Sauting my life

Preparing homemade spaghetti sauce; I sauté the ground beef and a bit of ground lamb, chop the garlic (three cloves), chop the beautiful bright orange pepper just purchased today at Super Fresh - but inside the flesh is riddled with black spots and white fuzz. Yes the pepper had looked so healthy and vibrant in the store - three times the size of the itty bitty red pepper dangling from my little pepper plant on my deck. So I put the pretty orange pepper back into the plastic bag and decide to return it tomorrow. So frequently what appears healthy and whole on the exterior can harbor diseased fruit.

On the deck, I snip two deep red peppers - homegrown with soil I selected and roots and growth I attend to daily - and when I cut them open, the are perfect, no imperfections other than they are small, modest.

Basil - the basil on the deck is robust, prolific - so I go back out and snip a whole limb to put into the sauce. My fingertips smell delicious and I think next time I go out, I will rub the basil behind my ears and onto my wrists instead of bottled perfume.

To the sizzling fragrant garlic, sweet red peppers, and basil, I add the ground meat, a can of diced tomatoes, some tomato paste, and oregano. I put on the cover and let the flavors get to know one another. Tomorrow night, I will serve this to Dylan and Sara as we have a final family dinner before Dylan returns to the University of Maryland. So soon, this year of college will end and he will already be halfway through. We are simmering; this family in a state of transition. I am not sure we have ever been anything but transitioning, evolving. The one word that would not be used to describe us is stagnant., but our soil has been rich and we have rained attention when needed.

A bit more routine, some predictability, would not hurt my life. Knowing how much money I will make and when would be welcome. Knowing what courses I might teach next semester and where I might live in a year or so might make my life richer. As I found some stability on the domestic front, the risks could be in my artistic work; with a relief from financial strife, my intellectual resources and attention could be more focused on classes and research and more creative efforts. So as the sauce marries, I wonder at the sauté of my life and how to brew something richer, fuller, meaningful, and delicious.