Infinite Mana in the Apocalypse – Chapter 99: Patience

Chapter 99: Patience

Day three hundred and sixty-five.

Jake stood at the stove at 5:47 AM, the way he had stood at the stove at 5:47 AM for three hundred and sixty-four days before this one, and the doenjang went into the broth at thirty seconds, the way the doenjang had gone into the broth at thirty seconds for three hundred and sixty-four mornings before this one, and the kitchen held the ritual the way the kitchen held everything: completely, without complaint, the walls and the counter and the stove absorbing the repetition the way soil absorbed rain — not because the soil chose to absorb but because absorbing was what soil did.

Three hundred and sixty-five days. One year. The first year of seven. The first year of Jeonghee’s timeline — the timeline that the retired schoolteacher had declared when she assessed Jake’s rice on the first day and pronounced the word that had shaped every morning since: “inadequate.” The timeline that said: seven years to mastery. Seven years of standing at the stove. Seven years of doenjang at thirty seconds. Seven years of rice that was wrong, then approaching, then right, then — eventually, in six more years — known.

The distinction between right and known was the distinction that Jeonghee had been trying to explain for three weeks. The distinction was — Jake stirred the jjigae, the motion automatic now, the wrist rotation that one year of daily practice had encoded into muscle memory, the motion that his body performed without his mind’s instruction because the body had learned what the mind could not teach — the distinction was the difference between hearing and understanding. Right was hearing. Right was: the rice sounds done, I turn off the heat, the rice is correct. Known was understanding. Known was: the rice is part of me, I am part of the rice, the turning-off is not a decision but a reflex, the way blinking is a reflex, the way breathing is a reflex.

“You are at right,” Jeonghee had said, three days ago, during the morning assessment. The notebook — entry three hundred and sixty-two, the word “right” — closed on the nightstand. “Right is — right is where most cooks stop. Right is where most cooks say: I have learned. I know how to make rice. The rice is good. The assessment is finished. Right is — adequate. Right is the destination that most cooks seek and that most cooks reach and that most cooks accept as the end of the journey.”

“But it’s not the end.”

“Right is the beginning. Right is the point at which the learning starts. Before right, you were — correcting. You were hearing the sound wrong and adjusting. You were measuring and compensating. You were — fighting the rice. The rice resisted and you adapted and the adaptation produced right. But the adaptation is still adaptation. The adaptation is still the mind telling the hand. The knowing is when the hand tells the mind. The knowing is when you stop adapting because there is nothing to adapt to. The rice and the cook are — aligned. The alignment is not achieved. The alignment is — grown. Like a tree. You cannot force a tree to grow. You can water the tree. You can give the tree sunlight. You can protect the tree from wind. But the growing is the tree’s. The growing takes the time that the growing takes.”

“Six more years.”

“Six more years is my estimate. My estimate is based on my own experience. I learned rice from my mother. My mother learned rice from her mother. The learning took — my mother said seven years. My grandmother said ten. I said seven because I had discipline. You have discipline. But discipline is not patience. You have learned discipline from the cooking. You have not yet learned patience.”

“What’s the difference? You told Dowon — cousins, not siblings.”

“Discipline is: I will stand at this stove every morning at 5:47 regardless of how I feel. You have discipline. You have not missed a morning in three hundred and sixty-two days. Patience is: I will stand at this stove every morning at 5:47 regardless of whether I improve. Discipline endures discomfort. Patience endures — stillness. The stillness of a day when the rice is the same as yesterday. The stillness of a week when nothing changes. The stillness of a month when the hand does not learn and the ear does not sharpen and the knowing does not come. Patience is the willingness to be still while the growing happens underground, where you cannot see it.”

Day three hundred and sixty-five. One year complete. The jjigae simmered. Ren stood at the second position, the forest-green lattice-being whose morning presence had not varied in frequency or reliability since the first standing. Soyeon at the third position — the aunt whose between-frequency anchored the kitchen’s harmonic the way a bassist anchored a song. Null at the fifth position — the watermelon-sized luminescence that arrived at 5:47 precisely, that produced its own jjigae on its own burner with its own doenjang that Misuk had sourced from the same Korean market on Western Avenue, that cooked with the specific, I-am-a-system-intelligence-learning-to-make-soup concentration that two months of daily practice had refined from incompetent to approaching.

