Decompressing. Sitting at the dining room table with my feet up, having my morning coffee and talking politics and history with Mary Beth. Playing with the dog while we talk. His coat is softer then I remember it. Feeling a sense of ease throughout my body, wondering at this lack of clench. I am no longer up to bat, the pitcher is no longer sending signals to the catcher behind my back. I’m done guessing and that game is over. There is a path that I am on, a path to pay the bills, a path to slowing down my life, a path to slowness, a path through language.

When the dog needs to go out I stand on the back stairs in the morning cold and I think about last night’s meal, Coho salmon caught by one of my relatives on some Canadian fishing trip. Most likely it was my uncle Arlyn who sat in the boat with the minnow hooked through the eye, bobbing up and down in the chill air on one of the great lakes.

Along came this cold water thing, this searching spine set to perpetual forward; then net and cooler, knife and freezer. One side with scales finds its way down the Mississippi in a motor home, my parents on their way to meet a new grandchild brining incidental gifts, sharing sharp cheddar and this foot long musculature, an incident wrapped in newspaper.

The cold of the morning reminds me of the cold of that water. We are what we eat.

I had set the oven last night to 300 and oiled the scales with extra virgin, the cat meowing at my feet with such insitence that I put him out of the kitchen and closed the heavy wooden door. Still frozen, I poured a quarter cup of lemon juice along the salmon’s length and cracked pepper, sprinkled sea salt, foiled and set to baking.

Somehow my basil had survived the fall. Somehow there was even new growth. Pine nut pesto with the last of the garlic, the last of the leaves, oil and Parmesan. Mary Beth came home from work and opened a bottle of red. I poured a glass and put the pasta into the boiling water. The pasta was old and clumped like the heavy Asian noodles that Mai Lee serves with the Bok Choy. I stood over the steam and stirred. When mixed with the pesto the flavor was right, even if the texture was odd.

Brad showed up with a bottle of gin, “Here I was worried about whether you were eating, running out of food, and you’re having me over for a salmon feast.”

This lived in house will soon house a lived in life.