The Denatured Comfort

My grandfather used to peel an apple with a pocket knife in one constant spiral, then he would cut that apple in half and share it with my grandmother. Sat at the kitchen table that was pressed up against the wall in their kitchen: grilled yellow fish, half an apple and coffee. As a child this fascinated me, and even now as an adult I find the idea of peeling a piece of fruit without breaking the skin more than once a wonderfully calming visual. For the longest time I thought that the first meal of the day was called Breakvis, because of that fish. I can smell it now, but I could never recreate it.

I sometimes find myself peeling tangerines, removing the entire peel without breaking it more than once, creating spirals. Meditation in the form of action, like counting rice. The anxiety that has lived inside my body for as long as I can remember is lulled by the ritual of habit, culminating in sustenance, making practice feel rewarding and not simply done for self-gratification.

When I was a little bit older and joined the Voortrekkers, my favourite part of the experience was morning coffee. If made correctly, the milk would form a skin on top. I spent many uncomfortable, sleepless hours in tents waiting for that morning moment. If my coffee didn't produce the desired skin, I'd ask friends to swap mugs. I remember first seeing the milk skin form in kindergarten. I've since learned that this happens when the hot coffee essentially cooks the milk's proteins and fats, causing the proteins to undergo denaturation; a change in their structure. Many disliked it, but for me it was magical, a consistent ritual every time we camped. I realise now it was my mind finding a moment of repetition in an otherwise unpredictable situation.

When I was younger, I used to lay down on the carpet in my parents’ room, the sun dappling through the windowpanes, heating the carpeted room. I would lie there with my eyes closed, pressing my hands into the space between my ribs where the collarbone splits into a V. Reaching into that hollow space to ground myself. Feeling the sun on my closed eyes, squeezing them tightly to see the light show that happens when you press your eyelids together tightly. At night I would lie in my bed, pressing my thumbs into my closed eyes to create fireworks that danced down the insides of my eyelids like a series of photos in a slideshow. Like the sparklers on an ice-cream clown from Spur, or the candles dancing on a birthday cake.

I once had a Liewe Heksie birthday cake, it was incredibly beautiful but tasted awful. That birthday party was fantastic though. I have lost contact with everyone in those pictures, for this I am grateful, but I wish them all well. That cake became an edible metaphor I have carried with me. The closest I’ve come to that level of disappointment was the first time I ate a dragon fruit. I had another birthday cake years later. My dad sent it: squares of chocolate and vanilla cake in a box. It was delicious, but it was also a moment of reaching out. Recently, my friend came down from Seoul for my birthday and bought me a Choonsik cake. I ate part of that cake on video call with my partner. He sang to me in Korean. It was a moment of reaching out. The ritual transformed but not diluted. I don’t really care about birthdays, but I need to have something to share. We all do. We celebrated his birthday early this year because I was in town. I bought a small cake and we sang. It rained so much the box nearly disintegrated before we even got home.

My grandfather gave me a pocket knife for my birthday, years after I stopped visiting them for sleepovers, years after I had that yellow fish for the last time. I tried desperately to peel apples like him. I cut my thumb many times, but I never got the technique right. I think that perhaps it was a ritual meant for observation, because not everything can be for everyone. I can peel an orange with my thumb. Perhaps this would have been outside of his abilities. But who really cares, because at its core we are doing the same thing. Repetition for the sake of survival. Repetition for the sake of fulfilment. I crafted a version of myself in the eyes of my family that I have spent years dismantling, because in truth the one thing I wanted above all else is sameness.

I have taken the pocket knife and peeled away at the layers I have crafted around me, the versions of identity that formed like a callus from years of pushback. And I have found that I still can’t cut the lines clean, and that perhaps the work belongs to us all. Perhaps to unravel the distance we have crafted between each other, we need to seek the sameness without forcing them to be the same thing. Ordering different things but from the same menu.

When my brother or his wife share pictures and videos of my niece experiencing food for the first time, it brightens my day. Seeing a new life experience the joys we have all forgotten to cherish reignites so many memories and connects a group of people that have layered themselves apart. The ritual of food is the ritual of sharing, of experience without performance. Of acknowledgement without demand. Love is the distance between a person’s hands. And sometimes the ritual is simply revisiting mango for the first time.

I crave repetition. I breathe best when I know what happens next. I can control the direction of my day, but the cost has been isolation, and this unravelling is the hardest task I have had to handle. But I don’t have to do it alone. I think everyone in my life has always held their hands out for me, but I had pressed my fingers into my eyes to see the stars, and thus I missed them all.

Every morning, I talk to my partner via video call, and when he goes to work I put rice in the rice cooker. I eat the same lunch every single day. I have for years. Then I go for a walk. When I come back, I lay down on the floor of my bedroom, where the sun heats the faux wood with the same dappling from my childhood. I press my hands into the space between my ribs, at the top where the body forms a V, and I dig into the hollowness that has reformed after years of fighting with myself. The solar plexus as its known in Yoga. The part of the body that manages anxiety. I think that perhaps there is space in my rituals for everyone I love, because there has always been space in theirs for me.