Sixty-ing

It’s the first of August, which means that in three weeks, I turn sixty.

Happy to still be here, especially given my inherited risk of heart disease. But it’s hard to believe this is where I’m at. Aware, of course, ain’t nothing I can do about it.

Sixty isn’t just an even number or a sobering number; it’s divisible by two, so now I can say things like “thirty years ago.”

Thirty years ago this month, I was working as a line cook in a kitchen run by women. It was a four-month stint, and I was the rookie. By September’s end, I’d be headed to New York for cooking school. I could tell you how I learned to use a knife and sharpen it, too. How to “mise” my station. Use a whisk, salt the flour, remove the gills on soft shell crabs. Get a finished dish in the window while Chef tapped her fingers on the stainless steel waiting on my ass.

But what happened the summer of 1996 — and this is something I’ve been working on in memoir revisions —is that I grew up. I found my purpose. I found mentors. I found confidence. I found sustenance. All of which allowed me to bloom.

I said goodbye to a teenage girl who lost her dad and I said hello to a woman who was ready to show the world what she could cook up. It would become the ripest chapter of my life — a long career as a food writer, three cookbooks, marrying Russ, teaching beginners to cook, building a family of friends, learning to grow vegetables.

Even as I sit with my disbelief at the passage of time, the cusp of sixty feels pregnant with possibility. I am channeling thirty-year-old Kim, scrappy in her search for purpose. I would tell her that she will get wiser and have more grace. That she is capable of anything she wants to do or be, and not just because her dad told her so. Because she told her so. I would tell her to keep trying things that scare her. Even when it’s time to say hello to sixty.

xokod