Start with Small and Silly

Hello!  I promised I’d come back and lo, here I am.

To be honest, I’m feeling a bit scared coming back to this space.  I have a much longer and more serious post I need to write about what happened this month, but I don’t feel quite ready for that.  The short story is that my older brother, Scott, passed away three weeks ago.  Before this month, I had never lost an immediate family member; losing a sibling before we are all old and grey is something I never imagined.  So it’s been a month of shock, and grief, and sadness.  It’s been surreal.  I will tell you more about that soon, but not today.

Today I thought I’d start with something small and silly: a pumpkin-shaped pot.

{Screen shot from amazon.com}

How cute is that?!  It’s a 3.5-quart pot from Staub, and while I totally do not need it, I just love it for its adorable pumpkin-ness.  See how the lid’s handle is even in the shape of a pumpkin stem?  Like many people, I am crazy about fall and all things related to autumn, and pumpkins are the epitome of fall.  It would make me happy every day to see a pumpkin pot perched on my stove, waiting for me to fill it with soup.

At Scott’s memorial, we listened to a poem by Mary Oliver called “Wild Geese.”  It’s a gorgeous poem, and now that it’s infused with his memory, I can’t read it without tearing up.  There’s a line in the poem that says, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

That, I think, is what has drawn me back to the kitchen and to this blog.  I love cooking, and I love writing, and those twin loves have endured, even as my life has changed in good ways and in bad.  I just want a cozy space to write and to spread joy.  Me as a soft animal—I just want everyone to feel safe to love what they love.  To feel that it’s safe to be honest.  I know that’s not always possible, but maybe that’s my ideal.

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

It’s good to be back.  I have missed you.