I pair socks in the basement, happy to find twins. I set up a table down there, where I can unload my clean clothes. Fold them, put them in proper stacks. Last year, I bought a new washer and dryer, ones that sing when a load is done. I even bought drawers to put under them so they'll be higher, though I still have never put things in them.

Also in the basement is the new freezer I bought so I can store the things I cook. I love to cook, experiment, and sometimes there's no room in my upstairs fridge. Sometimes, when I don't feel like cooking, or if I crave a certain thing, all I have to do is go downstairs and open up the freezer, decide what I might like to thaw.

I have two more tables downstairs next to the freezer. One is topped with the kitchen appliances I don't have room for upstairs. Upstairs, my counter holds my Vitamix, my Champion Juicer, my Keurig, my air fryer. Downstairs: another air fryer, a steamer, two food processors, a George Foreman grill, two crockpots, a dehydrator, pressure cooker, a spiralizer, an Instant Pot, and coffee maker.

The table next to the appliances is a second pantry, with big containers filled with things that don't fit upstairs: pasta, rice, beans, tomato paste, cans of green beans, peas, and corn. Tortilla chips, cans of refried beans, cans of diced tomatoes. Cans of stuff I'll probably never eat unless I get desperate.

When my fridge runs out of onions, it gives me an excuse to go back to the grocer. I go to the grocery like church. It's winter—so different from spring and summer, even fall, when I could resort to my garden. Cutting the kale from the soil, its leaves like lace on my fingers.

I live with my three dogs. I have nice art on the walls. My place is not extravagant.

I love putting my hands into the soil when the soil allows me. I love seeing, in the backyard, what the earth presents. I love the bees, the smells, a whole kaleidoscope of the most beautiful colors, when the perennials arrive. It's a whole season of gifts: colors, textures, scents. Not a thing I asked for nor expected when I bought the house. A whole back yard full of big surprises. It hasn't even been three years yet.

I think of ancestral trauma: my great-grandfather dying of the flu when my grandpa was a baby. My grandma's constant yelling. All the ones before them. My father's schizophrenia, my mother's co-dependence. The farm where I grew up and the milking of the cows, the baling of the hay, the cats that got run over, and dogs in heat and running.

Some days I lie on my back and try to release the hardness from my body: like a rock lodged deep within. I think of the garden. I hope that there's still room for things to blossom from inside me.

Some days, when I try to meditate, my puppy jumps on me. She licks.

I turn over, get on all fours, and pretend I'm an animal.

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