THIS. This was a slice of my life on that day in that year. Reading it again brings a smile.
-AS
Summer Love in the Kitchen
- Originally posted in a 6s community on August 12, 2011 at 5:02pm
Za’atar and sunflower oil dapple the taut breasts, while a summer garden concoction brews nearby. Chopping takes time away from writing and sketching in my hardbound sketch book, the one with the incredible painted peacock on the covers, and so I settle whole tomatoes and halved peppers in the bottom of a pan and layer with chunks of onion, crookneck squash, butternut squash and zucchini, covering at last with a tomatilla-chile-jalepeno salsa.
Before dinner, the garden sauce will be thickened in the blender, the boys will fall in love again with Wall-e and Eve, and I will fall in love again with them, with my life, with myself.
I can feel the morning glory vines climbing over brick and wood, birthing new violet trumpets whose seeds I will not consume but will know I could if I wanted to. The sun distances herself from us, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but I know she is choosing little by little another slice of the world to bless and hate, to consume and adore.
Soon I’ll hear the bass pulse within the garage, but I’ll wait until the door stops short at the end of the gold chain that restrains his entrance and the three-year-old’s slick getaway; with every step and glance, I will draw out the reunion, the coming home, the luxury of summer we’ll visit upon each other after the boys retire and before the sun rolls away.