March 11, 2026

peeling ginger

If it weren’t for Mike, who called to ask if I could take a shift because Lawrence, who’s usually in on Tuesdays, had to have surgery, I wouldn’t be standing next to Margy, peeling ginger with a paring knife that could use some sharpening. We both have our heads down, a quarter-sheet pan of roots between us, faded plastic cutting boards underneath our elbows. An hour or two ago, I was shaking off the latest headlines, rising from a sleep that raged with worry. But to be at this stainless steel counter, at the foot of a small mountain of ginger, returns me to the cursive lessons from third grade, a sheet of thin paper with its trail of red lines giving a feel for what was possible when I paid closer attention. It was messy, those first efforts at something resembling coherence. The tip of my pencil tore right through sometimes, indelicate as a hippo. But it didn’t take long to ease up, get into the grace of it, round my grip into the figure-8 of loops as I practiced letter after letter. In the kitchen, the pile between me and Margy diminishes quickly enough, but not before the sharp-sweet smell of ginger ascends into my nostrils where it stays for the rest of my shift. But what I’m thinking about now is less about the ginger and more about the feeling of being beside a stranger who becomes, in a matter of seconds, a collaborator, a person with whom a shared task becomes a betrothal, a way of promising you will through it together. We didn’t speak, Margy and I, not even when we finished peeling. Instead, we moved through the morning as if we could tackle just about anything, given the chance, no matter how dull the knives, how rusty our practice.