10 Sep Tiny Inconveniences
When the girls were little, they would sit on the kitchen counter while I made dinner, their small fingers peeling the papery skin from cloves of garlic. I would hand them another clove, then another, and they would drop the peeled ones into a little pile beside me.
Then I discovered minced garlic in a jar. I thought it was brilliant. I could scoop out exactly what I needed, keep my hands clean, skip the cutting board altogether.
A few years later came the frozen garlic cubes. Even better. Already minced, already measured. I could pop out two or three and drop them straight into the pan. I was delighted by this tiny improvement to my life.
I have always loved finding ways to make things more efficient. A shorter route. One less step. A few minutes returned to the day. And I have found a lot of them.
All the while, time has passed while I was busy attempting to save it.
Lately, I’ve started buying whole garlic again.
I pull a clove from the head and press it beneath the flat side of my knife. The skin crackles and sticks to my fingers. I peel it away, chop the garlic, gather the pieces with the edge of the blade. The girls are usually somewhere nearby, eating at the counter, opening the refrigerator, telling me something about their day.
I know there are easier ways to get garlic into dinner. I spent years using them.
But lately I find myself more willing to bother. There is something in the doing of it. The papery skin scattered across the cutting board. The weight of the knife in my hand. The sharp smell of garlic left on my fingers. A few minutes that once seemed worth saving.
We have gotten extraordinarily good at removing the parts between wanting something and having it. Often, this is wonderful. But those parts between are also where our hands touch things. Where we wait, notice, make, tend.
I’m starting to suspect that some of the best parts of being alive are the tiniest bit inconvenient.
Maybe I don’t want a life with all the bother taken out of it.