By The Book

Ever since I can remember, I loved reading all the manuals if someone bought a new gadget. I still read signs and follow all the right directions to wherever I want to go. I love my recipe books because it tells me that my food is going to be perfect if I follow all the right instructions. Well most of the time.

When you go to my Sisters house on a Sunday afternoon you will see her throw all the spices she can find into a big pot. I don’t even know if she owns a recipe book. She is the best navigator if you need to go somewhere, without a map book. She does not read the dosage on the medicine bottle. She goes on feeling.

Maybe I have relied on manuals and recipe books all my life because I do not trust my gut. Sometimes I wish I could be like her, she just goes with the flow and it all works out well in the end. Her food is way better than mine out of the recipe book. She once made Soup and I asked her for the recipe, and she couldn’t recall all half the spices she put in that soup.

She knows what goes with what. I have to read it. We are different in that that way. Maybe I feel safe with all my reading. But together we make the perfect pair. You should see us cooking up a storm when we are together. She rolls her eyes when I read the measurements out of the Recipe book for the tenth time, and I shout at her when she grabs spices with her hand and adds it to my pot.

I wish there was a manual on life, but life does not meet you halfway. You have to work and fight for everything you have. That is the only manual that I don’t read, but write as it happens.

Everybody has a gut. You just have to trust it enough to know it will work.