Sua at the fourth position. New. The fire-woman whose return to the Glendale kitchen — eleven days ago, a Tuesday, the carry-on suitcase still in the hallway because Sua had not unpacked because unpacking implied that the arrival was temporary and the arrival was not temporary — had added a fifth frequency to the morning cooking. Sua’s frequency was — heat. Not the thermal heat of the fire attribute, though that was present too, the seven-degrees-above-normal baseline that made Sua’s station perceptibly warmer. The other heat. The intensity. The concentration. The fire-woman’s approach to the morning jjigae was the same as the fire-woman’s approach to combat and to teaching and to tteokbokki: total, focused, the specific, I-am-doing-this-thing-and-I-am-doing-nothing-else quality that made Sua’s presence in the kitchen both comforting and slightly terrifying.

“Your jjigae is different with five,” Jeonghee observed. The retired schoolteacher did not cook in the morning — Jeonghee’s contribution was the rice, and the rice was prepared separately, on the back-right burner, with the specific, this-is-my-domain authority that Jeonghee brought to all grain-related activities. But Jeonghee observed the jjigae. Jeonghee observed everything. Jeonghee’s observations were — data. The data of a woman who had spent thirty-five years teaching children to observe and who applied the same pedagogical rigor to the observation of soup.

“Different how?” Jake asked.

“The chord. The between-frequency chord was four notes — you, Ren, Soyeon, Null. Four notes is — stable. Four notes is a square. Four walls. The chord held. The chord was — reliable. Five notes is — a pentagon. Five walls. The shape is more complex. The chord is richer. But the richness introduces — instability. Not bad instability. Creative instability. The kind of instability that produces something the four-note chord could not produce.”

“What does the five-note chord produce?”

“I don’t know yet. The five-note chord is eleven days old. The chord needs time. The chord needs patience. The chord needs — to grow underground where we cannot see it.”

Jake looked at Sua. The fire-woman stood at the fourth position with the posture of a person who intended to stand at the fourth position for a very long time. The posture of permanence. The posture that said: this is where I am, this is where I will be, the standing is not a visit but a life.

“The chord will tell us,” Jeonghee said. “When the chord is ready. Not when we are ready. When the chord is ready. The distinction is — patience.”

The morning’s jjigae was served. The village ate. The thousand-plus beings who gathered at the crystal tables in the courtyard — the daily feeding that Jake’s kitchen produced and that the village consumed and that the consumption sustained — ate the five-note jjigae and the difference was — the difference was present but unnamed. The diners felt the difference the way a person felt a change in air pressure: not consciously, not with words, but with the body’s knowledge. Something had shifted. Something new was in the soup. The something was Sua’s heat. The something was the fire-woman’s frequency joining the chord and the chord becoming — wider. Warmer. The chord was warmer because the fire-woman was warm and the warmth entered the jjigae and the jjigae carried the warmth to the village and the village carried the warmth to the day.

The village ate. The village did not comment on the warmth. The warmth was — normal. The warmth was Tuesday’s jjigae. The warmth was the fifth note. The warmth was — part of it now.

After the morning feeding, Jake drove to Victorville.

The drive was three hours. The drive took Jake through the San Gabriel Mountains and down into the high desert and through the specific, brown-and-beige, the-landscape-is-honest-about-its-emptiness terrain that connected Los Angeles to the federal correctional complex where Colonel Marcus Aldridge was serving a fourteen-year sentence for conspiracy to commit domestic terrorism, destruction of federal property, and unauthorized deployment of military assets against civilian targets.

Jake brought soup.

The soup was in a thermos — the vacuum-insulated steel thermos that Misuk had purchased at the Korean market specifically for prison visits, the thermos that kept the jjigae at serving temperature for four hours, the thermos that the Victorville security team had inspected, X-rayed, chemically tested, and ultimately approved because the thermos contained soup and the soup was soup and the federal Bureau of Prisons did not have a regulation prohibiting soup.

The regulation prohibiting soup did not exist because the regulation had never been necessary. Prisoners received meals. Visitors did not typically bring soup. The soup-bringing was — unusual. The soup-bringing had required a formal request to the warden, a review by the facility’s legal department, and a letter from Senator Reeves’s office (the Senator’s involvement was — ironic, the man who had tried to regulate crystal technology now advocating for a prisoner’s right to receive soup from the person the prisoner had tried to destroy).

