Big Spoons

I'm a Gwownup Now?

Sitting on the porch steps of my new place this morning, a cute neighbor was taking a morning walk. She was unaware that I was staring at her. I was staring not because I’m lecherous, but because I was still waking up and because I am an animal. That she was attractive is just me being descriptive, it could’ve been anyone. I quickly looked away at the mountains -because decorum- but I felt a great urge to focus my entire attention on the stranger, now in my territory, like a dog would if another dog was walking by. High alert. This is the natural impulse, which in this situation, had I been noticed, could be interpreted as impolite at best and misogynistic at worst.

The mountains are good though. They always are, but as I was exploring my new neighborhood the other day there was something about it I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The streets are wider and the houses are bigger, but something else… then it hit me; there are no power lines, the utilities are all underground.

The seemingly tiny detail changes the overall atmosphere in a way that you only notice subliminally.

I’m in the basement of a split-level house. Before I moved in I thought this was going to be a bummer but on my side of the street the terrain starts to climb up a hill to a park, putting my room at eye-level to the second floor of the house across the way.

I have four large windows; two northeast, two northwest, kind of bunched together which lets in a substantial amount of light and makes for an open, airy feel.

There’s also more room in my room. My little desk is actually a desk now, not just a place to put stuff.

Oh! I finally got a bed frame that is big enough for my mattress. Don’t judge. Three years of sleep in a gentle taco have come to an end. No adult would’ve put up with this arrangement, but understand; I only just celebrated seven years of sobriety on August 8th and I gladly put up with far worse circumstances for years before I stopped drinking. Considering that I was reborn in 2018 and that on good days my mental and emotional maturity is more on par with that of a five-year-old, I think I’m ahead of the curve in the adulting department.

Being single (shocker!) I was simply grateful to be sober with my own place, my own bed, and not in a dirty, dangerous traphouse somewhere, barely scaring up a desire to live another day.

For three years I slept very well on the flat side of the mattress and made my bed every day. However. The gratification that I get when I make my bed now, in my spacious bedroom is indescribable. The symmetry of the patterns on the blankets is satisfying in a fundamental way. For the first time I can acknowledge the discomfort of my previous sleeping arrangement.

I had been renting a room with a shared kitchen and living room, which I was “welcome to use“ but that I never did because these spaces were furnished with the homeowners’ stuff. I cooked there less than a dozen times, using their cookware, not having brought any of my own from my sister’s place after she had died and I finally, reluctantly moved into my “own” place, for the first time since I got sober.

So, this morning instead of going straight to the park to write, I stopped at Walmart and did something I’ve only done once before in my life, when I was 16; I bought cookware for my kitchen.

I have a dozen “fresh squeezed” eggs (from a local chicken!¹) sitting on my counter, and I needed a way to cook them. I got a nice but simple frying pan and a sauce pan so I can do fried, scrambled and boiled. I had to get salt and pepper. Sea salt and peppercorn grinders – might as well go fancy, since I’ve leveled up my life game to a pinkies-out, sweater-wearing, underground-utilities, flat-mattress-type situation. Of course I would need a plate. Or two plates, because I’m hopeful. Basic, plain white. And as I was going through the exercise in my mind, I realized I would require silverware. Forks, knives, two of each, and spoons. The biggest ones I could find. Chowder spoons.

One thing I’ve learned about spoons in all the years since that starry-eyed teenager struck out on his own in this big and crazy world is that they are all almost always criminally small. I think it’s a psyop. A spoon should be able to comfortably contain a single Mini-Wheat. The original, not the Little Bites. I’ve since learned that not everyone agrees with me about the proper size for a spoon. It’s okay; they’re allowed to be wrong.

It’s unbelievable to me that I almost didn’t move to this place because where I had been was good enough. Comfortable.

Most days I have precious little patience with myself and the slow progress I’m making in getting my shit together, but right now I can see the mountains from my actual writing desk and there are no power wires sullying my view.

Tiny steps.

1. This is only funny to me. I’m easily amused.