Tumbling Whole

Reading the headlines: Stocks sink after government bailout... I have been in a thoughtful mood today. Something's happening. Something already happened. I remember feeling something like this, the world shifting.

Looking to the present, I'm so happy that my friends and family are well. We have bacon. We have beans. We have the Art Tatum Village Vanguard recordings to help us along shelling the beans, and Mama's voice soothing me over the line in her instructive way about the cycles of projects and how we must be prepared to embrace new frontiers.

We have autumn winds blowing the hair akimbo with leaves and cool weather prompting the trench coat and a darker shade of lipstick again. We have Lolo immersed in his formulas, the toasty smell of the heat turned on again to come home to, a neighbor knocking at the door asking for an onion. We have visits with Barbara and Stephane's second girl just at the beginning of an expansive bloom into girlhood. Wisdom and innocence at the same time. Far reaches to a precarious sociability followed by her quick grasp for the pacifier she can't let go of quite yet. We have these things to remind us.

We have the good butcher developing a cough, something that reminds me to cook the meat properly. We have various poultry necks at 40 cents a pound with which I made stock on Sunday to pour over the fresh shelled coco beans that we will enjoy tonight. The boys at the Halle on my block waving to me with a twinkle in their eyes well before I've even contemplated what's for sale today. I feel lucky to be a part of this living web.

As each recipe represents a moment, an evening, a season, we can rely on this - the short cycles of our lives - to bring us back to the present. These recipes link us one season after another to life, no matter what today's news brings. It is very important to record these moments while they tumble whole to our senses. I appreciate them, even as I call to mind today's changes. I suppose this means I am growing up.