Rosemary died when I was six, and when my parents told me, I cried. I wasn’t sure if I had a right to, but I think now of something the British chef Nigel Slater once wrote, that it is “impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you.” I think the same can be said of the person who scoops your ice cream into a dish and stands, smiling, as you eat.

The so-called small stuff actually matters very much.

Being sick is like walking around with a microscope strapped to your face at all times with your own body squished beneath the slide. You don’t look away, at first because you can’t – you’re too sick – and then because you’re afraid that if you do, you might miss a symptom or a sign and die.

Food has powers. It picks us up from our lonely corners and sits us back down, together. It pulls us out of ourselves, to the kitchen, to the table, to the diner down the block. At the same time, it draws us inward. Food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people.

Being sick is supposed to come along with grand realizations about What Really Matters, but I don’t know. I think deep down, we’re already aware of what’s important and what’s not. Which isn’t to say that we always live our lives accordingly.

Food – like art, like music – brings people together, it’s true. It begins, though, with a private experience, a single person stirred, moved, and wanting company in that altered stated. So we say, “You have to taste this.” We say, “Please, take a bite.

To trust in your own aliveness, in your own ability to sustain and be sustained - there are times when there is no greater act of defiance.

Eli knew stuff about buildings and architecture and the history of squatters’ rights. In fact, he seemed to know something about everything. He didn’t lecture or flaunt. Rather, it was as though his whole life he’d been quietly gathering treasures. Little nuggets and gems of things he had heard or seen or read, and he was just uncurling his fingers to share them.

When I visit someplace new my favorite thing to do is eat...and walk, preferable to a place where I can eat some more.

Food—like art, like music— brings people together, it’s true. It begins, though, with a private experience, a single person stirred, moved, and wanting company in that altered stated. So we say, “You have to taste this.” We say, “Please, take a bite.