The pot of lentils I made every day for two weeks because my hands remembered the recipe

My grandmother taught me to make lentil soup when I was nine. She died in early July and I made her lentil soup the day after the funeral. I was not hungry. I made it because my hands knew how to make it and the rest of me did not know what to do.

I soaked the lentils the way she soaked them. I cut the onion the way she cut it, in quarters, not the way I usually cut it. I added the cumin she always added and the tomato she always added and I did not add the things she never added. I made it her way because her way was the thing my hands remembered, and my hands were the only part of me that was working.

I made it her way because her way was the thing my hands remembered, and my hands were the only part of me that was working.

I ate a bowl standing at the stove. It tasted like her lentils. I ate another bowl. I put the rest in the fridge and I made it again the next day. I made it every day for two weeks. I was not eating it because I wanted lentil soup. I was eating it because making it was the closest thing I had to being in her kitchen, and being in her kitchen was the place I wanted to be and could not go to anymore.

By the second week I was eating the whole pot. I had not eaten a full meal since before she died and the lentils were the thing that got me from one day to the next. They were soft and warm and they had calories and protein and I did not care about any of that. I cared that the kitchen smelled like her kitchen and that my hands were doing what her hands had done.

I stopped making it every day in the third week. I started eating other things. But I make the lentil soup once a month now and I make it her way, the quarters of onion and the cumin and the tomato, and it is the thing of hers that I kept. The grief is still there. The soup is not a cure for it. The soup is the thing I make with my hands when the rest of me does not know what to do, and for the two weeks after she died it was the only reason I ate anything at all.