Last night, I made lasagna. Not because Los Angeles in May warrants the consumption of cozy, crunchy-cornered dishes with cheese that stretches. It was seventy-five degrees yesterday.
I made it because the choreography lives in my hands. The familiar rhythm of gathering the ingredients, making an assembly line of tomato sauce, ricotta, mozzarella, pasta. The pleasing task of smoothing pillowy ricotta onto pasta sheets with the back of a spoon, of drizzling olive oil delicately over the top layer, watching it pool in between shreds of cheese, glisten and bubble as it turns golden-brown in the oven.
Lasagna wasn’t the plan. I was supposed to use those few hours of time and solitude to write. But I found myself, like I have so many other times in the past several weeks, drawn to more tactile matters. I wake up craving the daily meditation of watering my tomato plants, watching their waxy leaves wake up under a cool morning shower as I inhale their peppery-sweet earth smell. I steady my thoughts on the gentle hum of my dryer as I fold clean laundry, pressing my palms to the soft warmth of my daughter’s clothes.
I tell myself I’m getting centered, that it’s part of my process. But the truth is that I need the familiar ease of the mundane, that I’m seeking pleasant distractions. The reality of our world has shattered my writing brain into a million grief-stricken fragments, buzzing and panicked. Why can’t I focus, I wonder each time I sit down to write. Then I remember: a war, a racist hate crime (among too many), a school shooting (among too many), a pandemic, a potential court decision that so confidently and ignorantly invalidates my bodily autonomy.
My privilege means that few of these things directly impact my life. I read about them on the internet, connected to the deep sadness and waking nightmares only by my screen. No matter how powerful or heartfelt the writing, black words on a sterile white background convey a cold, matter-of-factness: this is our world, our country and its values, the very same one I chose to bring a child into.
If I let my mind go, all I can see is that stark, black typeface. I’ve built images around it: terror in the faces of the children and the people who went out for groceries and never made it home, parents standing frozen in a hallway, knowing they too would surely die if their child did not survive. A hundred unimaginable stories playing on a loop in my mind.
So instead, I focus on the warm water running over my hands as I do the dishes, the humid rush of sink-steam making the baby hairs around my temples curl up. I tune into the vibrations of my daughter’s feet on the pavement as she runs after the bubbles I blow for her, into the music of her delight as she “catches” one with her small body. I breathe in her baby smell when she hugs me, memorizing the slope of her nose and the contour of her brown bone against my bare cheek as I press my face to hers.
Moments like that radiate pure love. I try to feel gratitude. I try to block out the fear that has felt so prominent these past few weeks, the cold knowledge that these moments could be taken away from us, that they no longer exist for so many people. Human beings were not made to bear so much grief, to process so much tragedy and fear alongside the daily work and joy of living our lives. We were not made to have the weight of fear suppress our lightest moments.
I feel the frantic anxiety of powerlessness. The anger, too. I’m letting it motivate me to donate and vote (for LA people). Otherwise, I will continue to center myself on the tactile, on making the mundane substance of my daily life as sacred as I can. Because it is sacred, all of it: our lives, our sense of security, our healthcare, our autonomy. When those in power fail to acknowledge that, maybe it can be a small form of resistance just to live, to do things like cook lasagna, and to revel in the beauty of my life.
