Pull up your chair
The sun was setting and we were chilled to the bone from running through the rain at the playground. I went to my kitchen and got to work. I tossed salt into a pot of water and placed it on the flame. I chopped the onions, feeling the crunch underneath my fingers. I chopped shitake mushrooms into slivers, tossing the stems. I put a skillet on the flame. I cut a hunk of butter and threw it into the hot skillet. I watched as it melted and moved around the pan. I put the onion and the shitakes into the hot butter. I moved it around the pan with my wooden spoon, coating as I went. I let the fire take over. Next, I grabbed a clove of garlic, pulling off its papery skin. I tossed it into the boiling water along with the wheat rigatoni pasta. I pushed the onions and shitakes around the pan. I added salt, breathing in the aroma of cooking onions. I pulled out the garlic and chopped it up. I threw the garlic and shrimp into the pan with the onions and shitakes.
My oldest, curious about the soul-comforting smells from the kitchen, dragged a chair over to the stove to get a look. The shrimp were beginning to pinken. I flipped them over with my fork. Once the rigatoni was finished, I explained to him, I would add the shrimp to it, along with a bit of egg, a bit of mozzarella, and a bit of milk. It was our own cooking show. I was making it up as I went, finding the fresh ingredients in the fridge. I sprinkled a bit more salt over the top of the pasta. We imagined the hot meal touching our lips and warming our bellies.
I tossed together a Caesar salad and placed it on the table. I scooped up the pasta into deep bowls. We sat and ate, the boys excited about what they would pull out of their bowl. We enjoyed scooping out the meat from the shrimp tails. The rigatoni was a vessel for yumminess to nestle in. Simply satisfactory.
First the cooking, then the writing drew me under its spell. I wanted to know what would happen next, despite orchestrating it. Savas writes, “My last year at university, one professor of anthropology trained our attention inward at the close of every lecture…She asked us to notice that just life- writing papers, going to parties, applying to jobs- could always be mapped out following the structures we had learned in class…All of these were the unspoken foundations of our society, whose rules we had perfected, so as not to think of them as rules but as the smooth tracks of life. From time to time, the professor would ask us to imagine an anthropologist observing the everyday routines with which we had setup our lives. They might be arbitrary or essential, but they were rules to a game nonetheless, one which gave an illusory sense of harmony or permanence.” Savas writes about calling upon this imaginary anthropologist to help make sense of life as it’s happening. Rituals, routines, gift-giving, gestures, observances, celebrations- the rich layers and invisible strands that pull us together. These underlying movements of our day fill us up with shared experience and combat ever-encroaching loneliness. Each meal I make in our kitchen is an invitation to be together, which explains why I always find littles under my feet when I cook.
Reading List
Savas, Aysegul. The Anthropologists