Socially Distant Radishes with Butter

go outside, see somebody, eat something fresh

Chapter 45

Maybe it is running away from wherever you are just to be somewhere else, even if nothing is happening there. Maybe better because nothing is happening there, but the elsewhere-ness of it is its own kind of relief.

Really maybe it is the relief of being outside and not on your phone or computer or tablet scrolling through 10,000 reasons for rage or grief or shame or resignation or the illusion of connection.

Perhaps it’s that spring is a time for growing and different foods come into their season and suddenly strawberries and rhubarb and you start to feel like maybe you have come into season in your own way. Maybe it’s that change is the mandate of the season and you cannot resist it any longer. It’s that simple.

Sometimes it’s just the simple things: being outside with another real live person, eating something you know was pulled from the ground recently somewhere nearby, knowing you didn’t miss all of spring, that change is still coming, is inevitable.

Anyway, you are here, sitting with another person, on a day cool enough for a fire, but hot enough for an ice-cold beverage. You are here, at the moment in which the first radishes are ready to harvest, but the slugs have yet to find them.

You didn’t even know that something as simple as a fresh radish, smeared in good butter, and sprinkled with flaky kosher salt could be so much of what you need. Who knew that it was this simple?