Physics with Poets

Photo Credit: Morguefile by earl53

"Do you know the moon actually falls around the earth?" asks my eldest son. He's taking physics this year, moving inexorably and permanently into the world of things-Mom-does-not-know.

"No, I didn't," I say. I turn and look at him. Poems full of moons crash hard against my brain. My hands itch for the keyboard. His face, too, is passionate—for him; passion means something very different at fifteen than it does at thirty-seven. His mind is full of measurements and math.

"It's only the tangential velocity that keeps it from crashing down," he continues. He says something about attraction, something about gravity. I am lost. The moon is falling around the earth. It is swooning, sweeping, crashing in grand displays of emotion in its drop and, yet, it's always going 'round—tracing a path of inevitability in the footprints of its whereabouts the very year before.

This. This is how to live. We are born and fall from our mother's womb. We never stop falling. We cascade past stars and planets, never suspecting the largeness of our own expanse. In space, we are small and we fall, lonely all our lives, around the purpose we are made to make. Around and around, effortless and without control, the sick rising up in our guts, we fall. We fall. We fall. We fall. We fall to terror and to thrill.

We meet a man or a woman or we bear a child and fall into the orbit of our life, around the thing we call togetherness. We think we're steering, but we're plummeting around our growing mutuality. They smile, we smile. They speak, we answer. They hurt, we cry. We fall in answer to our love, our desire not to fall alone. We think we are walking or pushing the cart. We think we are strolling with them. Then, sometimes, they turn and make revolutions of our lives. In chaos, circling bloodshed—we know then that we are crashing into airless space. Space seems to suck us into empty, hollow cold. We don't know that we have never left the orbit that we set. Until we see that we remain in motion, have never stopped, are tracing our own steps around the known.

To fall with grace—oh! what a beautiful thing that would be. Adored by gravity and held up by faith; creatures of flight, creatures of courage, heavenly bodies we'd be. Freed from illusion of command, to swoon all our lives and be carried by a force beyond our sight.

Not me. I fall kicking and screaming and casting about. I think I am charting the course. I will get 'round the earth by Friday. Hurry, dammit, we are going to be late!

"Mom! Do you understand?" he says.

"Yes," I say. "Yes. I understand perfectly."

The Chicken Diaper

Miss Henny Penny, with all her feathers, in happier days.

We just purchased my chicken a diaper. It is a lovely, handmade thing. Stitched to order, blue, with daisies emblazoned on its expanse; like an oilcloth, really—one we'll be using to catch crap.

—Why are you buying your chicken a diaper?

—Fibromyalgia, obviously.

The chicken does not have fibromyalgia, at least as far as I know. Come to think of it, though, I might need to check. If I apply pressure to her tender points, will she cry out in pain?

—Bokkkkkkkkkk! (Stop that.)

—I'm sorry, Miss Henny Penny, but you're very sick. Here, have some Lyrica and warm towel for your comb.

No, I am the one in question: the fibromyalgia-suffering, diaper-buying person you're looking for. My story goes like this:

In June, I was asked by a lovely friend of mine if I might like a chicken for my yard. Would you like a biscuit? Have you ever tried this meth? I have a chicken I can give you if you want. (This is how they hook you. One chicken for free and you're back for more.)

Oh, well, yes. We've wanted chickens. Who doesn't really? They're so fashionable right now, appearing at the Oscars, like accessories, with stars. Get a chicken, the thinking goes, produce your own eggs, and you have got out from under the thumb of egg companies, that unchecked tyrant in your life. We have ducks, but we're already bored with them. See one duck drill mud in your yard on a Monday morning and you've seen the whole thing. At least until they start up the rape camps during spring.

The proffered chicken, it happened, had been a victim of injustice and abuse. Menaced by her companions, she was deprived of water, starved, de-feathered and bloodied until the very point of death. Nursed back to health in my friend's small backyard, she was finally recovering, but my friend was ready to let her go. Her daughter was becoming attached. My friend had seen her, with the chicken on her lap, both of them coming down the slide. All this suffering increased the chicken's value in my eyes immeasurably. Sure, we decided. We'll take her: a chicken, eggs, and a chance to save the world.

The chicken arrived in a dog crate—a bright-eyed, obviously intelligent creature with pretty feathers like autumn leaves and a bright red comb.

Bokkkkkkk, she said, in a pleasant way.

