Читать книгу All the Wild Hungers - Karen Babine - Страница 12

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WHEN OCTOBER DAYS GROW short and opaque and the dense of sky presses down like the palm of a hand, I crave cabbage, the resistance of green steamed just enough to bite, Brussels sprouts cut in half and sautéed in butter and olive oil. In the celadon spring, I always want colcannon. In these early days of cancer, my family—my parents, two sisters, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew—institute a weekly family dinner to alleviate the fear in our bellies over what is happening to our mother. We are a family that crowds three adult daughters into the consultation room with our parents and our mother’s doctors, prompting one doctor to look from me to my youngest sister and back again and ask if we are twins, and we laugh and say there are four years between us. Our family is very close, both geographically and emotionally, and this colors our reactions to the world around us. Because we live within a ten-mile radius, it is common for us to toss out impromptu invitations, so when we think about making each moment count, we realize that we have not changed much about the way we are with each other. Cancer simply requires that we articulate ourselves differently, reorienting our language as we become intimately aware of the words we use. We come to understand the idea of “cancer-adjusted normal,” that what might have constituted a bad day a year ago is actually a truly good day today. We don’t ask how are you doing? anymore—we ask how is today?

On one of these nights full of family and color and sound, I pull out Estelle, my vintage Le Creuset cast-iron Dutch oven, rescued from a thrift store about the time my mother was diagnosed, and I realize that Estelle is Week 14 Lemon Yellow and I’m seeing pregnancy and cancer and food everywhere. Tonight, I want the bright of braised red cabbage against that pale-yellow enamel, the bite of vinegar and sharp apples, because today is a day that stings the inside of my skin like balsamic breathed too deeply. I sauté the sharpness of two thinly sliced onions down to sweetness, then add fennel seeds until they warm the room. Three Granny Smith apples, cut into chunks, are stirred gently into the onion, and then I turn to the red cabbage, which will be chopped and added to the pot with enough balsamic vinegar to braise over the course of an hour. I refuse to think of pathology as I slice harder than necessary through dark purple and white, the hidden patterns and swirls in the packed leaves too beautiful to be accidental.