Ninety Minutes and a Cold Pot

My mom called at like six-fifteen, which is peak dinner-assembly hour in this apartment if I'm being honest with myself about my ambitions as a cook. I had been doing something with pasta water and a jar of sauce and the general intention of eating before eight, and then her name came up on the phone and I just, picked it up and leaned against the counter and that was the end of dinner for a while.

We talked for an hour and a half. Not about anything urgent. She told me about a thing that happened at her church group. I told her about the pottery class ending and the collapsed bowl that is now living on my windowsill next to Gerald. She laughed at the Gerald thing, which she always does. She asked if I was eating enough, which I am, technically, even when I forget pots on the stove. It was the kind of call where you hang up and the room feels quieter than it did before, in a good way, like something got refilled that you hadn't realized was running low.

The pot she forgot about.

When I finally hung up the pasta was cold and slightly tragic and I ate it anyway standing at the counter because that felt appropriate. Gerald and the bowl watched from the windowsill, which is very on-brand for them. I don't know when home started feeling like a voice on the phone instead of a place I could drive to, but somewhere in the last couple years the call itself became the visit. Ninety minutes. Worth every degree of heat the pot lost.

Gerald and the bowl. The only reliable constants.