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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 We were in the kitchen, cooking together. It was early January, early evening. We were cooking and talking. Chopping, pouring, beating , scraping, setting pans in the oven and on top of the stove—a great commotion of cooking, with plenty of clatter and mess (which is the way we like it, even now—or the only way we know how to do it, and thus we’ve come to like it; who can tell?)—and all the while talking . The stereo was on, too, the volume way up because it’s in the living room, so that anyone passing through the living room on the way upstairs to what was then our only bathroom had to make the trip with her hands over her ears. Grace was seven and a half. We were doing a lot of cooking together that winter, that whole year. A lot of cooking, a lot of talking, a lot of listening to music. I don’t remember what was on the stove that night—and in the oven and on the cutting board and in the mixing bowls—and I can’t say what music we were listening to, turned up so loud, or what we were talking about. If I were writing fiction, as I used to only do, I would be able to tell you. Not being able to say—having to guess, because I don’t want to pretend that my memory is better than it is—is part of why I never used to be interested in writing nonfiction. The other part—not unrelated—has to do with what I once thought of as being “constrained by” what actually happened: stuck with and tied down by—weighed down by—the inartfulness of “real” life. But as I have grown older, I’ve found that what actually happens is in fact at least as interesting to me as what I can make up, and that real life, when looked at closely, is enough like art that the distinction between what is art and what isn’t is less interesting to me than it used to be. (Art may be the wrong word. Artful might be better. For that mat- 100 Seeing Things ter, interesting may be the wrong word. What I mean by interesting, I think, is meaningful. But let’s let this be for now. I’ll come back to it: it’s one of the things I most want to talk about. But first things first. I have a story—a true story—to tell.) My best guess is that on this night we were making the meal we ate most often in those days—pasta with a sauce heavy on the garlic, the tomatoes pureed in the Cuisinart; collard greens or broccoli sauteed in olive oil and still more garlic; and, for dessert, the cake we called “healthy pound cake,” which Grace and I had invented together that autumn (and which we called “healthy” because it was made with whole wheat flour, no white at all, and never mind the three cups of sugar and half pound of butter)—and that the music was the Beatles (because 2001 ushered in the Era of the Beatles in our house). We were almost certainly talking about school, because winter break had just ended, and it was that January that Grace made her first friend at the school she’d transferred to eleven months before. Chances are good that she was telling me about her—Kristin—because most nights, that winter and spring, Kristin was the main topic. Or she might have been talking about her teacher, the tirelessly inventive Mrs. Pace, and some complicated project she had just assigned—for second grade was not only Year One of the Era of the Beatles, it was also the Year of Complicated Projects: a to-scale model of the Capitol Building, a homemade katydid costume Grace wore while reciting a poem she’d written about katydids (she got to choose the insect; I was just grateful she hadn’t picked one that had more legs), a possum made out of pantyhose and pillow batting, an “original invention” related to the Olympics (for which Grace came up with something she called “Snack ‘n Drink”). What I do remember perfectly is that right in the middle of everything —in mitn derinnen, as my grandmother would have said—Grace stopped what she was doing and said, “Mama?” She said it quietly, but even with...
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