An Ode to Chopping Vegetables

Sometimes, I feel that if there is one throughline in my life, my travels, my adventures, it is chopping vegetables. (An exaggeration of course, but in a similar vein I actually do kind of think that my life is just experiences filling time between stops at the Kennebunkport rest station heading North, but that’s a theory for another time).  I feel sometimes that I have chopped vegetables in every place I’ve ever loved, at every counter or table I’ve ever argued over or eaten at, in every kitchen I’ve ever navigated, around every campstove I’ve ever lit. If there is one act that feels universal, that can instantaneously pull me back to a place, to a moment, it is chopping vegetables. 

I have chopped vegetables using a tiny veggie grater in an outdoor kitchen in Chile, crying over a dead dog, trying to prepare carrot cake for an old guy whose name I could not recall if I tried. In the same kitchen, I made dozens of vegetable-filled meals for two of my all-time favorite kids, singing and laughing as we told jokes and tried to deep fry everything in sight. The kitchen, our place of rest and rejuvenation, a separate place to connect outside of math class, always full of the smells of delicious meals and tragic failures, strong efforts and silly outcomes.

I have chopped vegetables in my childhood home countless times. I can show you the scars from where I cored a tomato poorly as a kid, from where I nipped my finger cutting lettuce. I can show you my favorite cutting board, my favorite place to stand–facing the windows and the road, usually a soft golden light falling over whatever I’m chopping to throw into home fries on a late summer morning. I can tell you about all the meals I’ve made or helped make there– elaborate New Years Eve feasts or hungover brunches for friends, Thanksgiving meals with family, meals I’ve made alongside my mom, leftovers I’ve converted for school lunches.

I’ve chopped veggies in a shared house in Providence, pressing myself tight to the round table in the middle of the too-small kitchen to let housemates pass through to the sink, trying to make a meal from incoherent ingredients, dried beans and old herbs and bulk grains. In the same kitchen, I’ve chopped while dancing, singing along to my favorite songs with my favorite friends, knives and spoons standing in for microphones. I’ve helped my housemates make dinner, desperate for a break on my way down the stairs, avoiding homework, the demands of college.

I’ve chopped veggies alongside rushing water, on mountains, in canoes, on flat rocks in the middle of lakes. I’ve chopped veggies on a picnic table at a campsite, under a rain fly, cowering as water poured over the edges, making quesadillas with Eleanor, waiting for the boys to find a suitable place to sleep. Or with Louise or Lara or Katie, stirring beans and talking about incoming rain, camp chairs wrapped around a fire. I’ve cut veggies with my carving knife, with my PFD knife, with a spork, with a butter knife. I’ve giggled and chattered and bickered and drank beer while cutting veggies, in the cold and the heat and the wind and the rain, with nearly all of my dearest friends, always while making meals to share after long, hard days. 

I’ve chopped veggies in a cold, windy apartment in Halifax, preparing vegetables for someone who hadn’t eaten them in weeks, trying out recipes in a kitchen that almost felt like my own, spending weeks holed away, flipping through ski bum cookbooks, watching the slushy snow fall twenty stories below. I’ve bought mushy on-sale January cucumbers wrapped in plastic and turned them into bibimbap bowls, bright salads, keeping the cold out and the light in. I’ve spent days this way, chopping vegetables, making my own bright colors in the gray winter, curling up in bed with new books and old movies with the person I love most. 

This summer, I chopped carrots and apples for kids at the big, long wooden kitchen table on the island, chatting with friends in the kitchen, drinking coffee and trying to prolong the moment, trying to stay there endlessly, glancing at the clocking hoping to see us stuck in time, sensing the loud, insistent buzzing energy of kids outside. Begrudgingly taking my carrot matchsticks and peanut butter out to them, scraping scraps into the compost, waving goodbye to the singular moments before emerging back into the bright, blue sunlight.

I’ve chopped vegetables in other friends’ childhood homes, asking endless questions about where things live and how hot the tap water gets, waiting for instructions, trying to be as busy as possible with my hands while listening to stories about mishaps and well-baked cakes, avoiding snow-melt spots in my socked feet on January afternoons, or wiping my onion-teary eyes on dishcloths in July hot island kitchens, breathing in the sweet scents of someone else’s memories. Hands busy, heart open.

And now I’ve also chopped veggies in my homestay kitchen in Tanzania, my knife held, alarmingly, mere inches from the face of a little girl named Wilma, who is a friend of the family and followed us home after a recent playdate, her standing on my crocs as I stripped and sliced carrots and onions and peppers for an omelet lunch after church. Using a new knife and a new cutting board I’d never seen until moments before, but feeling those familiar, repetitive motions, made new with the dodging of Wilma’s curious fingers, avoiding flinching at the feeling of her poking a pen through the holes in my crocs, trying to catch a few words of her toddler-inflected Swahili through the giggles, dreading the moment when she’d have to go home, and take with her the brightness of an endlessly-curious mind.

When I really think about it, the act of chopping vegetables has proved a respite, a distraction, a mindless but eternally-present activity, many times before, in many distinct eras of my life. I’m not particularly good at chopping–anyone who’s seen me do it will attest to that–but I really do love the act. No matter where I am, it’s something I can always do, something I know how to do, something to do with my hands while the rest of my brain is listening, taking in the distinct sights and sounds and feelings of the place and people around me. 

As a result, every time I cut a carrot into strips I think of L and S, my charges in Chile. I think of T, our long slow days in Halifax. I think of my housemates; I think of my friends. Inevitably, I think of my mom. And now I’ll think of Wilma, too, giggling and picking potato scraps off the floor, and my homestay mama, looking on with a watchful eye, letting me help because she could tell I needed it more than she needed a shoddily-sliced cabbage. Every time I cut an onion, I’m back in the places where I’ve cut every onion before it, sharing in the making of food, the pausing of time, the simple task of making a big thing small, of making one item part of a greater whole. I think of the meals I’ve shared at the end of the chopping. I think of the tables at which I’ve shared them. 

I am grateful for the veggies. I am grateful for the people who’ve handed them to me. I am grateful for the places I’ve gotten to cut them. I am grateful for big, welcoming wooden kitchen tables, and for grubby college kitchen counters. And most of all, at this moment, I am grateful to have added another few vegetable-tinged memories to the mix.