Any real Italian would add that leftover liquid from the jarred anchovies to the pasta sauce I thought, though the smell was pungent and the contents unknown. Probably olive oil and whatever salty oils had sloughed off the fish. So I added a splash to the Sunday sauce even though I’m not Italian.

Our cat Timmy molested the handmade snowman from Germany that was roughly his size and made from some straw-type material, likely the same stuff used in medieval, half-timber homes: wattle and daub (and dung). The snowman looked time worn with a missing eye and arm and a tatty-looking scarf. Timmy chewed the scarf and made a face.

The Sunday sauce called for loads of meat: pork shoulder, sausages, meatballs. You browned the meat in olive oil and then added the onions and garlic cloves, crushed tomatoes, basil sprigs. It simmered on the stove for a few hours until the pork fell apart and then you cooked the pasta and combined both on a platter.

I butchered the pork shoulder, angling my knife along the bone and carving most of the fat cap off but saving some to brown the meat. Half I’d save for another upcoming dish, the Guyanese Christmas stew called Pepperpot, which called for a syrup from Cassava root and exotic cuts of meat. Then there’d be the spiral-cut ham and other, otherworldly delights planned for our season of excess. Time was I’d hit the brandy hard this time of year but now it was yoga and meditative time spent in the kitchen sharpening knives and sweating onions.

The excitement of coming home. There is no better feeling than being reunited with loved ones at the holidays. It’s proof that the sands of time are not impassable and we are connected still. In the dark, in the rain, trudging through the horse farms on my morning walk and saying a prayer for those I love and miss and want to be near. There is so much fog and mist; my glasses are fogged and wet. My feet loose and wobbling, not mine, but there are lights in the distance and I know the curl of the road. I’ve been here before. These loved ones, they’re a part of me. Like this shirt I’ve worn, more than 20 years ago. The city drains take in the rain water and somewhere a frog croaks. The lights are fuzzy in the fog and dreamlike. The air is damp and clean. I can breathe.

I started meditating again. Like actual, cross-legged, hands-in-a-beneficent-pose meditating. Amazing where your mind can take you if you let it. I went back to the hallway in the apartment where we lived as a kid. I imagined I was there. But it’s a travesty the way I treat my mind with the potato chips I feed it all day long on my phone. There is no comparison between what your phone can offer you vs. your mind.

(Later)

Bit by bit it got colder as the atmospheric river overhead moved on and the season inched closer to winter. I’d make the Pepperpot stew a few days before our oldest returned from Strasbourg and serve it on the solstice. It called for a slurry of herbs and hot peppers to marinade the meat in, cinnamon sticks, orange peel, the Cassareep that was black and thick as molasses. People in the Caribbean served it on Christmas morning and made it well in advance so the flavors developed. You didn’t need to refrigerate it since the Cassareep acted as a natural preservative, a curious thought.

I loved long, slow stews that filled the kitchen with warm scents. That and a splash of color from dim lights throughout the house. Soon we’d all be together again and there was no better way to celebrate than by cooking, lighting a fire, and giving thanks.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, Memoir, Nostalgia