The warden had approved the soup. The warden’s approval had been based on three factors: the prisoner’s good behavior, the visitor’s status as a person of international significance, and the warden’s own assessment that “if a bowl of soup can do what Ms. Chen’s paper says soup can do, then maybe my facility could use some soup.”

The warden was not wrong.

Jake sat in the visitation room. The room was — institutional. Beige walls. Fluorescent lighting. Plastic chairs bolted to the floor. A table that was metal and scratched and designed for durability rather than comfort. The room was the opposite of the Glendale kitchen. The room was the opposite of warmth and wood and the smell of doenjang and the sound of the stove’s click, click, catch. The room was — cold. Not thermally cold. Emotionally cold. The cold of a space designed to contain rather than to welcome.

Aldridge entered. The colonel — former colonel, the rank had been stripped — wore the khaki uniform of a federal inmate. The uniform was not the body armor he had worn when he authorized the Armenian bakery bombing. The uniform was not the dress blues he had worn when he testified before the Senate committee. The uniform was khaki cotton and it fit poorly because Aldridge had lost weight and the weight loss had changed the body that the uniform was designed for.

“You brought soup,” Aldridge said.

“Doenjang-jjigae.”

“The same?”

“The same recipe. Different morning. Different chord.”

“Chord?”

“We have five now. In the kitchen. Sua came back.”

“The fire-woman. From the — the crystal place.”

“The Hearthstone. Yes.”

Jake opened the thermos. The steam rose. The jjigae’s smell — the doenjang’s fermented depth, the tofu’s clean neutrality, the scallion’s sharp brightness — filled the visitation room the way the smell filled every room it entered: completely. The beige walls absorbed the smell. The fluorescent lights did not change but the room felt — the room felt less cold. The smell was warmth. The smell was the kitchen carried across three hours of desert highway in a vacuum-insulated thermos and released into a federal correctional facility’s visitation room.

Aldridge looked at the steam. The looking was — Jake recognized it. The looking was the same look that the first Hearthstone beings had produced when they encountered jjigae for the first time. The looking of a sealed being encountering feeling. Not because Aldridge was sealed the way the Lattice had been sealed — Aldridge’s feelings had not been engineered out of existence. Aldridge’s feelings had been — buried. Trained away. The military discipline that had shaped Aldridge’s career had produced a man who controlled his emotions the way a dam controlled water: effectively, impressively, at the cost of the river’s natural flow.

The soup was — the soup was the crack in the dam. The soup had been the crack since the first visit, six months ago, when Jake had brought the thermos to the prison and Aldridge had tasted the jjigae and the tasting had produced — a letter. The letter that Aldridge had written from his cell and that had been published in seventeen newspapers: “The soup was not a weapon. The soup was a phone call. Please bring more.”

The letter had been the beginning. The beginning of — Aldridge did not use the word “transformation” because Aldridge did not believe in transformation. Aldridge believed in — recalibration. The word that the military mind preferred. The adjustment of parameters. The correction of targeting data. The recalibration that produced accuracy where previously there had been error.

“I started a garden,” Aldridge said. He spooned the jjigae. The spooning was — careful. The care of a man who had learned, over six months of monthly soup visits, that the soup was not just food. The soup was — attention. The soup was the thing that Dr. Chen’s paper described and that the Crystal measured and that the kitchen produced and that the thermos carried. The soup was the between-frequency. The soup was the 848th subtype. The soup was love.

Aldridge had never used the word “love.” Aldridge would likely never use the word “love.” The word was — outside the colonel’s vocabulary. The colonel’s vocabulary contained: mission, objective, target, asset, threat, neutralize, secure, deploy. The vocabulary did not contain: love, warmth, connection, between-frequency, the-soup-is-a-phone-call. But the vocabulary was — expanding. The expansion was slow. The expansion was — patient.

“A garden,” Jake said.

“The facility has a yard. Concrete. But there’s a strip along the east wall — six feet by forty feet — where the concrete was never poured. The strip was weeds. I requested permission to clear the weeds and plant vegetables. The warden approved. The warden approves most things now. The warden has been — recalibrated.”

“By the soup?”

“By the garden. I started the garden three months ago. Tomatoes. Peppers. Basil. Cilantro. The facility’s nutritionist provided seeds. The seeds were — standard. Government-issue. The same seeds that every federal garden program used. Nothing special. Nothing crystal-enhanced. Nothing — interdimensional. Just seeds.”

