Catching the Burning Smell Before the Pot Handle Melts

Is there a smell coming from the kitchen?

It sounds like a half-finished sentence, and it has saved more than one pot handle. The flame licks sideways, the plastic starts to heat, and the burning reaches you before your eyes catch any smoke. There is something odd about the Vietnamese for it: we say we hear a smell. The nose smells, the ear hears, and yet when we need to describe paying attention, we borrow the word for listening. Hear the burning. Hear the rain coming. Hear that something is not right in the body. Hearing here has nothing to do with ears. It is about a person willing to settle for a moment before everything catches fire.

I like that word, settle. Settling is what happens when the sediment sinks and the clear water appears. Try to listen before anything has settled and it is very hard. Someone says something that grates and I have already put up a fence. Someone corrects a thing I just finished and inside I am muttering: what, am I really that bad at this? Someone offers clumsy feedback and my face stays calm on the outside while inside the stove is already glowing and the handle is starting to go. The generous word for this is sensitive. The more accurate one is that I take offence very fast, faster than my home internet, which is slow exactly when I need it.

There is one view I want to keep: while people are alive, the way we treat each other is the valuable part. Laying out a huge spread after they are gone, crying loudly, doing everything correctly, is moving, and it is a kindness that missed its train. Not giving each other a decent meal while alive, then heaping the altar afterwards. Letting each other feel small while alive, then saying the things that should have been said long ago. Cold ash does not need a warm blanket. The person sitting in front of you does.

I do not say that to criticise anyone. I am the sort who loves people and expresses it badly, who is concerned and looks like he is checking your spelling. Sometimes I mean to say something soft and it leaves my mouth hard. I mean to help and it comes out as an instruction. I mean to ask after someone and it comes out as an interrogation. So listening is not only hearing what the other person is saying. It is hearing what is being loaded inside me, ready to be fired. A kind sentence, or a small stone.

I once heard about someone who lost their mother very young. Growing up, the image of her had faded like a photograph left too long in the sun. But love does not necessarily disappear with a body. It can travel through an uncle, an aunt, another pair of hands, another meal, another reminder to be careful. Hearing that softened something in me. Some losses are truly irreplaceable. And some kinds of love know how to change their position. They no longer live under the old name, and they are still there in the way other people go on caring for you.