Garlic under the knife

I gently brace for the give of the garlic when the knife blade forces it to the board, stainless steel and variegated wood smeared with the lusty scent of dinner. The papery skin lodges under my fingernail as I peel it away from crushed pungent flesh.

I peel and sigh.  A creeping wave of content flows from plant to animal.

The onion is next to be undressed and divided, chopped and sorted. My hands work under me, my eyes shifting from cutting board to pan to sink where a bowl full of dandelion greens, kale, chard soak their green cells. My hips are moving to the music I have turned up on the stereo, my lungs expelling a weeks worth of breath, worry, grief. The onions are not making me cry, the week is not making me cry. I am (finally) smiling a small delicious smile, my fingers moving across living food I am blessing with my careful (yet still imprecise) knifestrokes. And wonder. Wonder! Always wonder at how vegetables grow, who grows them, how we nurture them and they nurture us, how this symbiotic relationship really came to be, how we forget that they are more of our keeper than we are theirs.

Slippery aliums are scooped up into bare hands and released into a sizzling bath of coconut oil and pepper flakes. I fish out my favorite wooden spoon from the jar next to the stove. I stir the chunks of garlic and rectangular slivers of onion until they are pliable and welcoming.
Ginger...
A knob breaks off in my hands. Scraping the brown off yellow the memory-smell of palm trees and squid boats on the horizon and clear aqua seas floods my brain. I chop the fibrous root into tiny fragments and drop them into the melee.
I stir.
My hands dive into cool water, greens dodging my grasp, slipping by dirty fingernails and calloused palms on the first pass. I swirl and grab, hold them tightly in a crunchy bunch, lift and shake, convey them over marbled countertops to the noisy pan. They pop and sizzle and steam. 

I stir.
With my hands and my heart, I stir.
The kale and the garlic, they stir me back.
In this kitchen, in this moment, alone (with this food), I am whole.

(I had forgotten how that happens. The vegetables sought to remind me.)