Aldridge ate another spoonful. The jjigae was — the jjigae was doing what the jjigae did. The between-frequency entering Aldridge’s system the way it entered every system: quietly, without announcement, the warmth spreading from the stomach to the chest to the shoulders to the jaw that had been clenched for forty years of military discipline and that was, one spoonful at a time, learning to unclench.

“The seeds grew,” Aldridge continued. “The tomatoes — the tomatoes are not remarkable tomatoes. The tomatoes are — adequate. The word your teacher uses. The tomatoes are adequate. They are red and round and they taste like tomatoes. They are not special. They are not crystal-enhanced. They are — tomatoes.”

“But.”

“But I grew them. I — planted the seeds. I watered the seeds. I watched the seeds do nothing for eleven days. Eleven days of watering dirt. Eleven days of — the word is patience. I did not have patience. I had discipline. The discipline said: water the dirt every day regardless of results. The discipline kept me at the garden. But the discipline was — empty. The discipline was the dam. The discipline was control. The watering was not — the watering was not patient. The watering was scheduled. 0600 hours. Three liters. East to west. The schedule was precise. The schedule was — military.”

“What changed?”

“Day twelve. The first sprout. A tomato — the green thread, barely visible, breaking through the soil. I had been watering for eleven days and the soil had shown nothing and on day twelve the soil showed — one thread. One green thread. And I — I stood there. In the yard. At 0600. With the watering can. And I looked at the green thread. And the green thread was — the green thread was the most important thing I had ever seen. More important than a target. More important than an objective. More important than every mission I had ever completed. The green thread was — alive. The green thread was alive because I had watered the dirt. The green thread was — mine. Not mine the way a subordinate was mine or a weapon was mine. Mine the way — mine the way the soup is yours. The green thread was — I had made it. Not by commanding. Not by deploying. By watering. By waiting. By — patience.”

The word came out of Aldridge’s mouth the way the first sprout had come out of the soil: tentatively, breaking through a surface that had been hard for a long time, the emergence fragile and unlikely and — real.

“Patience,” Aldridge repeated. “The watering became patient on day twelve. Before day twelve, the watering was discipline. After day twelve, the watering was patience. The difference was — the difference was the green thread. The green thread taught me that the growing was not mine. The growing was the seed’s. My job was — to water. To wait. To be — patient. To stand at the garden the way you stand at the stove. Not because the standing produces results. Because the standing is — the standing is the thing. The standing is the point.”

Jake looked at the colonel. At the man who had authorized a bombing and who had written a letter about soup and who had planted a garden in a prison yard and who was, on day three hundred and sixty-five of Jake’s cooking year, speaking a word that Jeonghee had been teaching and that the stove had been demonstrating and that the rice had been requiring and that the world — the entire, post-rift, post-Devourer, post-Hearthstone, Crystal-enhanced, dimensionally-connected world — was learning:

Patience.

“The other inmates,” Aldridge said. “Seven of them asked if they could help with the garden. I said yes. We garden together. 0600. Every morning. Seven men and one strip of dirt. The gardening is — quiet. The gardening does not involve conversation. The gardening involves — standing beside. The standing beside that you described. The standing beside that the cooking requires. We stand beside each other in the garden and we water and we wait and the growing happens underground where we cannot see it.”

“Do you eat what you grow?”

“We eat what we grow. The tomatoes — the adequate tomatoes — we eat them at lunch. The facility’s kitchen allows us to prepare the vegetables ourselves. The preparation is — I learned to dice. The dicing is — precise. The dicing requires attention. The attention is — the attention is the same attention that the soup requires. The attention that is not — targeting. The attention that is — listening. The attention that your teacher calls patience.”

Aldridge finished the jjigae. The thermos was empty. The colonel — the former colonel, the inmate, the gardener — set the spoon on the table with the care of a man who had learned that spoons mattered. That the way you set a spoon on a table communicated something. That the communication was not strategic. The communication was — personal.

“I have eleven years left on my sentence,” Aldridge said. “Eleven years is — eleven growing seasons. The tomatoes will improve. The garden will expand. The warden has approved an additional strip — six by sixty. The sixty feet will accommodate — the sixty feet will accommodate beans, squash, corn. The Three Sisters. The planting method that — I read about it. The indigenous method. The three crops that support each other. The beans fix nitrogen. The corn provides structure. The squash shades the soil. The three support each other. None of the three can grow alone as well as the three grow together.”

“Standing beside.”

