The Starter Situation

January seventh. Simone arrived with a mason jar.

I want to be clear that we had a plan. The outdoor bouldering morning was on the calendar, the specific Saturday Simone named aloud in December, the one I wrote about not being able to locate a gap between the naming and the meaning of. The plan existed. And then Simone texted at eight-fifteen to say she was bringing something, and the something turned out to be sourdough starter in a ball jar wrapped in a dish towel, which she had apparently been keeping alive in her refrigerator since October. I did not know this about her. I feel like this is information that should have come up.

We rescheduled the bouldering for next week. In the meantime: flour on my counter, a wooden spoon I forgot I owned, and Simone holding the jar up to the kitchen window like she was reading a wine label.

Her face when she held it up to the light.

She looked at it the way she looks at a route she's not sure about, evaluating, not committing. I laughed, which is the correct response to watching someone be deeply serious about fermentation at eight-thirty in the morning. The bread itself took most of the day. We didn't stay for all of it. We walked two blocks and got coffee and came back and the kitchen smelled like something was actually happening in it, which is not a sentence I can say very often.

The windowsill caught the morning light the way it does in January, flat and gray and honest, all five things in a row. I noticed it the way I always notice it in winter, which is to say without meaning to. The bouldering will happen next Saturday. The starter is in my refrigerator now. I don't know how I feel about this responsibility.