My wife and I moved a short while back from our crowded and lair-like house outside Boston to an abruptly more open and airy place in Amherst. Over a month in, I’m still gaping at new space and different light. The move came after thirty years in the house that most of our lives had happened in, the house about which I said for close to thirty years to anyone who would listen, “You’re going to have to bury me out back by the hollowed-out apple tree trunk.” And I meant it.
A decade ago, wars of liberation were being fought all across North Africa and the Middle East. Smaller, more personal wars of liberation were being fought in France, too. Here in the fifth arrondissement of Paris, we battled the forces of French bureaucracy to liberate our household goods from their shipping containers at Le Havre. We had valued most of the fifty boxes at $50 each. Many contained books, writing supplies, and journals. Many contained art. How do you assign such things a dollar amount?
I awoke on that spring morning in March, nearly forty years ago, in a state of knowing. The mild cramping had started so I crept out of the bed I shared with my husband and went downstairs to run a warm bath. I wanted to bask in the early morning solitude before sharing the news that our baby would arrive today.
Cooking is a carefully choreographed ballet about life and survival. An ongoing drama that tests our ability to cope with challenges, from burns to bad recipes, while allowing us to embrace all that is nourishing and good. In my more than forty years as a cook, I’ve learned that the kitchen can be both a source of chaos and of mindfulness. Here’s how to dance between the two.
CHAOS
There will be chaos. You will forget to preheat the oven. Eggs will hit the floor. You will scorch the sauce, forget to serve the corn that you left on the back burner, run out of a key ingredient, and neglect to set the timer.
There’s a preamble to pressing my linen shirt. First, I plug in the iron cord into the outlet. Lift the plastic gallon jug of distilled water off the floor, hold it firmly on the ironing board then pop off the top. I tip the iron and angle the cumbersome jug, so the lip barely rests on the fill-hole. Tilting the jug slowly, I pour, watching closely as the water flows through the hole, backing off as it pools and bubbles. Feeling good that I have not spilled, I angle the jug back before the water reaches MAX. Steam rises shortly after I set the dial on high. Hiss!
I’ve planted a mini-forest in the small green allotment that is my suburban yard. This I have done with all of the properties I’ve owned. It is an intuitive reflex, this planting of trees and shrubs and flowering perennials. For me, a rolling lawn is a painful scab upon the earth that begs to be covered with diverse vegetation and I respond with shovel, burlapped root balls, and plenty of water.
Show me a lawn that exists free of human intervention! These monocultural carpets are not a natural phenomenon. I sometimes hear them cry out in pain, like those Chinese noblewomen who once had their feet forced into shoes that maimed.
In ancient Egypt, a couple had a trial marriage to determine whether they were well-suited. Called “a year of eating,” this test was based on a simple premise: Over the years, a man and woman spend more time at the table than they do at any other shared activity. If at the end of this time, their tastes proved too dissimilar,and the conversation wanting, the marriage could be dissolved. When I first came across this concept in a book by James and Kay Salter (A Food Lover’s Book of Days), I wondered, Is culinary compatibility a reliable measure of long-term happiness?
“You can’t leave the building,” Jimmy said. “The whole base is on lockdown. We’re at Defcon Three. The planes are on the tarmac. Our nukes are armed and we’re ready to go at it with the Ruskies–they’re helping the Arabs and Nixon wants them to back off.” He sighed. “Can you fucking believe it? We haven’t been on this high alert since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“Holy fucking shit!”
Today is the fiftieth day since I set out on the bike from my house in Lake Tahoe. I feel the hot desert sun on every inch of my body, and I suddenly realize how thirsty I am. Take me home, I whimper to the Travel Gods. But where is that? I’m still not sure.
What I do know is that I am hours away from any help. I am running low on water, and my 100-pound body is an easy snack for a predator, though there’s no longer much meat on it.
“You need to keep going,” says a voice out of nowhere. I tell the voice, “Go to hell!”