Pesto Pasta
I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.
I’ve been doing this thing lately – and by “doing this thing lately,” I mean that I’ve written a total of two entries – where I keep a journal for my future kids. I feel like if there’s anything I’ll never get tired of, it’s capturing a moment and hearing about them from others. My favorites always come from my parents. Sometimes I’d like to step into the time capsule of a memory and know all of it – what they were watching on TV, the smell of incense, the way my father’s bedroom in the Atco basement was decorated. It’s more than a photo snapshot could give me. I think about the one stuck to the freezer of the two of them lit up by the flash, the head of Pop’s beagle Kip poking into the frame between them, and I wish that I knew what they were thinking some twenty-odd years ago.
I was standing in my kitchen tonight cooking dinner by myself. I wasn’t really hungry, but my roommates Emely and Erica had mentioned the pesto pasta recipe I made a couple weeks ago several times by then, so I cooked it with the idea of saving it in two glass Pyrex bowls for them come Monday. I had my red Bose speaker set up on the pantry shelf, letting the playlist I made with someone specific in mind float through the darkened apartment as I salted the boiling water; Love is Everywhere (Beware), King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1, You Might Get What You Want. The tablecloth was dirty from where Em made chocolate-covered strawberries days prior and alongside the carnations James gave her, there was a long-stem rose in a glass too short for it that I’d hastily set up on Valentine’s Day, ready to get back to the guy who brought it for me where he stood by the doorway. The place was a mess, the basil hadn’t held up in the freezer, and –
And I don’t know. One second it was nothing, and the next, I was pushing the chicken around in the pan, still wearing the college-logo t-shirt I’d worn to the gym that morning since the laundry wasn’t done, and I was me again – content, as easy as breathing.
There was nothing special about it, nothing specific to think about other than the sizzling and the music drifting through the air. I spilled a quarter of the fusilli in the sink full of dishes, splashed water onto the hot burner, and forgot, for the second time, that you need to hold the lid of the olive oil spout on tightly so that it doesn’t fall right into the pan. And yet, with optimism that I haven’t felt since late last summer, all I could feel was how fortunate it is to make such simple mistakes, hissing expletives with a laugh to no one but myself. How fortunate it is to appreciate the things we might think are worth missing.
Life can be beautiful when you let it; sometimes, that’s all it takes. Take a tablespoon of appreciation for the moments that get lost with the next and drizzle it over the halved cherry tomatoes on the cheap plastic plate. Even the most bland of things can become an act of love with just the smallest fond thought; I felt love, and happiness, and although the pasta was too al dente and I was missing half of the ingredients, it could not have mattered less. I know more words for sadness than I do for joy. Maybe that’s the nature of contentment at the core – I don’t need to work to romanticize what’s so easy and whole. I just need to let it be, and capture the details as they come.
Cover Photo by Eky Rima Nurya Ganda. Edited by Peyton Bortner.