Those damn potatoes.
Wrapped in foil, sizzling hot, resting on the oven rack—twenty-seven minutes too late. Steak already cooked. Asparagus? Yup, overdone.
Home soon; he’d be home soon.
We hadn’t been living together long. A month, if that. I’d already set the table, washed the dishes as I went along (sudsy water gracing my shirtfront, an unwelcome dinner guest). Dressed a step above my late-summer uniform of camp counselor shorts and flannel, ready to welcome him home.
Except for those damn potatoes.
I flubbed the timing—did you know potatoes can take an hour to bake? Especially in a crappy apartment oven, the coil burners seared irreparably with grease and grime, ants emerging inexplicably from below our sealed window, creeping out of the gap between the wall and the outlet into which we’d plugged our coffeemaker.
I flubbed the timing, waited far too long to put the petite foil-wrapped reds in to bake with no backup plan. No microwave, no means of fishing the too-toasty spuds from the oven, no way to chop them without letting them cool.
That’s the thing about timing: you don’t know it’s all wrong until it’s too late.
Nothing to do but wait. When my boyfriend came home I made him wait, too. Forced both of us to eat cold steak, asparagus overcooked yet slimily chilled, and potatoes like searing coals, still not baked through.
We finished our shabby dinner and I cried.
I cried about how stubborn and stupid it was that I realized the potato wasn’t going to be ready on time and I baked it anyway.
I cried for my failings, my inability to plan, my insistence on doing things too fast, too slow, unthinkingly; in ways that don’t make sense.
I mourned the image of domestic perfection I so desperately wanted to project; that life-sized paper doll with holes where her eyes should be—caring, loving, kind. I held her up in front of my face.
Insubstantial.
Fallible.
The slightest hint of rain and she fell apart, pulp and ink.
I journaled and paced and took the trash out and washed the counters down and thought. I thought about the times I tried to take care of people (read: men) and failed. How they demanded more or (God forbid) left notes. Judgmental, icky notes, chipping away at my paper-thin self esteem. How these men had taken up valuable real estate in my own head, squeaking out critiques in my own voice, rattling off lists of ways I could do better.
But this was different: I wasn’t with them. I didn’t have to hear them any more. The timing was wrong for a reason, wasn’t it?
Sometimes I let my alternate realities play out like an old film, watching the reel flicker. I moved to the city I really couldn’t stand, bought a house that was all wrong, lived alone through the pandemic, kept smoking on the back patio with my morning coffee (okay, maybe I miss that a little). Languished.
Then I released the hawk to catch the rabbit running wild, the falconer of my own thoughts.
The timing was off, but it was for a reason. The timing was off; you’re in the right place now. You only thought you flubbed it—you are exactly where you were meant to be.
And as I coiled up the last of the aluminum foil and put it in the cupboard, I remembered the potato and shrugged.
Sometimes a potato is just a potato.
And sometimes it’s a reminder that it’s okay to mess things up, as long as you learn from them. These days, I cube the spuds before I bake them.
Lesson learned.
Woah! Look at you, all the way down here. Here’s a little treat: it’s the song I’ve had on repeat!
Beautifully written DJ. I loved this.