We put her in a coop and run. She looked around, ate a bit and got bored, so she flew out. No, no, we told her. This is your house. She looked at us, as if to say she'd prefer to be with us. And flew. Hello, she said. We moved the dolly on which she was landing as she flew out of the coop. This threw her for a while. Then, she discovered she'd be fine just setting on the top of the wire of her fence. This went on. It was my my youngest's birthday party day. Mike and I looked at each other.

"I'm going to stay here and fix this," he said. Neither of us relished telling the chicken's former slide partner how she'd ended up in the road. I threw "the luau" by myself.

We built up the run to a height of over nine feet and the chicken finally consented to stay in. Where, though, could we get her some friends? Chickens are social creatures. They pine in isolation. We did not want her to pine. Finally, we purchased three chicks to raise by hand. The sweetest-tempered breeds you have, we told the man. No more would poor Miss Henny Penny be the victim of abuse. We raised the chicks in our living room under a heat lamp. When they got sour crop, I massaged their lumpy little digestive sacks until the food within disappeared. We coddled them. We fed treats of hand-grown sprouts of field peas raised in compost in my yard. When they were old enough, we moved them outside, where Henny Penny could see but couldn't reach. Furious, she lurked over them like an ill-tempered dragon stalking fat little donkeys near her cave. When they weren't close enough to launch at through the interfering fence wire, she stood in the corner and keened. The neighborhood resounded with her misery.

"She'll get used to them," I said with confidence. And this went on.

Finally, months later, it was time to introduce the friends. I'd read copious advice on this introduction, all conflicting, and was haunted by specter of pecked-out brains. The most progressive story I'd heard was of a man who, introducing two grown chickens, spent the day with them in their yard. When one attacked the other, he would pick up the hostile and pet it, assuring it that it was loved. This advice appealed immediately to me, since it allowed me both to act like Marshall Rosenberg and to hold chickens in the sunlight. I imagined myself like St. Francis of Assisi, spreading God's love amongst my fowl. At the end, everyone would be impressed.

—What a miracle it is you've worked here!

—You just have to get to the concerns underlying the behavior, I'd say humbly. Chickens, like us, want to know that they are loved.

—Can I quote you on that? they'd say.

—Why, sure.

Instead of this scenario, though, things went quickly ill. Henny Penny wanted the other chickens dead. They ran in terror, huddling, a bouquet a chickens, quivering under a chair. And after them again she went. I picked her up. No, no, I told her gently. These are your nice friends. Good chickens, nice chickens. She looked at me pensively. I set her down. And after them she went. Hours later, I tried singing children's songs.

These are the chickens in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood...

No dice. She was going to kill them. I imagined their bright eyes ripped out and bleeding, their brains exposed, their precious little feathers torn, which I had practically grown myself. I tried for days. Weeks. Then, finally, I gave up.

"We have to move her to her own coop," I told Mike.

We put Henny Penny in what had formerly been the chick's coop and moved it into our backyard. There, the dog discovered that he could eat both her eggs and her feed. Mike spent a weekend constructing a fence to keep him out. The water froze. Mike made a device with a light bulb and a paint can to keep the water warm. Which brings me to the fibromyalgia.

I have trouble with the cold. In winter, I make every effort to never leave my house. This is mostly because when I do, I start shaking, my holds turn blue and numb, my muscles tense up and then I cannot get warm for hours. During this time, the care of our flock of ducks and chickens falls entirely to my husband and my sons. The other day, though, I went out to visit the chicken—Mike had somewhere he had to be—and found her next to naked. Pin feathers, like porcupine quills punctuated her head and back. No one had thought to mention this development. Is she molting in January???? I began wildly to do research. Six times, I held the chicken up and looked at her for mites.

Bookkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!! she exclaimed as I searched carefully around her vent. I didn't know there would be a pelvic exam, she said.

I could find no evidence of mites. Finally, though, a friend put me in touch with another friend, whom she described as "a chicken savant." It was decided that the feather loss was due to stress. She's lonely. Of course. It's too cold. I don't go out there. She has no friends. Could the chicken I had so carefully tended die of broken heart and cold? Hold her every day, she said. Give her cat food for the protein. Her feathers should come back. Then, once they do, stick her in that other coop and let them duke it out. So much for Marshall Rosenberg.

OK, I thought. I can do that. I checked once more for mites. Then I started to worry. What if I don't go out and hold her because it's too damn cold? I can't let her die because of my Raynaud's Phenomenon.

