I’m having a lot of difficulty around writing the last few years, and I’m trying to find ways to make it more accessible, which I think mostly means making it more habitual. In 2026, I want to go back to how I used to start my days, with tea and meds and writing first. I wrote a post-it just now, with my plan for the morning, and the first thing on it was to write a little piece that’s sort of about Ethiopian food. Mostly about other things.
And then I came to bed, and I wasn’t tired, so I opened up my computer, opened a new Word file, and started typing. So here’s a little end of year something for you. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it — maybe it’ll be part of a food book. Or a love book. Or a food and love book? We’ll see.
(This is the story of the third time Kevin and I broke up.)
I got to a point where I couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him, or even the same house. His parents’ house; he’d come out to visit them, and me.
“I need to walk.”
Up the steep Los Gatos hillside, along the road, to the old convent-turned-winery. In 1997, you could walk freely up there. Through the scrub brush, the dry trees – after a year in California, it all still seemed brown and dry to me, who’d grown up with lush New England springs and summers, with autumn glory in vermilion, citrine, flame.
I hadn’t known what I’d be missing, coming to California for a master’s degree: summer thunderstorms, fireflies (they never crossed the Rockies). I only knew I’d be missing him.
We’d been fighting for hours that day. The worst fight we’d had, though it might not look so bad from the outside. We didn’t throw fists or pots or even words. Just a wrenching conversation, trying to make our plans for the future line up, failing. Two parallel lines that couldn’t intersect.
The trees were dry and scrubby, but still, they helped. Trees do that.
Eventually, I walked back down the hill to his parents’ house. Calmer, calm enough that we could break up, finally, in a civilized way. He’d have to drive me back to Oakland, to the house I shared with roommates – I had no car, didn’t even know how to drive. He’d drive me back, and then he’d leave me. Whatever four years had meant to him, to me, it wasn’t enough.
The drive was mostly silent. We got back almost to the house, and then – I don’t remember who said it first – we needed to eat. We were starving. We’d been fighting the entire day, stomachs churning, had failed to eat breakfast or lunch. My head was aching from all the tears, my eyes were swollen, but my stomach complained the loudest. It didn’t care if I had a broken heart.
So we went to a restaurant. He needed to eat too, before that hour-long drive back. We went for Ethiopian, a big platter of injera, soft and seductive.
Drenched in yemisir wat, kik alicha, luscious creamy shiro, and whatever else they wanted to pile on our plate. We were so hungry, and we’d always eaten well together. We talked about safe topics, about the food, tried to make sure that both of us got to taste a little bit of everything, at least. We were generous with each other.
Somehow, by the time we were sopping up the last of the sauce-soaked injera, we were back together.
We hadn’t solved the problem of our future, but if we were on parallel tracks for right now, well, perhaps we could try to keep them close together at least. Close enough to lean over, to brush lips across lips, to intersect. Maybe the fight would never have gotten so bad, if we’d managed to eat something earlier in the day; maybe the lack of nutrients had kept us from thinking clearly.
Or maybe food, and feeding each other, can be love. We just needed a reminder.
…to be continued…?
