Strawberry Banana Pineapple Smoothie

Two weeks since Marcus. Two weeks since the phone rang. Two weeks since the kitchen went dark and the stove went cold and the woman who has defined herself by the act of feeding stopped feeding. I count the days because counting is the only form of organizing I can still do, and organizing is what keeps me from falling into the canyon, which is right there, always right there, one misstep away.

Calvin microwaves his meals. He eats standing at the counter — the way he used to eat when he came home late from Bible study, the way I used to let him because he was tired. Now he eats standing because there is nobody cooking, because the kitchen is cold, because the woman who kept it warm is sitting in a chair in the living room staring at a wall and trying to remember how to breathe.

Destiny went back to UAB this week. She did not want to go. I told her to go. I said baby, your life does not stop because mine has. She cried. I did not cry. I have not cried since the funeral. The tears are somewhere inside me, deeper than I can reach, in the same place where the cooking lives, which is to say: buried. Everything is buried. The tears. The cooking. The desire to eat. The desire to move. The desire to do anything other than sit in this chair and exist, which is not the same as living, but it is all I can manage.

Mama calls every day. She does not say much. She asks if I have eaten. I say yes, which is sometimes true and sometimes not. She asks if I have cooked. I say no, which is always true. She does not push. Mama knows grief. Mama has grieved. But she has never grieved a grandchild, and the shape of this grief is different from any she has known, and she is feeling her way around it the way you feel your way through a dark room — cautiously, with her hands out, afraid of what she might touch.

The church kitchen runs without me. Other women have taken over. Sister Mable. Sister Terri. Women I trained, women who know the recipes, women who are keeping the ministry alive while the minister is dead inside. They do not say this. They say: take your time, Mother Simms. We have the kitchen. Come back when you are ready. I do not know when I will be ready. I do not know if ready is a place I can get to from here. I do not know anything anymore except that my son is dead and the stove is cold and the house smells like nothing and nothing is the worst smell of all.

Mama asked if I had eaten, and I said yes, which was not quite a lie but was not quite the truth either. What I had done was stand at the refrigerator with the door open until the cold air hit my face and something in me remembered that my body was still here, still asking, still needing. I could not turn the stove on. I could not. But I could drop frozen fruit into a blender and press a button, and that is what I did, and it was the first thing I made with my own hands in two weeks. I am not saying it fixed anything. I am saying it was something, and something is where you have to start.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

1 cup frozen strawberries
1 medium banana, peeled and sliced (fresh or frozen)
1 cup frozen pineapple chunks
1 cup orange juice (or pineapple juice)
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt (or coconut milk for dairy-free)
1 tablespoon honey, optional
1/2 cup ice, if using fresh fruit instead of frozen

Instructions

Gather and load. Add the orange juice and yogurt to the blender first — this helps the blades catch. Then add the frozen strawberries, banana, and pineapple on top.
Blend. Start on low for 10 seconds, then increase to high and blend for 45–60 seconds until completely smooth. If the blender stalls, add a splash more juice and try again.
Taste and adjust. If you want it a little sweeter, add honey and pulse a few more seconds. If it’s too thick, add a little more juice until it pours the way you want it to.
Pour and drink. Pour into a glass. Sit down somewhere comfortable. Drink it slow.

Nutrition (per serving)

Strawberry Banana Pineapple Smoothie — When the Stove Is Cold, You Still Have to Drink Something