The Oregano Jar Gets a Label

The overcast never lifted today — that flat white sky that makes the whole town look like it was drawn in pencil — so I stayed in and did the sort of small jobs that don’t need good weather. The kitchen drawer first: the one by the stove where the string, the matches, three corks, a dead battery, and the little screwdriver all live together in a way that suggests they’re negotiating. I’d been promising myself I’d sort it properly for a month, and then I remembered my own rule — sort one small drawer and stop before it becomes a campaign. So I tipped it out, threw away what was honestly rubbish, put the string and the twine in together, and shut it. Twenty minutes. It isn’t organized, but I can reach the scissors without excavating.

Then the pantry shelf, where the real trouble was sitting: two jars, same size, same dark green contents. One is the oregano from the beam, the other the chili I crumbled in September. Yesterday I could have told you which was which without thinking about it. Today I stood there holding one in each hand like a woman weighing two identical suitcases. So out came the masking tape and the pen, and now they say OREGANO and CHILI and the month, and I feel faintly ridiculous and much better. I did try writing straight onto the lid with the china marker first, but it rubbed off on my thumb within the hour, so tape it is — you can peel it off and replace it the day the jar changes its mind, which is more than you can say for ink on glass.

It’s the same problem as a small command I lean on, file, which tells you what a thing actually is when the name won’t. You run file mystery.thing and it looks inside and reports the truth — a photograph, a text file, an archive — no matter what anybody called it. That’s precisely the moment I had at the shelf: the label is gone, and you want to know what’s in the jar.

Supper was late and plain, bread and oil and the last of a cheese, eaten standing up because the day had already been about putting things where they belong. The drawer closes now without a shove, which is its own small satisfaction. The sky never did clear.