Controlled Chaos
I desire order, but I thrive in chaos.
Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I’m decent in the kitchen. While I’m no master chef, I do tend to get compliments—and more importantly, my kids prefer that I cook rather than us ordering out. I’m not formally trained, but it’s a skill I’ve been honing for upwards of thirty years now.
I’ve been in the kitchen since I was big enough to push a chair to the stove. While most of my ability, skill, and intuition came from necessity—having to prepare meals for a family of five or more starting around age eight or nine—some of it came from my maternal grandmother. She was patient enough to answer my random questions while showing me how to peel potatoes, fry cornbread, and slice bananas to uniform thickness for puddin’.
What I enjoy most about preparing a meal is that it’s a kind of controlled chaos.
There are known reactions—garlic hitting hot oil will always be intoxicating—but there are also variables. A burner runs hot. An ingredient is missing. Something spills. Any one of those things can dramatically change the outcome.
When you grow up poor, you learn the basics quickly. If the food isn’t edible, you don’t just go hungry—you risk making others go without as well. And if you mess up, everyone lets you know. There’s no running back to the store. No borrowing from neighbors, because they don’t have it either. You use what you have, no more and no less. There’s very little margin for error.
So I learned to make adjustments on the fly. How to start with one meal in mind and, due to circumstance, wind up with something entirely different. And even if it’s not what I originally planned, it’s still going to be nourishing, filling, and often delicious.
It’s a skill.
It’s an art.
It’s an analogy for my life.
The last month has been a reminder that life rarely follows the recipe you start with.
Before Christmas, my fourteen-year-old asked her dad if she would see him. His response wasn’t yes or no—it was that they were going to spend Christmas with me and that he wouldn’t force them to see him.
They’re texting now, sporadically, but he still doesn’t respond to me. And he hasn’t spoken to our twelve-year-old at all, outside of a Christmas Day text. They haven’t seen him since early November.
There’s no dramatic confrontation here. No explosive argument. Just absence.
And absence, I’ve learned, is its own kind of message. One that’s heard loud and clear by everyone.
For Christmas, their dad sent money. Which is helpful—it buys things—but it doesn’t sit across from you at the table. It doesn’t ask questions. It doesn’t show up when things are uncomfortable. It doesn’t give advice or lend an ear when you need it.
I’m fully moved in with my love, who, for the sake of things, I’ll simply refer to as Mr.
The girls are sharing a room, for now. It’s okay, mostly. They’re already getting on each other’s nerves, which feels less like a problem and more like proof of normalcy. Adjustment noises—screams, groans, the occasional curse word. Growing pains.
As for me and my Mr., I could not be more in love. But being seen—being appreciated—can be uncomfortable. I still deal with my own triggers and insecurities, and I often assign negative intentions to innocuous conversations. I struggle the most with text messages. I tend to read them as if he’s always angry or disappointed in me, although that’s never his intended tone.
Old wiring doesn’t disappear just because the storm has passed. It takes time to dig new pathways and clear away old debris.
It probably doesn’t take as much time as the construction on 270, though.
(Get it together, St. Louis.)
And yet, my Mr. just keeps showing up. Time after time. In ways I didn’t realize were going to matter, but now I know I can’t—and won’t—live without.
I am constantly amazed at how present he is.
He noticed what the girls were actually into. Band t-shirts for the fourteen-year-old. Robux and genuine interest in the twelve-year-old’s info-dumps. Not generic gifts. Not placeholders. Them.
Me. This may have been the best Christmas I’ve ever had as an adult. I wasn’t showered in gifts, but the things I did receive showed how much he listens and how much he thinks about me—actions I am not used to seeing.
Us. This past weekend, he showed up for my fourteen-year-old in an awkward, important moment her dad should have been there for. When I called my Mr. and asked if he would take her, meet the people involved, and verify authenticity, he didn’t hesitate.
He just did it.
And then he called me with an update.
The amount of constant consideration he shows for others is astounding.
I don’t think the girls’ dad even knows about the event—or really much about anything that’s been happening in their lives over the past month.
I still appreciate order, and I know how to thrive in chaos—that skill kept us fed when there was no margin for error. But there is something quietly magical about a pantry full of staples, about knowing I won’t have to pull something together out of nothing this time. What matters is what’s on the table, and who shows up to eat. Absence taught me what neglect looks like. Presence taught me what care feels like. The difference is no longer subtle, and I don’t unlearn things like that.
Reconstructing Cori 