Grinder | She Curmudgeon

The choice of what to take, what to leave—it was excru­ci­at­ing, try­ing to fig­ure out what went in the box(es).  In the end, it was essen­tially arbi­trary, because I tried to be fair and leave my hus­band things he could use or might have some attach­ment to—yet.  I had to be fair to myself—take the things that I’d bought or were mine or were things that damnit, I wanted or just would use more– because we weren’t talk­ing about it, and wasn’t that the crux of the prob­lem, afraid to ask, afraid to answer, and not under­stand­ing even when words did make it out into the air?  I felt ground down, crushed by all the deci­sions I’d made and would have yet to make in the future once I’d moved out, once that part of the leav­ing was done—but still, I had to fig­ure out—which wine glasses to leave?  Which ones to keep?

I did the dishes as I waited for my lit­tle brother to arrive with the truck.  I’ve no idea why—probably to stave off the sob­bing that began as I stood on the side­walk and regarded the way all my things, whit­tled down, hardly filled up U-Haul’s smallest—I lost it when there were only four boxes left still to load, and my poor brother, he tries, but emo­tions?  He deals with them dif­fer­ently than I do, and his back pat­ting was awk­ward for both of us, though he knew I needed his sweaty hug at the moment.  Before, though, I was wash­ing the dishes and staving off cry­ing at the ridicu­lous thing I noted at the edge of my vision—the microwave read “End,” a punch to the chest.  I’d never noticed that ever before, not in the years—years—that we’d owned the thing.  Dishes were always his job, since I did the large part of the cook­ing and shop­ping, and if I’d ever reg­is­tered what the microwave gave as a final mes­sage upon com­plet­ing its nuclear task, it wasn’t ‘til now that I saw.  Under­stood.  Knew.

It was end­ing.  Really.

I looked around what had once been my kitchen—and now would no longer be, though maybe there’d be a con­ver­sa­tion later on about the butcher block, a gift from my dad when we first started out, but it wasn’t like I had some­place to put it and load­ing it up, that would be spiteful—and no.  I hadn’t missed anything.

Except.

My pep­per grinder, the blonde one, the tall one, the one my dad gave me when I got my first apart­ment, moved out of my Mom’s house and started law school and we went to the Crate and Bar­rel at the Chest­nut Hill Mall because a girl’s got to have freshly ground pep­per in her trousseau—it sat in its place next to the stove.  It was the first of many knives, pots and pans I got over the years—and I packed most, though not all of them back up when I moved.

I’d thought to leave it—a ges­ture, I don’t know of what, maybe just that he’d need to grind some pep­per, it’s not like there weren’t other Lucite grinders in the house— but in the end, no mat­ter how much I’d changed, how much I still am plan­ning on chang­ing, that one blonde over­sized pep­per grinder has seen me through more microwaves, more ends and begin­nings, since I started to try to be an adult.   I grabbed it.  Held it.  Put it in a bag of odds and ends and dis­tinctly thought to myself—fuck it.  It’s my pep­per grinder, part of who I am, that cook­ing thing that some­times I do when I can get up the inter­est, not be so wrapped in my head that I can’t express my inter­est, my love for oth­ers by melt­ing some but­ter, heat­ing a pan, chop­ping some onions, sea­son­ing to taste.

Pep­per is one of the old­est and most fre­quently used of all spices, right up there with salt.  It height­ens fla­vors, but it also pre­serves.  Every time I look at my grinder on top of the shelf over my Dad’s gas range, much less use it to add spice to some dish—I’ll remem­ber.  Mid­dles and end­ings, but also—beginnings.

Sea­son to taste.

I think that I will.