Kimberlee K.

With a metal spoon, I scoop the cooked broccoli into the blender, followed by the butter, garlic, lemon juice and pasta water.

“It might be loud,” I say, genuinely not knowing how loud it will be, as this is not my blender, or my kitchen.

Sitting behind me is my best friend Nicole, her newborn daughter, Isabella, and her three-year-old son, Luca. I squint as I push the button, not wanting to startle anyone, or upset the baby. But I am pleasantly surprised by the low hum of the blender, and the almost instant liquefication of our ingredients.

A timer goes off behind me and I open the oven door to pull out our bread.

Dinner is ready.

—

Earlier, Nicole and I had sat the on couch for most of the day, catching up after a few months apart, chatting about anything and everything that came to mind. I watched as she cared for her almost three-week-old daughter Isabella, whose blue eyes looked up and around at us, the room, and the world, taking it all in, trying to make sense of it all.

We stared at her for hours as we talked. At her little nose, her lips, her thick, dark hair. Sometimes when she fell asleep her arm would curl around her head, and her fingers would spread out, like she was in the middle of a big, sweeping wave. And she got upset every time she yawned, as the sensation seeming to startle her.

“Do you want to hold her?” Nicole asked, and I nodded.

Throughout the day, I held her a few times, a feat I wouldn’t have imagined a decade ago. For the longest time I was afraid to hold small babies. Their fragileness made me nervous. They were a whole person I could hold in my hands, and the possibility of doing something wrong felt far too great. But a few years back a friend had a baby, the first baby among our friend group, and when I went to visit her in the hospital, she nodded at me encouragingly, saying, “I think you’re going to hold her.”

With wide eyes I’d reluctantly agreed, and I gasped when she put the baby in my arms because I could barely register she was there. Between the hospital blanket she was swaddled in and my own thick winter layers, I had to keep looking down at her big dark eyes to prove to myself I was holding her.  

Since then, I’d grown more courageous, and begun to find holding babies more incredible than frightening. An entire person, an entire universe that I could hold in my hands? Amazing.

I looked down at Isabella.

“Hi,” I said, and her little body squirmed around in my hands. Her eyes slowly blinked as she searched the room for colors and shapes she didn’t yet understand, and her mouth hung open, as if she was in a constant state of shock. “Hello there.”

Now I understood why adults always felt the need to cradle their arms and tell older children that, I held you when you were this big. Because how could it be that a baby that small becomes a kid, becomes an adult, becomes a person.

Looking down at Isabella, I knew one day she’d be running around, chatting, laughing, singing, perhaps sitting on the couch beside me and Nicole, contributing her own stories to the conversation. But how? When she’s so small.

Right before dinner time, Brian, Nicole’s husband, and Luca got home from a long, fun day at a bike park.

“Do you know what we’re making for dinner?” Nicole asked Luca.

“What?” he asked.

“Hulk pasta!”

Nicole and Brian both flexed their arms and Luca laughed. The green color of the sauce had earned the dish this nickname, which made it both hilarious and perhaps more appealing to eat for a three year old.

“Am I going to get big muscles if I eat all of my pasta?” I asked Luca.

“I don’t know,” he said, unfocused as he fastened a cape around my neck.

Halfway into cooking dinner, I tagged in to help as Nicole fed Isabella. I moved around the kitchen unconfidently, forever amused by the way every single kitchen is organized differently, and how, unless we are in our own house with our own learned system, we will always open every single drawer until we say, “aha!”

With the pasta cooked, the bread baked, and the sauce ready, we sat down at the table to eat.

It was only then that I realized I was still wearing a cape.

“Look!” Luca said, holding up an end piece of the bread. “I got the butt!”

I smiled as I ate my hulk pasta, feeling peaceful, feeling happy.