“Standing beside. The beans stand beside the corn stand beside the squash. The standing is — mutual. The support is — mutual. The growing is — mutual. I did not understand mutual when I was a colonel. I understood command. Command is vertical. Mutual is — horizontal. Mutual is the garden. Mutual is the soup. Mutual is — the thing that I am learning in the last place I expected to learn it.”

Jake closed the thermos. The visitation hour was ending. The guard at the door — the same guard who had been stationed at the visitation room for every soup visit, the guard whose name was Torres and whose initial suspicion of the thermos had evolved into anticipation because Torres had, on the fourth visit, asked if he could try the soup and Jake had said yes and Torres had tasted the jjigae and Torres had called his mother that evening — Torres signaled the five-minute warning.

“I’ll bring soup next month,” Jake said.

“The garden will have tomatoes next month. I would like to — I would like to send tomatoes with you. When you come. The tomatoes are not — the tomatoes are not special. The tomatoes are adequate. But the tomatoes are — mine. The tomatoes are the first thing I have grown. The first thing I have produced by patience rather than by command. I would like — I would like your mother to have one. If she — if she would accept a tomato from the man who tried to —”

“She’ll accept it.”

“She doesn’t know who I am.”

“She knows who you are. She read your letter. She said — she said ‘he’s hungry.’ That’s what she said. ‘He’s hungry. Of course he’s hungry. He’s been hungry his whole life. Bring him soup.'”

Aldridge’s jaw — the jaw that had been clenched for forty years, the jaw that the jjigae had been slowly unclenching, one spoonful at a time, one visit at a time, the slow, patient, underground process that the surface could not see — Aldridge’s jaw loosened. Not unclenched. Loosened. The distinction was — small. The distinction was the distinction between right and known. The distinction was the green thread breaking through the soil. The distinction was the beginning of a process that would take — eleven years. Eleven growing seasons. Eleven years of patience.

“Tell her — tell her the tomatoes will be ready in July. The first harvest. The first — the first meal from the garden. I would like — I would like her to taste what patience grew.”

“I’ll tell her.”

Torres opened the door. Jake stood. Aldridge stood. The two men — the cook and the former colonel, the man with infinite mana and the man with a six-by-forty strip of dirt — stood in the visitation room of a federal correctional facility in Victorville, California, and the room was no longer cold. The room was — the room carried the residual warmth of the jjigae and the residual presence of the conversation and the specific, something-has-shifted-and-the-shifting-is-permanent quality that every encounter between the soup and the sealed produced.

“Thank you,” Aldridge said. “For the patience.”

“The patience isn’t mine. The patience is the soup’s. The patience is the doenjang. The doenjang takes — six months to ferment. Six months of sitting in a jar. Six months of doing nothing visible while the bacteria transform the soybeans into something that they could not become without the time. The time is the ingredient. The patience is the fermentation. The fermentation cannot be rushed.”

“Six months for the doenjang. Seven years for the rice. Eleven years for the sentence.”

“And the tomatoes in July.”

“The tomatoes in July.”

Jake drove back to Glendale through the desert. The three hours of highway. The San Gabriel Mountains growing larger in the windshield. The city appearing — Los Angeles, the city that had become the world’s kitchen, the city where a crystal village and a tree-being’s mycorrhizal network and a grandmother’s stove coexisted with the specific, we-are-all-here-and-we-are-all-imperfect-and-the-imperfection-is-the-point quality that the cooking had taught and that the world was learning.

The city was patient. The city was — learning patience. The patience of a place that had been through the rifts and the Devourer and the Hearthstone and the doors opening and the beings arriving and the crystal deployments and the senator’s bill and the colonel’s bombing and the grandmother’s soup and the fire-woman’s tteokbokki and the teacher’s rice assessment and the tree’s flowering and the system-intelligence’s cooking lesson. The city had been through all of it and the city was — still here. Still cooking. Still standing at the stove.

The patience was the city’s gift. The patience was — Los Angeles had always been patient. The city of immigrants and transplants and seekers and dreamers had always understood that the growing happened underground, that the arriving was not the destination, that the standing-beside required time that could not be scheduled or commanded or forced. The city knew patience the way the doenjang knew fermentation: from the inside, from the process, from the transformation that the time produced.

Jake arrived at the Glendale house at 4:30 PM. The house was — full. The fullness of a late afternoon in a home where nine beings lived and where the living produced the specific, shoes-at-the-door, someone-is-always-in-the-kitchen, the-tree-is-humming hum of sustained domestic occupation.