Enter the diaper. If you can't go to the chicken, I thought, bring the chicken in your house.

After further reflection, I bought her a little jacket to go with that—a saddle, they called the thing. It's designed to keep chickens warm if they lose their feathers in the winter months. I chose a nice blue color that will coordinate with her diaper, although I don't suppose she'll be wearing both at the same time.

Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farms, said famously that keeping backyard chickens is no harder than keeping a parakeet. And perhaps it's not. I imagine wounded parakeets with tiny, handmade crutches, wings in little, knitted slings.

—Honey, did you remember to change the parakeet?

—No, I thought you did. Anyway, just smell him. His diaper's full.

The Mathematics of a Weekend Morning

Photo Credit: Morguefile by kconnors

"I set you for 6:30 AM, " I tell it. "And here it is 6:35. What is the problem with you?"

The cell phone remains obdurately silent, a closed coffin glistening ebony and the finality of mysteries unsolved. It makes no more sound than it did five minutes ago. No matter, I suppose. I am up anyway. I am disappointed, though, in the refusal of responsibility inherent in its flat little play-dead.

Virtue rests on the teetering point of decisions to shower deferred. Surely, I think, this can wait. Bedtime plus eight equals 6:30. 6:30 minus shower equals 7:00. Subtract Facebook, email, coffee and the letting out of dogs and you have yourself 7:30. The war begins at 8:00. First shots fired at 7:55 or so with the trudging sound of sleep-stupefied feet. Carafes are bounced, boffed, settled. Clatter arises in the vicinity of the sink. Commotion ensues. When the child awakes, I am enveloped in mustard gas. I lie dying, writhing and clutching my throat. "That's it! I'm not writing anything today!"

Ergo, the shower is off. I look like Medusa before she combs her hair. I've got jammies and a t-shirt, coffee and a pile of live snakes which are nibbling on my ears. Mascara has settled into the cracks of my face. Surely, you say, you've washed that off before you go to bed! Hardly, my friend. At bed, I was chased under my sheets by exhaustion which menaced me with a club. Mascara removal was well out of it. I am starting a small zit farm operation on my face.

I know I'm getting old because I awake now suffering symptoms of anaphylaxis, an allergy to time. My face is somewhat swollen; my skin seems poisoned. It's reacting to the unkind use I put it to, facing the mirror every day. Perhaps, one day my throat will close up and I will collapse on the bathroom floor. My hair is going grey to keep the snake bellies company. I look like someone's grandmother in a crack house, part of anti-drug campaign.

I sleep in my socks. Knee socks with skulls and crossbones, black on white, protecting my feet from the South Pole relocation which has ended up under my sheets. At 3 AM, the climate shifts and becomes tropical. The socks turn into Venus fly traps and start digesting my toes. I pretend that I'm still asleep. Nothing is eating my digits, I mutter. It's dark out. I haven't traversed the number line eight marks. Finally, though, I realize that there will be nothing left of my toes. I bend and release them from the jaws of the socks, and the seam angrily slinks away. "You haven't seen the last of me," it says. I growl.

So, I'm tired from all this activity. My toes still hurt. The snakes on my head are hungry and, tangled into Tantric positions, are trying to eat each other's heads. I open the document I'm working on and read it one more time. Because I'm sleepy, I murder all the characters. I'm sick of them. Let them choke their last on their own blood. Ill-conceived and ill-wrought, stupid, pointless things. I hate people like that, don't you? At some point, you just have to end those relationships that aren't feeding you at all. "You'll never prove I did it. They lived their whole lives in this file!"

Now, I feel just a little bad. If I had showered, things would probably not have had to end this way.  The kind of person who has clean hair is much less likely to massacre her imaginary children while no one else is awake. And I would hate to have a mug shot taken while I look this way.

Twelve cups of coffee minus one travel mug equals nine. Time for my second cup. Two cups equals two wholes. I will have had two cups of coffee. 48 fluid ounces equaling two. If I could lift up a small barrel with a lid, I could call it one. Given enough coffee, I will look more like Helen and less like a gorgon any minute now, lack of hygiene aside.

I sip and consider resurrection, the power of Control Z. "No," I think, "Let the dead stay dead. Bring me more characters! If they impress me, I'll let them live." I am a god, or a monster, the necromancer of files. I am just sipping my coffee while fictional characters live out their tortured lives. I will subtract them if they vex me and add them only if they charm. In the end, they have less power over me than socks.

