This Is Just To Say

Cacio e Pepe, mother-writers, and Alan Rickman

This Is Just To Say

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

I have eaten 
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which 
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

---

Jazz swirls in the steam of salted pasta water. My husband is beside me, plating slices of mozzarella and tomato, drizzles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, in his ever-meticulous way. He’s had to go upstairs at least three times already to tell our rambunctious youths, who share a bedroom, that they need to settle down and go to sleep.

It’s a Saturday night, and on Saturday’s he usually cooks for me, but lately we have begun cooking together. There is something surprisingly intimate about this, something which tugs at threads I hadn’t known were lingering. His closeness to me as we prepare each other’s nourishment, our silence of familiar nooks and crannies, fills me with comfort and heat.

I grab the tub of Pecorino-Romano cheese, adding some to a bowl with a healthy amount of black pepper, and blend the two for Cacio e Pepe. My mind floats easily to other places, other times. I find myself sitting near my grandmother and mother as they cooked, smiling over their cackles of laughter, my cheeks reddening over my grandmother’s dirty jokes. In the same breath I am older, with children who can wipe their own bottoms and are generally self-sufficient around somewhere - or perhaps gone - wondering if they are thinking of Momma’s jazz and steam sonatas filtering up the stairs.

Setting a pitcher beside the pot of boiling noodles, I place a ladle into my hand - a reminder to please not drain the pot without reserving the pasta water again - and hear the whisper of voices over the monitor. In the last week my second-born has stopped needing me to lay with him until he is asleep, at least for now, and it’s both a relief and an ache.

Generally, trying to ground myself in the present at all feels impossible with my boy’s nearly constant needs or demands, the toys and cushions strewn around the house within seconds of their waking. But then a small hand wiggles into mine, or a grubby 4-year-old runs into my arms to tell me he loves me with a sigh, or my giant nearly-6-year old cracks a joke that elicits a genuine guffaw from me, and his shy grin is worth all the angst I held.

The pasta water is remembered, and I watch it swirl into the melting cheese, thickening and smelling incredible. Adding the noodles, I watch them glisten with the savory coating. My grandma would have wanted to add clams, I think. Perhaps next time.

---

This last week held temperatures warm enough to wear sandals, and today we are back to coats and socks. My belly fills with savory, earthy meals, and my mind with full calendars and brotherhood brawls, lost in these chaotic days that seem to stretch on and on. In her essay “mother-writer,”

Laura Pashby

writes of

“trying to hold tight to the soft-limbed milky moments that felt at once achingly fleeting and exhaustingly interminable.”

Learning the weave of my soul-skin puts me in a peculiar place of still experiencing those milky moments and recognizing my own shifts away from my children. I can sense that almost imperceptible recognition of change, both in the time I'm finding to create and their lengthening limbs.

---

bits and bobs

•Art: I love this print called New Skies by my friend and talented artist, Rachel Grant, which captures a moody winter sky so well:

and this one called ABC’s of Life, by another internet friend Lori Roberts at Little Truths Studio

•Writing: My dear friend

Katie Spring

has launched a Substack called Art & Soil, and this last week she wrote about resilience:

I don’t think I believe in resilience as springing back into shape.  As easy as it is to  romanticize the before-times, I don’t want to go back to that shape.  I don’t want to go back to the times when I didn’t know how to rest or find patience or ask for help or be gentle with myself.  I don’t want to go back to the times when I thought resilience was an individual task.

•Reading/Listening: This week I started reading (amidst the several other books I am generally juggling) Alan Rickman’s collection of diary entries in Madly, Deeply. Like

Jillian Hess

at the popular Substack Noted, I have always had a fascination for the daily, ordinary lives of other people and how they are recorded. Lists, journal entries, scrawls in an agenda. Rickman, a forever crush of mine, is often succinct in his entries, though they very much carry his personality.

I enjoyed this one, only one line:

15 August

All afternoon - the simple but back-breaking pleasure of creating a flower-bed.

---

What are you holding onto this week? What are you letting go of?

As always, I love connecting with my readers. You can reply in a comment below, or to the email in your inbox - it goes straight to me. Please share with others if what I write resonates with you as it warms me straight through to see this community grow!

Wishing you a week of hygge-riffic delights, and reminders of your significance apart from the roles you carry.

Warmly,

Jess