Sua was at the stove. The fire-woman — who had been at the stove for most of the eleven days since her return, learning the dead spot and the listing flame and the click, click, catch with the discipline that Jeonghee would eventually teach her to convert into patience — was making tteokbokki. Not the morning’s tteokbokki. The afternoon’s tteokbokki. The practice tteokbokki. The tteokbokki that would be judged by no one and eaten by everyone and that existed for the sole purpose of standing at the stove and learning the stove.

“How was Victorville?” Sua asked.

“He’s growing tomatoes.”

“The colonel.”

“He says the tomatoes are adequate.”

“The tomatoes are adequate. The way Dowon’s tteokbokki is adequate. The way your rice was adequate before it was right. Adequate is — adequate is where everything starts.”

Sua stirred the tteokbokki. The pan warped. The flame listed left. The dead spot between two and three required the quarter-turn that Sua’s wrist had learned in eleven days because Sua’s learning speed was — fire-attribute fast. But the learning speed was not the knowing. The learning speed was discipline. The knowing required patience. The knowing required — six more years, or three, or the rest of her life.

“Jeonghee says I need to learn patience,” Jake said.

“Jeonghee says everyone needs to learn patience. Jeonghee’s solution to every problem is patience. Jeonghee is — Jeonghee is probably right. Jeonghee is always right about the things that matter and impatiently wrong about the things that don’t. Jeonghee told me yesterday that my tteokbokki has too much fire and not enough listening. She said my tteokbokki is discipline-tteokbokki, not patience-tteokbokki. She said the difference between discipline-tteokbokki and patience-tteokbokki is six years.”

“Everything takes six or seven years.”

“Everything takes however long it takes. The number is — the number is not the point. The point is: the growing happens underground. The growing happens when you’re not looking. The growing happens while you’re standing at the stove making the same thing you made yesterday and the day before and the day before that. The growing happens in the repetition. Not because of the repetition. During the repetition. The repetition is the soil. The growing is the seed. The patience is the water.”

Sua plated the tteokbokki. Set the bowl on the counter. Jake ate. The tteokbokki was — Sua’s. The Glendale version. The warped-pan, listing-flame, dead-spot version. The version that eleven days of practice on Eunja’s stove had produced. The version that was — adequate. The version that was the beginning.

“Day three sixty-five,” Jake said.

“Year one of seven.”

“Year one of seven. And the tomatoes in July. And the tteokbokki in — six years. And the rice in — six more years. And the stove — the stove takes however long the stove takes.”

“The stove takes forever. The stove never ends. The stove is — the stove is not a destination. The stove is the standing. The standing is — the standing is what we do. The standing is who we are. The cooks who stand at the stove and make the food and serve the food and wash the dishes and sleep and wake up and do it again. The standing is not a seven-year project. The standing is — a life.”

Jake looked at Sua. At the fire-woman in the Glendale kitchen on the three hundred and sixty-fifth day of his cooking life, the first day of his second year, the first day of the patience that Jeonghee prescribed and that the rice required and that the stove demonstrated and that the doenjang fermented and that the garden grew and that the world — the whole, imperfect, fractured, healing world — was learning.

“One more year,” Jake said. “Then five more. Then — the knowing.”

“Then the knowing. And then — the knowing doesn’t end either. The knowing is — the knowing is the deeper standing. The standing that doesn’t count the years. The standing that stands because the standing is the point. Halmeoni stood at her stove for forty years. Halmeoni didn’t count the years. Halmeoni stood because the standing was — the standing was Halmeoni. The standing was not something Halmeoni did. The standing was something Halmeoni was.”

The kitchen held the words. The late afternoon light through the window — warm, golden, the April light that preceded the long evenings of Los Angeles spring — fell on the counter, on the stove, on the bowls, on the two cooks who stood in the kitchen and who would stand in the kitchen tomorrow and the day after and the year after and the six years after that and the lifetime after that.

The patience was not waiting. The patience was — being. Being at the stove. Being in the kitchen. Being the cook who stood and made and served and washed and stood again.

Day three hundred and sixty-five. Year one, complete.

The stove clicked. Click, click, catch. The flame held. The jjigae would be ready in the morning.

And the morning after that.

And the morning after that.

Patient. Growing. Underground. Where you cannot see it. Where the knowing lives.

One morning at a time.