Grandma didn’t cook, not once did I see her in the kitchen slaving over a secret sauce or making cookies for us,
for me,
she wasn’t that sort of grandma, not like the ones from books and films, the cuddly ones that knit and hug,
is it odd that I’m baking something to remember her by?
But memories are never straight, are they? They don’t join together neatly, they jump around and happily mingle with things that don’t even exist, all blurry and incoherent, they’re impossible to pull apart, tangled so tightly,
apples, blackberries, grandma,
a fly has landed gracefully on my hand, I hesitate, and do nothing, that’s what this practice is about—doing nothing—apparently it will help,
it’ll help the jumble of washing machine thoughts that are on a permanent spin cycle from morning till night,
it’ll help untangle the bramble of ideas and help quieten the tornado of words that occupy my mind, whilst I’m helplessly lost in their midst with no way out, making them stronger as I hang on, wrapped up in their whims,
the fly tickles, not unpleasantly, as it pitter pats its way up the edge of my thumb, the skin—knuckles and nails—smeared with the blackberry stain that refused to wash away,
is it burning?
Not the stain, not the fly, the crumble in the oven, it’s only been a few moments, a few moments of peace, a few moments to do nothing,
I inhale, my lungs expanding, the air tunneling in, down my throat, my body responding, I didn’t tell it how to do it, it works all by itself,
it won’t always though, one day it will break like a battered old car, like Grandma, a tiny malfunctioning body,
don’t burn, please don’t burn,
waves of baking apple waft in on a breeze, warm, sweet, like Christmas evenings, full of anticipation, disappointment yet to be unwrapped,
did I forget the sugar? The small cup with a chipped handle, tannin stained, off-white, I measured it out, I’m certain I did, I poured it into the butter, sprinkled on the blackberries that have stained my hands, like when I was ten
smaller hands shielding my eyes from the white autumnal sun as I scramble into the hedgerow, scratches lace my wrists, my arms, battle scars between the thorns and I.
I’m victorious, a rare triumph as I steal the berries, a theft from nature,
perhaps they were always destined to be mine, as they flowered, bloomed, ripened,
did they have another life that I took from them? They’re blackberries, they hardly had career plans… did they? The secret life of blackberries, how could I say it isn’t true?
Me, a human, so far removed from nature that an annual venture to the roadside was a mighty expedition, the itchy, hand-knitted scarf—pulled from the depths of the wardrobe, musky and dusty—designed to irritate my neck,
a chilly breeze blisters past, so vivid, so strong that I shudder, sure that I can feel it now, in my city apartment, twenty-five years apart from those hedgerows, those winds,
nature isn’t meant to be easy with its spikes and disorder, living, feeling, growing things in a mangled web that we, humans, managed to disentangle and eek our way out, gasp by gasp, bludgering all below, not looking back, not daring to see the destruction crumbling between our toes as we did everything and anything not to return,
the plastic punnett, thrown in the trash, berries with a use by date and cling film coat,
what day is it? Thursday? I tug my sleeves down, no, Friday, is it recycling or regular tomorrow? If I miss another week my backdoor will vanish under the weight of black bags stretched to their limits, the insides—squished oat milk cartons for lungs, banana skins for guts and a heart of pizza boxes—barely contained, like a bloated fish washed up on the sea shore,
would they find my body if the turgid bags leached out, inch by inch until they had devoured me? All that I had consumed, consuming me in return, like a ravenous… a ravenous… what?
What is ravenous? A ravenous leopard? But a pile of rubbish with its thin skin hardly has the grace of a big cat. A slug? Are slugs ravenous? Surely they are—everything is ravenous enough if they are lacking something, anything—food, water, love, television shows,
my kitchen houses a ravenous slug of rotting rubbish that is waiting to seek its revenge
I must remember to put the rubbish out,
I rub the skin of my hand, blackberries, apples, crumble,
teasing our taste buds and sparking our brains till we don’t recognise the nature around us, within us,
blackberries unrecognisable as I mix them with sugar and cover them with a sweet fatty blanket, popping it all in the oven to cremate,
I pull at my collar, my light hummingbird specked blouse transforms into the knit scarf, the scent of mothballs so real I almost gag,
her grey hair twisted into little knots that resemble the same mothballs, like Grandma had stuck her head in a drawer, a crown to keep away the attack of flying insects of the dark,
goodnight kisses on oil soaked skin,
I wonder at the vain effort to keep herself looking the way she always had, youthful skin doesn’t belong on old bones, like Christmas Carols in the summer time, wrong, out of place, out of time,
I have an itch behind my ear, it’s spreading like lava, is it on the skin or under the skin? It’s making me fidget, my knee twitch, should I scratch it or just do nothing? I never know in these situations and don’t dare ask, who would I ask anyway, the voice on the app? Right here, right now in the meditation—to scratch or not to scratch?
How far should we go at doing nothing? If the kitchen ceiling were to fall in, cascading down like an avalanche, my bed sheets flowing down like fondant icing, the pillows the cherries on the top, should I resist and do nothing?
