mom not prepare a Saturday evening meal on Fast Sunday Saturday. Luckily by Sunday morning my stomach was pretty numb and I was just going through the motions of life then. When the little brothers and sister were little they, of course were fed usually some sort of cold cereal and luckily once the chores were done we dressed and took off to church which took up most of the time—and as church ended and drove home and entered the house we were thinking nothing but how good the meal would be. Many times mom would throw a roast into the oven before she left for church and the house were we totally permeated with the smell of roast beef when we entered the house following church. The aroma was so potent it was like getting socked in the nose, I instantly salivated and breathed as deeply as I could. We could not eat immediately on returning home but had to wait for the rest of the meal to be prepared which met potatoes being peeled and boiled and mashed, gravy being made along with any other vegetables which might be considered. Clothes changed and table set and wait from the meal and the fast to be finished. The pain of being hungry on purpose there is nothing like it.

I don’t fast regularly now except when medically necessarily and I hate it. I hate being surrounded by food and not being able to partake. I am not reminded of my fasting days like when I do a medical prep. I am glad those days are past and I do not have to do this but once every five years or so and that is 0ften enough for such memories.