no. 99: postcards

I drove one last carload of our move down through Sunday night’s blizzard, a mishmash of dog beds and tamis (yes, I have more than one, why do you ask?) and the tailings of our apartment in Cambridge. It felt more final than it really should have, but that’s the nature of gleaning, the last passes through a place, to leave it clean and bare. The drive felt like a journey to the afterlife, through something that was neither darkness nor light. A string of strings of cars, following red eyes in the dark.

Stopping for the night in Wallkill, I found myself looking for coffee in Kacey’s Cafe in the morning. Kacey’s turned out to be less an eatery than a kitchen into which someone had shoved a few tables and nailed a TV to the wall. Decor was by Sysco, wire shelving and boxes of takeout containers. It was neither a diner nor a truck stop (this wasn’t a trucking road, and an 18-wheeler wouldn’t have fit in the parking lot) and it wasn’t a breakfast restaurant either, since they’d make you chicken parm for dinner.

Kacey herself — her name is apparently Maria — was cooking, in fur-lined, full-calf boots, and a wooly sweater covered in hearts. The counter was covered with muffins in terraria. I ordered eggs and cheese on a roll.

“Salt-pepper-ketchup?”

“Salt and pepper please, no ketchup. And mustard, if you have it.”

“For bread, I’ve got bagels, rolls, pretzel rolls, and croissants… I bake the croissants here. Just took 'em out of the oven too.”

There was a tray on her cutting board. The shaping left something to be desired.

“A croissant then. The muffins and cookies as well?”

“Did'em yesterday while it was snowing. I was here anyway.”

“Not a lot of places do that anymore.”

“I been here 21 years, I’m not about to go buy a cake somebody else made just so I have cake to sell.”

There was an air conditioner cut into the back wall of the kitchen, recording how much grease that meant.

I ate two breakfasts. The sandwich was a day trip to the sidewalks of Manhattan, the croissant was blissfully lean, its crust thick but flaky. As I ate, Kacey pulled a five pound block of ground beef from her fridge, and started microwaving chunks of it on paper plates.

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We’re renting a house, which we’ve taken to calling “the Cabin” because that’s what it feels like, a low, compact, 1950s shape. The house is tiny but sits on the best part of an acre (almost 3000 msq, for the metric folks). A family of foxes runs the neighborhood: Orange, Russet, Ember, and Flame. The cold has driven them to ground, I miss their tails flashing across the lawn.

There is a goddamn lawn. What are we supposed to do with it? Perhaps we should install a garden gnome.

The kitchen here would make a good station, a meter of stove and a meter of counter. There’s much more storage than we thought. It feels like a metaphor, or a message — we have no crowds to cook for here, so there’s much to be put away, dormant for the winter, possibly longer.

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I’m spending my days in an office for the first time since 2019, and the difference I feel most acutely is how difficult it is to care for the space around me. I cannot get up from my desk and load the laundry, or fold a loaf of proofing bread. I cannot clean the room, because the open plan expanse would take all day, and besides, that’s very much not what I’m paid to do. There would be questions, and a quiet talking-to. So I brush the counter clean of coffee grounds and crumb the tables in the kitchen while I’m making tea, but it feels like a gesture, not a prayer or a tiny victory.

I’ve been trying to finish watching the Bear so I can stop paying Hulu, and just got past the episodes where everyone learns about fine dining. I think this was many people’s favorite arc of the show, because it speaks to a universal desire.

Crumbing the counter at work feels a little like aligning forks with napkins, or sorting sharpies by color. These acts nurture a wineglass kind of beauty, crystalline and fragile. You can’t ask who notices, because almost no one does – but what are you caring for, if not for others?

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I’m still learning to breathe with this place. The bread is too.

First loaf, morning light, Falls Church.