Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen? Someone once said that watching me cook in my kitchen was like watching a captain on her ship. Sure of every move I make, piloting with confidence however agitated the sea may be. Don’t you love that feeling?
Or, you might prefer a dance metaphor. Cooking up a story comes with its own choreography. When all is well, we glide from counter to cupboard, sentence to sentence, light on our feet. Each gesture has purpose. Each word has its place. We take charge.
No need for a long mirror to watch ourselves. We know how we look in this familiar place. More important, we know how we feel. At home in our natural habitat. Free to deviate from the recipe, a pinch of plot experiment here, a dollop of quirky dialog there, without counsel or critique from anyone.
Who’s Cooking In Your Usual Story Kitchen? You are. Occasionally you may invite collaborators in, but generally trust your own judgement first. Prefer your own fingerprints on the spice jars of your imagination. You perform with comfort on this stage, and soloing here gives you peace.
I pause now to focus on those sensations in my personal experience. Luxuriating, mid-pirouette, toes grazing tile, fingers flying over keys, commanding whatever my creative corner of the world might be. All are, for the moment at least, part of my past.
My Covid era story kitchen is another place entirely. I no longer flow freely from one inspiration to the next. No longer relax in my familiar creative place. I am no longer a captain on the bridge of my ship. Because I am no longer alone.
My husband is here. He simply showed up one day, buffeted by circumstance onto my private preserve. I might have been less taken aback if he possessed more aptitude or affinity for the practical tasks at hand. But maybe not.
His choreography is clumsy at best. He wants to be here about as enthusiastically as I am eager to admit him. He is out of his element and imperfectly replanted in mine. We attempt a compromise amidst our mutual discomfort. Try our best not to blunder into each other’s path.
All the same, he taxes my parameters. Asks endless questions, makes furtive moves, displays little inclination for blending into his new, accidental environment. He captained his own ship in another place, at another time, but that ship is on covid drydock now.
Our pandemic pas de deux may improve with practice. Lately, we are less at odds, but I doubt he will ever slide smoothly between storage cabinet and stove, or that his bumpy ballet will become a beauty to behold. And this is only in the cooking kitchen.
In other rooms, something more troubling pervades. I have lost my private creative space. Writing has always been a solitary occupation for me. I am challenged to maintain motivation in a shared environment. Are you in a similar circumstance, struggling to contend with the same question? Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen?
Meanwhile, an even deeper discomfort lurks beneath our displacement dissonance. The absence of supper guests who never arrive. We yearn for company worth unearthing our most lovely table linens to pamper and please, so sadly absent now.
We are in lockdown, staying at home, staying safe, whatever. No feet other than our own tread the deck of whosever ship this may end up to be. Which, we find with regret, is the least tolerable intrusion of all.
Who occupies your Coronial creative place? Who samples the kettle and adjusts the seasonings just so? What characters concoct your story stew and contrive the plots in your pots? Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen?
Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.
Aunt Dee cooks to heal the heart in Alice’s novel The Wrong Way Home – the ladle-licking-luscious first book in her Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Sample this delish dish for free HERE. After that appetizer, dig into the four Riverton Road story courses that follow. Find those, and the rest of Alice’s books, HERE.
What Readers Say: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”
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My kitchen isn’t one. I have an efficiency apartment with a refrigerator but no stove – only a microwave. There are few things I make that require one, but when I do, there’s one upstairs in my neighbor’s kitchen I can borrow. She’s awesome about that. Have never enjoyed cooking anyway, so I’m not really doing anything different from when I had a full kitchen. But there’s not much room for other feet, and like you, no dinner guests. Still, my hubby is okay with it and so am I. Other than missing the occasional baked item, I’m happy with my new space.
Hi Kayelle. Now I understand something that has continued to puzzle me. How you find the time to do as much as you manage to accomplish. A prodigious pile of achieving in my opinion. You don’t cook!! I would have had time for a whole other career if I’d taken that road. Or at least to be more time-on with the career I plug along at now. All of those hours clocked in the kitchen. Imagine them spent at my desk instead. Hallelujah to you, my friend. And good thinking too. You were smart enough not to condition everyone around you to expect you in the kitchen every day producing fodder for them to eliminate, while maybe offering a passing “Good Supper” comment in return. Blessings. Alice
I love reading your books, Alice, and I enjoyed your posts. They made me laugh and warmed my heart!
I’ve long felt like the captain of my kitchen, and it wasn’t easy letting my mate step up to help. However, as you know, I had a terrible accident five years ago where I fell and broke both wrists. I’ve since healed, thank God, and I have been teaching, writing, and doing work at home. It’s by the grace of God, I believe, that I can do what I do. However, I since learned to welcome my husband’s help with the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, etc. He is still the captain of the lawn mower! I appreciate your blog and hope all is well with you and your family. God Bless!
Hi Cathy. It’s great to hear from you, and I am very glad to learn about your healing. What an ordeal you have struggled through. I applaud your courage and your persistence toward wholeness. I have had my own such challenges, and I know what it takes to get through to the other side. Brava. I can also understand how your husband’s household presence would be a mixed blessing perhaps, but strongly canted toward the upside. I find that I remain the actual captain of my kitchen, but I am definitely grateful to have a first mate. I am pleased to hear that you enjoy my blog posts, and I hope you are finding time for writing of your own. Please keep well and stay safe. Blessings. Alice
Loved your cooking essay on your blog. It inspired me to think about my experience with cooking at this time in shutdown history. Thank you so much for your insights and wisdom.
Dear Nina. How good it is to hear from you. I have been praying for you and keeping you in my thoughts. I hope you are well and safe. You are right about cooking in shutdown. It comes with special challenges. Often with the necessity to become more creative with fewer ingredients. But also we must remember to nourish our bodies, which are carrying added stress these days. That stress may feel like it is emotional, but it impacts the body as well. So, feeding ourselves is part of holding ourselves dear and precious, and remembering as we do that we are loved, not only by ourselves but by others as well. I send my love to you today and always and hope you will find it nourishing. Blessings. Alice
Alice–that was too funny. You are to be admired for your ability to laugh at yourself and Jon. I howled through the entire piece………………love you.
Hi Dorice. We must laugh at ourselves, or I can’t imagine how low life might plummet, and I have no desire to go there. I am most pleased that you found reason to laugh your way through the post. Thanks so much for telling me that. It warms my cockles (wherever they may be) to think I gave the gift of laughter, especially to someone I cherish as much as I do you. Blessings
Love your choreography, photos and share your despair of no guests for dinner!
Dear Jo-Ann. It is lovely to hear from you. Thank you for your kind words. You are right about the absense of folks to feed at our welcoming tables. We so often think of feeding others as a gift we give them, and we find sustenance for our own human hunger by doing that giving. Now we must sustain ourselves in other ways, and try to remember to feed ourselves too, even though so many of us have been raised to think that selfish. In these very different days, we are offered the opportunity to be our own guests, and to revel in the good company we are. I know for a fact that you are good company indeed. Please keep yourself well and safe until the time, and it will come, when we can welcome one another to feast together once more. Blessings. Alice