There was something about telling Melanee she couldn’t do something that almost guaranteed she was going to try. It didn’t necessarily matter whether she had any experience doing it, whether it was particularly practical, or whether the person telling her no might actually have a reasonable argument. Once those words came out of somebody’s mouth, there was a pretty good chance the discussion was about to become a demonstration.
Mel had moxie. Quite a bit of it, actually. Enough that I occasionally wondered whether she’d been issued an extra supply at birth and nobody had bothered to install an off switch. If she thought something needed doing, she’d figure out how to do it. And if somebody suggested she wasn’t capable, well, congratulations. You’d probably just given her a new project.
I remember Mel telling me about something that happened when she was younger. For the life of me, I can’t remember exactly what the activity was, but some of the men in her family had made a comment along the lines of, “Oh, that’s something only boys can do.”
Now, if you’ve been following these stories about Mel, you can probably imagine how well that went over.
She immediately set out to prove them wrong.
I wish I could remember what they were doing, because I’m sure the actual story was entertaining. But what has stuck with me all these years is that somebody had decided she couldn’t do something simply because she was a girl, and Mel wasn’t about to let that stand. It was practically an invitation to demonstrate why they shouldn’t have opened their mouths in the first place.
And that attitude didn’t disappear as she got older.
Mel had a difficult childhood, and she learned early that waiting around for somebody else to handle things wasn’t always an option. By the age of ten, she was already helping care for her two younger siblings. That’s a hell of a lot of responsibility for a kid, and I don’t want to romanticize something she never should have been expected to carry. But I do think those experiences contributed to the woman she became. She learned to figure things out, stand up for herself, and keep moving even when circumstances weren’t particularly cooperative.
That independence was one of the things that attracted me to her in the first place. She didn’t need somebody constantly telling her what to do or reassuring her that she was capable. In fact, unsolicited advice about what she couldn’t do was probably one of the fastest ways to get her determined to do exactly that.
Of course, being married to a woman with that much determination wasn’t always a walk in the park. There were times when I admired her ability to push through a challenge, and other times when I wondered whether we could perhaps consider an alternative that involved a little less arguing. Mel could be stubborn as hell, and occasionally the line between admirable determination and making life unnecessarily difficult got a little blurry.
But she had a kind of grit that I respected, even when I wasn’t particularly enjoying being on the receiving end of it.
As her health declined, that determination faced challenges that weren’t as simple as proving somebody wrong. There were things her body could no longer do, no matter how badly she wanted to do them. And for someone who had spent so much of her life being independent, I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been.
But even then, she wasn’t particularly interested in giving up.
Cooking was one of the places where I saw that most clearly. Mel loved to cook, and she was damn good at it. She could take a few bites of something, figure out what made it work, and come pretty close to recreating it herself. She was meticulous about ingredients, preparation, and getting everything just right. Food was never simply a matter of throwing something together to make the hunger go away. When Mel wanted to make something special, she put herself into it.
As doing things physically became more difficult, she’d still try to cook from a chair. And when she couldn’t manage something herself, she could certainly tell somebody else how to do it.
Now, anybody who’s ever received cooking instructions from Mel knows that those instructions could be remarkably specific. You didn’t simply chop something into pieces. You chopped it to the size she wanted. You didn’t stir something until you thought it looked good. You stirred it until it was blended appropriately, which was a determination Mel was considerably more qualified to make than I was.
I suppose some people might have looked at that as being bossy.
Having spent thirty-two years married to her, I can confirm that she did possess that particular skill.
But there was more to it than that.
Cooking was something she loved, something she was good at, and something she could still share with people even when her body wasn’t cooperating. If she couldn’t stand at the stove for as long as she wanted, she could still contribute her knowledge. If she couldn’t prepare every ingredient herself, she could still help somebody else bring the dish together.
She wasn’t going to surrender something she loved simply because she had to change the way she participated.
And it wasn’t always about making something for herself, either.
Even when she wasn’t feeling well, Mel was often willing to help family members who needed something. Sometimes that meant offering to cook. Other times, it meant volunteering me to make something.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Apparently, being married to Mel occasionally meant discovering that I’d agreed to provide a culinary service before anybody had actually consulted me. Fortunately for her, I enjoyed cooking certain things for the family, so this arrangement usually worked out pretty well. And she wasn’t simply assigning me a task and disappearing. She’d help me with the preparation, offer suggestions, or contribute whatever she could.
We had our differences over the years, and God knows we didn’t always work together as smoothly as either of us might have liked. But food was something we shared. It was one of the ways we expressed affection, took care of people, and made them feel appreciated.
Food was our love language.
It still is mine.
I think that’s one of the things I want people to understand about Mel. Her determination wasn’t always about proving she was right or demonstrating that somebody else was wrong. Sometimes it was about refusing to let circumstances take away her ability to contribute. She wanted to be useful. She wanted to share what she knew. And even when she wasn’t feeling her best, she could still find a way to do something for somebody else.
That doesn’t mean her determination always served her well. There were times when she pushed too hard, resisted help, or had trouble accepting limits that were very real. And there were certainly occasions when I wished she’d recognize that slowing down wasn’t the same thing as giving up.
But I also understood that independence was a huge part of who she was. Losing the ability to do something she’d always done wasn’t just an inconvenience. It meant having to figure out a different way to be herself.
And Mel could be pretty damn creative when it came to finding another way.
I’ve been thinking about that childhood story, the one where those men told her something was only for boys. I may never remember what the actual challenge was, but I don’t think I need to. What I remember is a young girl who heard that she couldn’t do something and decided to find out for herself.
Decades later, I saw that same determination in a woman who still wanted to cook, help her family, and be part of whatever was happening around her, even when doing so had become much harder.
Her circumstances changed. Her abilities changed. But that part of Mel was still there.
And if there’s one thing I learned from her, it’s that sometimes being capable doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. Sometimes it means knowing what you can contribute and finding another way to make it happen.
Even if that means volunteering your husband to do the cooking.
Love you, Piggy. You certainly had moxie.
And apparently, I was part of the equipment.