almond butter

My jaw cracks as I yawn, and I stretch until my limbs pop and my joints creak. I blink, scratching the back of my neck, subconsciously reaching for my phone lying at my bedside, before I realize what I’m doing and silently admonish myself. I throw back the covers, the snow-white duvet landing in a heap on the heavily carpeted floor, slip on the flip-flops my grandmother has procured for me to wear specifically in the house, and pad down the (also carpeted) stairs. I enter the kitchen and pour some water for myself in an intricately decorated artisanal mug, lined with beaten gold and handed to me with very pointed instructions that it must NOT be placed in the microwave. I fill the kettle absent-mindedly, staring at it as the water within begins to boil and bubble. I flip the switch and fill two steaming cups for my mother and grandmother, placing them on the counter over an undignified, messy pile of tissue paper (because I am far too lazy to hunt for coasters), and head into the adjoining guest-room to peruse the bookshelf. I find ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie and stow it away in my crocheted tote to read in the café in the evening. I make some coffee, stirring in almond milk and organic cane sugar, mentally lecturing myself on the acidic properties of caffeine and the fact that I’ll get addicted. I make a second cup.

My grandmother is hollering for me to collect the dirty laundry, so I proceed to treat myself to a long, languorous, hour-long shower. No, I’m kidding. My grandmother is scary enough as it is, and an hour-long shower? In this economy? No, thank you. I pick up the laundry and stuff it in the washing machine, separating the whites from the colored fabrics. My grandmother checks in to make sure I’m obeying her (as if I wouldn’t, as if she hasn’t threatened me with a slipper-slap enough times) and, apparently appeased, gives me a quick good-morning kiss on the top of my head and makes her way down to the kitchen to prepare her various breakfast concoctions. Among other things, she likes to consume slimy aloe-vera and flax-seed smoothies, and freshly-squeezed gooseberry juice, which doesn’t sound so bad, but boy is that the most sour, bitter, tart substance I’ve consumed in my 18 years of living. Some of her more appealing tinctures would be the one with turmeric, ginger, pepper, and honey stirred into a mug of organic goat milk (she loves that word, organic), and the one where boiled and dried drumsticks and other herbs are powdered and mixed in with hot water to create a slightly sweet, soothing drink. It’s not bad.

The sun is looking especially tempting, and I am lured into the lawn where I sit with ‘Becoming’ by Michelle Obama for about an hour and a half before I help my mom, who is going through a gardening phase, plant some tomato, apple, and lemon seeds, as well as the root of a banana. This activity is done much to the chagrin of my 8-year-old brother, who has made a thorough, detailed spreadsheet of the exact watering cycles, soil requirements, and optimal seasons according to which each seed must be planted and tended to. He has all but given up, leaving my mother to her antics, but does peek his head out occasionally to skeptically scour the soil for a sprouted sapling or a bud. He has come today, and gratefully, after an hour of work, I hand over the shovel and bags of soil to him, laughing as he grimaces at the excruciating thought of planting tomato seeds when the sun is at a ninety-degree angle in the sky, as opposed to the specific forty-nine-degree angle required for tomato, because of course everybody monitors the cycles of the sun and knows which angle in the sky it must be to plant the according seeds. I sigh, shaking my head sadly. The kid’s bound for Stanford.

I clean the dirt off my hands in the kitchen sink, ignoring the disappointed clucking of my grandmother (who doesn’t like people washing their dirty hands in the sink meant for washing dishes - fair enough, I suppose). I pick up a soft towel from the drying rack along with some crisp, ironed clothes, and take a bath, not for an hour, unfortunately, but for exactly four minutes, which is close enough. Feeling fresh and energized, I comb my hair back, slip on my tennis shoes, and sit on the sofa for an hour, scrolling through my phone because we have all become perpetual slaves to the internet and have long crossed the point of no return. Okay, no, because my mom is just coming in from the garden, and we are all getting ready for lunch. Feeling fresh and energized, I help prepare a delicious lunch, which includes a tofu-spinach curry, a chickpea-lentil soup, and a heaping bowl of tomato-basil rigatoni. Eating with a grandmother in close proximity is a dangerous event, because you look away for one second, and bam! your one plate of food has been filled again, with enough that can be heaped onto three of the same plates. Look away again, and bam! it’s increased to five. I don’t know how any of this is possible. But I don’t question it, because grandmothers work in mysterious ways. I simply pull the same physics-defying mechanism on my brother, who, confounded, yells good-naturedly at my grandmother, and pours half the food back into the bowl.

After we’ve eaten and done the dishes, I remove a half-empty jar of sticky almond butter, courtesy of Trader Joe’s, from the refrigerator. I pick out some blood-red apples from their little nook at the corner of the kitchen counter and slice through them cleanly with a butter knife, relishing the snap and crackle of the juicy, sharp flesh. I take a piece and spoon a generous amount of nut butter onto it. I bite into the apple, and am reminded why I love this small snack so much. The earthiness of the apple paired with the creamy, heady, fatty almond butter - what else could you possibly need?