Yesterday I burned my pieces of toast, but I scraped the black crumbs off of the four sides and still used it to make my egg sandwich.  I burned nachos and cheese under the broiler at lunch time.  I scooped the smoking pan out and whisked it straight to the metal table on the deck.  Bill sees me.  “Are you sure they aren’t salvageable?”  I tell him that my granddad might have eaten the nachos, but they were too far gone for me.  I hear the echo Granddad’s laughing voice, “When it’s brown it’s cookin’, and when it’s black it’s done!” 

On Friday, Bill defrosted tubes of rolled pie crust, pie shells in tins, lamb kidney, and chunks of stewing beef.  Like a driven mad scientist, on Saturday he commandeered the kitchen in the late afternoon to make steak and kidney pie—and steak pie for me.  He had four websites up and was building his own recipes out of different chefs’ opinions.  When I came in from outside, the kitchen smelled delicious as the meat was simmering away in a sauce that included a pint of Guinness beer.  The aroma went bitter as I watched Bill replace one lid and pull the other off the second pan. 

Instantly, I knew our family wouldn’t be eating together this evening.  I focused on the Guinness smell over the kidney smell much the way I stand on one leg in yoga and pick a spot on the wall to drive my gaze into such that I don’t lose my balance. I reminded myself that the kidney smell did not represent my steak-only pie.  I opened the fridge to see a hearty package of Brussels sprouts.  Roasted sprouts would neutralize the kidney—and farther push Will and Liam to the far corners of our house behind closed doors.  

An hour-and-a-half before Bill and I sat down to eat, I grilled steak, made mashed potatoes, and tossed lettuce in dressing for the boys.  Bill and I sat down with his favorite English meal; he opened a can of stout, similar to Guinness, to go with it.  The beer poured like motor oil into a pint glass.  “Perfect… I’ve been saving this for a cold day to have with steak and kidney pie.” Granddad ate liverwurst and stinky limburger cheese; no doubt he would’ve enjoyed sharing Bill’s steak and kidney pie. My steak pie was reminiscent of a wintry beef stew tucked inside Grandma Mills’ homemade pie crust.

When I wrote in the library, the quiet room felt five degrees cooler than the rest of the library, perhaps ten degrees cooler than our house. Relatively speaking. In that room, I would pull my traveling sweater from my backpack and slip it on to keep my upper torso comfortable.  My hair worked to insulate my neck and ears.  Many times sitting at that long table I thought about Bob Cratchit gingerly trying to convince Scrooge to add another piece of coal to the stove.  That coolness in the library kept me focused and fueled the movement of words.  This morning it feels like 23 outside, and I have the window cracked behind me.  The temperature lacks equilibrium: the front of me is 70 degrees while my back is dipping down to 30 degrees.  If it weren’t for my fingers needing to touch the computer, I could rotate like one does standing next to a bonfire.  Or like how we twist the stick to perfectly roast a marshmallow over coals in the fireplace.

With our home’s normal room temperature, I keep my hair up in a ponytail or a clip.  Wisps that fall to the front aren’t cute or playful; they annoy me.  I keep rescue bobby pins in drawers upstairs and downstairs.  Grandma Mills often used those utilitarian tools to keep her thick hair in place as she worked in the kitchen or the garden.  At home, I finish the initial up-do with a bobby pin on either side anchoring predictable pieces that would otherwise soon loosen.  Around lunchtime, another piece of hair drops into my eyes; I inherently grab another bobby pin out of the drawer in the kitchen before cooking.  I go back to the same drawer when I come in from the wind.  I drift into Will and Liam’s rooms in the afternoon to check in and to grab laundry.  I collect the laundry basket from the master bedroom, put it down, and grab another bobby pin from my bathroom drawer.  At the end of the day, I feel my head for pins.  Before I went to bed last night, I took four of them out.

I marvel at the power that those little practical pieces of curved metal have in holding it all together.