How do we know who stays?

Thought No. 3

Hello. Lying in bed again. I’ve been meaning to write a piece on seasonal ingredients for the Australian summer. I see so many beautifully captured posts on seasonal ingredients through the different seasons in the northern hemisphere and I love to see it. Although, I’m based in the southern hemisphere so our seasons exist at opposite times with very different climates.

So, I might capture this for me and keep track of it on here. Usually it just circulates in my mind given I’ve been obsessed with fruit and vegetables for a very long time lol. Okay, so whilst thinking about all this the thought crossed my mind. Some people move through our lives like the seasons. I equate them to a seasonal ingredient. Others are permanent. How do we know who stays?

The first strawberries of summer are brilliant, urgent, impossible to ignore. They arrive when the air is thick with possibility, when we are open, hungry. And then, just as suddenly, they are gone. Often, I try to try to preserve them in memory, apply heat and turn them into a jam. Although, it’s undeniable that their beauty is in their impermanence.

We exhaust ourselves trying to preserve people at times. Maybe we should let them go with the season they serve.

Other ingredients like salt, like flour, like the things that sit in the pantry so long we forget they are there, shaping the foundation of every meal. These are the ones who anchor us. They are not always noticed, not always thrilling, but without them, nothing quite holds together.

We often don’t notice or value these people in our lives. I have seen and felt more of the value. The love. The true support. I’ve held them closer.

There are reasons some ingredients are seasonal and others endure. Some require time, fermentation, aging, patience. Some demand immediacy, are at their best when they are fresh, unguarded.

Perhaps, people are the same. Some are meant to pass through, to be experienced in their fullness for a brief moment. Others are meant to stay, to settle into the background of our days, steady as bread, essential as salt.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that neither is lesser. Neither is more. The strawberries remind us what it is to feel deeply, to revel in something fleeting. The salt reminds us that not all things must fade. We need both. Even though it’s heartbreaking at times.

I’m learning to savour what comes, to release what must go, to trust that, in every season, something necessary will remain. Well, it’s vital in baking, to know when to hold tight and when to let go of these ingredients. It translates into the folds of my life.

How do I know who will stay?

I don’t and that’s okay. Maybe the imprint is more important than the permanence.

Christiana