Already a Prize

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons by Claire S.

I like sunrises, don't you?

Morning is grand because yesterday is over. Now things can start again. The persistence of things from yesterday into the brand new day is surprising. Possibility seems to abound and then there is your life from before, like cold leftovers, coming at you again. Tomorrow, I will return all my comments. Tomorrow, I will write a new post. Tomorrow, I will finish...Yesterday is following me like a bit a toilet paper stuck to my shoe, or like Ariadne's thread, making sure I'll get back to where I was. O, yes there it is!—my context.

Don't worry. That last paragraph doesn't make sense even to me.

I have something I am writing for submission. I have done that only once before. Then, it was a contest. I had to pay twenty-five bucks. If the editors liked my piece, they'd send me comments. If they liked it best, I would get to be princess of Tunisia. No reply was sent. I was reminded of my sons, standing giddy as helium balloons before a mechanical claw.

"If I put in a quarter, I'll get a toy! Mama, pleeeasse?"

"Me too, Mama! Pleeeease?""

I let them do it several times. Some things you have to learn yourself. Some lessons are worth carrying two children out of a mall in tantrum for. This is one: You don't get a toy in a machine for free.

Here is another one: my writing isn't as clever as I think it is. It's not as good. Accolades are not free.

Real writers: they work.

I am trying to do this, but I don't seem to have all that much free time. That's not precisely true. I have, in spades, the kind of time you could use to write one good sentence and then tell your kids gruffly to go away if you wanted to do any more. I'm not complaining. This is my chosen life. I homeschool one child and a half. I do this, in the way I do all things, which is to say: I go overboard. I have lesson plans. I have objectives. I do research. I pile books upon the table and we work. Grammar, literature, mathematics, world history, spelling, typing, vocabulary from Greek and Latin roots. We are deep and thick in all of it. After the "work," there are library books to read, documentaries to watch, debates to undertake.

All this is to say that I have made my life more about mothering than writing. I am fine with that.
In the spaces in between other people's needs, I tend to look at Facebook. It is easily broken off from, but gives me something to do. My writing, on the hand, sucks me in. When I write, I get up at 4:45 am. I sit in silence. If my husband wakes up and starts talking, I've been known to cover my ears, without thinking, before noticing how rude this is. It takes me twenty minutes to produce the first paragraph. That's the hardest one. Then, hopefully, it goes faster. Sometimes, it doesn't. The process is less like bleeding out lyrical inspiration and more like hacking through stone. Hack, smash, cut. I keep dusting up so that I can see what I have done. The longer I write, the longer it takes for me to write. The longer I do this: The more I revise. The more I think. The less likely I am to hit publish. I have studied grammar, learned to diagram sentences, sent copious emails to my writer friend. I have become much more insecure.

The longer I do this, the longer the chances look of catching that animal in my claw. I think it's called perspective. Or depression. Take your pick.

This writing has made me a lousy blogger. I haven't returned enough of your comments. I read every single one. I haven't visited enough of your blogs. Often, I visit and then leave before I can think of anything to say. I'm a lurker. I've used up all my words. I just wake up, write, school my kids, clean up the books, serve lunch, tutor, clean up again, start dinner and collapse on my couch in a pile of frizzy hair and clothes. Some child comes and cuddles me. When a fifteen year-old head perches on my shoulder, I remain still, like there's a butterfly on my hand.

The sun is up. Today I am going to see a circus. I have a migraine. It's beautiful outside. There's other writing to do. It's time to start thinking about buying seeds. Context. My context just keeps chasing me through my days. I am surrounded by all the parts of me that I have already won and only have to keep. There is no suspense as the claw hovers, no disappointment as it pulls back.

Here, I am already a prize that somebody gets to hold.

My sweater has shrunk.

Today's post is a response to the GBE2 prompt 15 Minute Freewrite. The idea is to spill out one's brains for fifteen minutes and then probably chuck the results in the trash. Because I hadn't posted in a week, I decided instead to fix my typos and publish the damn thing. Now you know what it's like on the inside of my head. You're welcome.

