When I was nine, I decided my grandmother’s kitchen was haunted. Every Sunday, jars of napa cabbage would vanish into the pantry and reappear three weeks later, transformed, sitting in the refrigerator like nothing had happened.
We moved when I was seven, and everything around me seemed to reward speed. My grandmother’s kitchen ran on a different clock, and no amount of impatience on my part changed the timeline.
The turning point came during my sophomore year, after my third failed attempt at a project I’d poured months into. I called my grandmother, expecting sympathy. Instead she asked me one question.