“Shush, ceiling. I’m meditating”
just a little scratch, I must, it’s eating away at me, begging me
but my hand doesn’t move, I glance down, it’s there, resting on my bent knee, is my hand making its own decisions now? Why doesn’t it move?
Perhaps my hand knows better than I do, my hand is wiser than my head,
just imagine the mayhem that would ensue if hands really did have minds of their own like octopuses have brains in all their tentacles, would our own hands be our friends or enemies?
I stretch my fingers, with a mind of their own would they approve of what I did or did they yearn to play the piano, climb mountains, or chop down trees?
They surely wouldn’t have liked being thrust into spikey hedgerows, grappling with thorns and spiders for the hope of a squishy little fruit they would never taste,
the smell is stronger now, the sun, the rain, the earth, the insects that worked busily to make the plants grow, the human hands that tended every step, the fingers that wrapped around the apple and plucked it, discarding it into a box, the cow, chained and caged in the dairy farm, squeezed of its milk, crying for its calf who is already half way around the world being formed into a burger, all for my slab of butter, that melts and bubbles and burns in the oven, the sweat of the factory workers who pieced together the packets, the people who made the printers that stamped, ‘plain flour’ in blue font on the paper bag, the engineer that survived years of caffeine fuelled study to make the oven that sits in my small open plan apartment on a pollution soaked street, and the planet that is drained dry of water, drip by drip every second,
I inhale it all deeply, my belly expanding,
melting fats and caramalising sweets, crumble and fruits, cooking together, a work of art I made with my own hands,
is that smoke?
My nose wrinkles, I squint open an eye,
Grandma told me never to light candles, not ever, not once
‘the house will burn down.’
candles weren’t the arsonists, Grandma had very little trust that I wouldn’t burn the house down,
I still don’t own a candle, not one column of beeswax, not one crinkled tea light,
I’ll buy some tomorrow,
I’ll forget the matches,
my life will be an ongoing torment of wanting to light a candle but not having the means,
what else did Grandma tell me?
‘Don’t stare in the mirror too long or the devil will get you.’
who told her that? Was it the devil itself as she gazed at her own reflection
words unsaid are just as powerful
my heartbeat races, vibrating in my chest like a fly caught in a jar
‘relax,’
I whisper the word to the empty room, it leaves my mouth and mingles with the dust motes, telling its story to everything it meets,
‘relax,’ it sings to the unshaded lightbulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the room,
‘relax’ it murmurs to the tv, frazzling in the static of the screen,
‘relax’ it mumbles to the photograph of three women—united by the same down-turned mouth,
she was bigger then, bigger than all of us, bigger than the world could contain, she always needed more, living in a fabricated place of magic and mysticism that kept her at arm’s length from everyone else, exactly how she liked it,
I stole her size, day by day, little by little, I grew and grew, ravenous, and she shrunk and shrunk, until I was fully formed and she was nothing more than a tiny doll, wrapped up in a daisy dotted blanket,
A thief, a blackberry thief, a Grandma thief,
I didn’t return for the funeral,
I rub the blackberry stain, deep purply pink, a bruise that will linger far longer than the food,
would she have minded my absence?
the fly is long gone, I didn’t even notice it leave, it didn’t say goodbye, I’ve left the kitchen window open, it’s getting dark, the fly has probably invited her friends, perhaps they’ll have a party amongst the trash bags, flies laugh at us as they dance on our thrown away crusts and apple cores, partying their short lives away, crackling in the blue hum of a fly zapper as we cheer on their demise,
did I notice grandma leave? Did she say goodbye or did I? No dent or hole in the world opened up when she left,
no, she wouldn’t have minded,
her words whisper through me, thrumming every cell of my body,
the phone’s vibrating, a gong, struck once, recorded, repeated around hundreds of homes, telling us that we’ve done enough of doing nothing for a while.
We tried.
Will there ever be a time when we don’t need to try?
When we don’t try to keep away the hard won wrinkles with dabs of oil or the guilt of not saying goodbye.
When we try to make an apple crumble that smells like childhood and tastes like sweet memories that burn the roof of your mouth.
The oven timer trills.
I can’t do nothing any longer either.
I retrieve the cake from its furnace. Saving it from a cremation I couldn’t save Grandma from.
She wouldn’t have minded that I didn’t sit watching her burn and crisp up like the speck of crumble fallen from the tin. That I didn’t breathe in her ash as it danced on the breeze.
The crumble is singed at the edges, the apples bubbling furiously to escape. Like Grandma. Where even the sweetness inside is tinged with violence. Like the thorns defending their fruit.
I’ll wait for the food to cool, for the bubbles to retreat, for the heat to subside. Doing nothing lets it become what it needs to be, like the hurricane swirling in my mind, less and less. I breathe in the appley scent of chilly autumn evenings, warmed by stove tops. Sitting at the end of grandma’s bed, listening to tales of worlds just the other side of our own.
I breathe in as it crumbles the barriers from then to now. The sweet smells that seep into my mind, dissolving everything they encounter and turning them into the memories of my life.
As I sit in their midst, breathing deeply, I’ll do nothing for a little while longer.