Photo Credit: Morguefile by Alvimann

My sweater has shrunk. The change is faint, but obvious to me. It fit perfectly, in that subtle way men never understand. It slid correctly down my body and ended in the place it should. It was sleek but not too tight. It fit. And now it's shrunk. The shape is wrong, the hemline slightly round. It isn't ruined, and so I'll have to wear it anyway. It goes on my body, it doesn't pull. It's just...ordinary; its special quality is gone. My sweater has passed its heyday. Nothing gold can stay*.

So, too, with most of my grand ideas. They've been washed one too many times. I was careful twenty-eight washes, but the twenty-ninth I failed. Damn, the thing is shrunk. It's a bad memory of what it was.

"What?" say the sons and husband," It looks just the same as before."

"No," I say. "It's crap."**

Sixty passes over an essay, a vignette. The thing is torched, it's ruined, cooked on high. It's a bunched-up on itself; it's shapeless, scratchy, bent. It was a thing of beauty in my mind.

Why, then, do it at all? Why wear sweaters? Why not just get a serviceable sweatshirt and slop around the house? Why wear nice sweaters for men and children who can't even tell if they are shrunk? I like sweaters. I just like them. With a scarf and boots and jeans, a good sweater will make its wearer empress of the world.

Fine, then. Let's try again. If I pull the edges—thus!—it might just look like something I'd want to wear. Tug a little here, but not too hard. Just pull it into shape. Maybe better? I can't tell. I have to live with it for a while, live with it until I forget what it was "going to be" before. Maybe, just maybe, I'll let it live.

Editing. I'm editing.




*Robert Frost said this before I could get there.
** This whole conversation is made up. I never swear at my kids or husband. Really, never. Believe me?

The Transformation of Curry and Ghee

Yesterday, I spent a stupid, astonishing number of hours standing in my kitchen. I stood there, apron-less, so completely present that I didn't leave a stain. I learned to bruise lemongrass, to make a bhun, then added flavors in layers like the organdy folds of a dress, shadow and light. I minced garlic and ginger, cracked open cans of coconut milk and squeezed a lime. I discovered that brown rice could be made to taste like a dessert without the use of sugar. Ah! To live where there are coconuts.

Also, I made ghee and put it up.

The butter melted and began to boil. I stirred and blew the surface to see if it was clear. It wasn't clear. Not forever. Somehow, this was not matter of patience but of presence, so I waited and I stirred. I watched and blew.

I was forced to stay in the kitchen and watch until, finally, it changed. I strained off the liquid and Mike helped me drain it into jars. For a total investment of five dollars and an hour or so of my afternoon, I had produced what looked like temple oil. I am manifestly hoping that this clarified butter will free me from my lactose-intolerant dependence on margarine. We will see.

There's something about that clarification that stayed with me. I have been spinning it in small cycles in my head. I acquire knowledge like Thai red curry, layer after layer, creating new flavors from the small facts that went in. It takes time and patience and must be done at the right heat. The flavors must be balanced or the bitter spice of ginger wins the day. I read the same book four times, at each pass learning something new. I add in layers, I fold in comfort, relevance and truth. In the end, I have forgotten the recipe, but the taste is something of the world.

The work I do on my soul, though, is like making ghee. I add everything to the pot and increase the heat. If there is too much heat, I'll burn. If the temperature is gentle enough, if it is safe, I bubble with the discomfort of altering slowly into who I want to be. I continue, past all patience, to be unclear. Blowing the froth, I remain clouded this time and the next, unending. Until suddenly, I'm not.  Then, for a time, I am holy. I am liquid gold. My inspiration can be burned in celebration, the memory of clarity holds true. Inspiration is made to be used and I do. I use it until it the jar is empty and it is time to make more ghee. This is predictable and painful. It is how it has always been. It is also what brings me joy.

I too often approach others who are making ghee as if they are making curry, and I offer them galangal, kaffir lime leaves and advice on how to work the spoon. What they need, I think, is someone to stand by them and watch as they gently transform into something they never were, someone to make sure the heat is not too high, to blow the bubbles and to offer encouraging thoughts.

The work of transformation is hard and sacred. It helps to have a friend.

The Best Ingredients We Have

Photo Credit: Morguefile by Xandert

Standing in the kitchen with my teenagers over the sundered carcass of a beast, I swell with joy. For the moment, I have their attention.

"We need more sea salt in the rub," I admit.

"Is this enough?" asks twelve year-old Devin, with the eyes like wells, Devin with the lashes like one hundred bolded question marks.

"Not really," I tell him, "and you need the fine rather than the coarse."

