The Food We Ate Together
I used to think the fact I’m ‘not a chef’ meant I ‘can’t cook’ and I know now this isn’t true.
As I spend more and more time learning the basics I never bothered to learn (because I didn’t have to, because I took on other things), I realize I didn’t let myself take on the work of melding flavors because the kitchen was yours.
And as time went on and less words were spoken, food was how I knew you were still saying I love you.
With pasta, butter, grated cheese, our Chimichurri, a fried egg.
Most days we couldn’t muster expending one more ounce of energy on food, and especially not on food for ourselves, when we’d spent that many hours making it for other people. But when we ate this for dinner after another shift of our marathon life, this reminded us (it reminded me anyway) that we were lucky to be tired if the work was ours and we were lucky to be together.
On my lowest days, I boil some water and cook some pasta. While the pasta softens in its bath, I go through the motions of frying an egg—which I don’t even know how to do ‘correctly’— then I drain the spaghetti (I don’t use fettucine because that’s what we ate together), I drop in too much butter, sprinkle in the fanciest grated cheese I let myself buy that day, and mix in Chimichurri.
I slide the egg on top and then I eat this until it hurts, to remind myself I can still feel something.
I pay my rent by sharing the joy our food brings me (and hopefully others), and yet, here I am, crying over the exact same thing. Am I a hypocrite?
Food will always be so much more than something I eat. I can’t accept it can be seen as something as low as simple sustenance. It’s a love story. It’s a tragedy. It helps me say the things I sometimes don’t know how to say. It brings memories flooding back, but it also grabs my hand and pulls me out when remembering drags me under.
I don’t want to accept I’m capable of cooking because it means I unequivocally don’t need anyone. That I can do it, insert whatever ‘it’ is. And it also means you’re not here, that I’m alone.
