Every home should have a nest or two, some place where you can go to feel warm and connected, hugged by familiar things and an easy rhythm. Yesterday, around dusk, that place was the kitchen. With some old mixes providing the soundtrack (how can it be that even a really sad Beck makes me smile?), I set out not to dazzle my family so much as to simply provide a meal for them.
Wanting a little company, I bring in Finn's bed and tuck it underneath the miniature pleather benches of the breakfast nook, where he too could be cozy and content. Settled in, I knew he would have a perfect view of any wayward, kamikaze orts tumbling from the cutting board.
It's hard to beat the 5:30 glow of a cloudy winter afternoon, especially set against the indirect lighting peeking out from under the cupboards. That glow somehow transforms the most mundane things--dicing onions, for instance--into something more admirable and important.
I run my fingers along the tops of the spice containers, slowing at the more exotic choices--Look at that! Garam masala!--but, mostly, it's an exercise in enjoying the order and promise of these mostly alphabetized-by-size options.
Like my fingers, my mind wanders, too, and, for some strange reason, I can't shake ketamine from my thoughts. Twice in the last month, I've heard or read stories about this strong anesthetic and its unexpected side benefits--namely, it's ability to smooth away depression in the matter of hours, not months. I think of friends and acquaintances who have spent years trying to find the perfect magic formula for rewiring a blue brain, often with unsatisfying, slurring results. And now, researchers are talking enthusiastically about the speedy potential of a repurposed drug.
My mind wanders from ketamine to baking soda...something so ordinary that that's the best name they (whoever "they" are) could devise. Utterly ordinary yet surprisingly transforming, remember to add it to batter and your pancakes become light and airy. Forget it and you've started your own communion-bread side business, minus the transubstantiation. And it's got a nice list of side benefits outside of the kitchen, as well--tamer of bug bites, burns and indigestion, for instance.
Aside from being food central, this nest called "the kitchen" seems to encourage the fermenting of ideas, as well. Here, I'm free to draw tenuous threads between anesthetics and leavening agents. Here, I can make something with my hands while my head goes somewhere else, and usually without disastrous results.
Like a safe room, without all the drama.
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