Fifteen year-old Rowan grinds pepper. In his able hands, the pepper grinder rumbles, purrs, obeys. Devin separates rosemary from a branch.

"Mom, is this the thyme?"

Innocence and ignorance sit so closely on my tongue. Rowan scoffs. I smile, and Devin answers with a smile that owns his question, the scoff and all the amusement in the world. The lashes blink and cheeks run to merry red.

"Is this the thyme, then?" he kids and points at the other herb. "No! What?" He enacts the drama of the fool. Rowan looks on through half-lidded eyes, as skeptical as a snake. I giggle. They push and pull and shape one another with their tugs. Logical and lyrical, an answer to the other's strength.

"We could do a dry rub," I tell them. Rapt eyes focus on my face. "But I am going to use olive oil."

We cover the chicken in olive oil, anoint it like a supplicant before its God. Then we pat on the salt, the pepper, the rosemary and thyme.

"I am going to slice the lemon finely," I tell them.

"Why can't you slice it coarsely?" Devin asks. Because of the laws that govern words. One can slice finely or chop finely, but one cannot slice things in a manner that is coarse.

"One slices thickly," I tell him. "But I am going to slice it finely." Somewhere an Adverb Judiciary nod their heads in frank relief, disaster averted once again.

For a few moments, I slice in silence. The boys watch me as disks of lemon fall decisively from my knife.

"You're slicing them thickly," admonishes Rowan. "You're screwing this all up."

Of course I am. It is my job to teach him things so that he can think that he could do them better than I can. It's his job to rib me and tell me I'm a fool. The basis of our good-natured fondness for one another rests in my willingness to assume that he may well be right. I grin and he grins back.

"Well," I tell him, "They'll have to do." We layer lemons over the chicken.

"It goes in a 400 oven uncovered for an hour or until done. Now, what shall we do with the butternut squash? "

We halve the squash and scoop out the seeds, cut it into manageable wedges. Then we sprinkle it with pumpkin pie spice—nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, lemon peel and cardamom. It is dabbed with what passes around here for butter and settled in a bit of water, covered in a casserole dish. Into the oven it goes. I am confident in this experiment. Anything blessed with cardamom will sing.

"We need to make a salad." Bell peppers hardly bigger than Christmas lights, yellow, red and orange, and English cucumber, carrots—purple, orange and white. Leafy red lettuce. Devin has disappeared and it is only Rowan and me.

"I want to show you how to make my signature dressing."

"I just remembered I have something else to do," says Rowan.

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do. I have to go lie on the couch."

"Come here," I tell him, using my Mother Voice and he Comes Here. He still Comes Here.

"You mix two tablespoons of red wine vinegar with two tablespoons of dijon and whisk."

"That smells disgusting," he tells me.

"Of course it does. It's vinegar."

"Then add in six tablespoons of olive oil, gradually." As I measure and add, he whisks it in, unasked.

"There's something about the way that looks that just...is wrong."

"Well, it tastes really good. Try." I hand him a lettuce leaf. Dip.

Meh, he tells me. Meh. Whatever, Mom.

When dinner is served, I put out cheap wineglasses and serve sparkling cider with the meal. Devin asks continually if he's holding his glass correctly.

"You look like a redneck who's trying to have class," Mike tells him. Devin rewards him with the deep red smile, the fluttering of lashes and the further mocking up of drinking wrong.

Rowan takes a bite of chicken and stops for a moment of what might be prayer.

"That's gooood," he says.

It is. It is good and it is simple, made of things that happen to be around. Leftover herbs from Christmas. Two lemons on the verge of getting hard. I stock good vegetables, good spices and buy cheap chicken then let everything marry itself on our tongues. I am raising my kids the same way, with whatever is in my cabinets and whatever I find at the store, whatever is on sale. Yesterday it was cooking, tomorrow history. Add good ingredients and a little know-how and forget the recipe book. One may taste like lemon and dijon, the other like cardamom and clove. It doesn't matter. They will sit and watch me cook until one of them takes the knife from my hand, saying, "Mom, I can do better than that." Then, he will cook his own meals and eat the ruined and the rich. He will learn from the smoke about arrogance and devise greatness in his own dry rub.

Until then, I will look for moments where I can stand with each of them in the kitchen, with the smell of lemon and fresh herbs, the warmth and closeness. I will look for them surrounded by the best ingredients we have.