Pizza Crust

I have never eaten my pizza crust. Well, maybe a few times if the pizza was particularly good, but usually the crust is just a waste of my time. As a kid, I always passed my crust over to mom. Sometimes she'd eat it, sometimes she'd just throw it away for me. I didn't really care, I just didn't want it on my plate.

Once I moved out of mom's house and was living on my own, I gave my crust to Larry. I remember the first time we were eating pizza together. I had a little pile of uneaten crust on my plate and wasn't going to just ask if someone wanted to eat it, but when Larry said "you gonna eat that?" I knew I'd found my pizza partner :) Even after Lance came into the picture, Larry always had dibs on my crust when we ate together.

When we got Eleanor, Larry lost his pizza partner status. All crusts went to Eleanor. I remember Larry having a bit of a hard time sharing crusts with our dog, but it was Eleanor and so he did. She didn't outright beg, but she gave you the look of "omg, I'm starving and if you just give me one bite, I'll love you forever." Amazing how much they can convey in one look.

Yesterday, I made a frozen pizza for myself and Hannah for lunch. I hadn't really thought about it as I was making it, it wasn't until I saw Hannah reach the end of her slice and get to the crust that I choked up because I knew what was coming. I fully expected her to get up and go give the crust to Eleanor or start asking me where Eleanor was. But she didn't. She just handed me her crust and said "here mommy, you can have my crust now." Each little piece she finished, she handed the crust off to me. At the end of our lunch, I had a pile of crust on my plate and I was at a loss.

I threw away the pizza crust. It was a small action but it had such emotion attached to it… I've also had to bend over and pick up every little piece of food I randomly drop on the floor throughout the day. I know I'm messy, everyone knows I'm messy. I just haven't had to be concerned with my messiness in the last 10 years because I had Eleanor to follow behind me and clean it up. She'd hear something hit the floor and she'd be on it. This morning as I was picking up the cereal I'd spilled all I could think was, damn.