Two Little Kitchens
Hi… I am Ayaan. And a few days ago, two little girls taught me something I didn't know I had forgotten. They don't know each other. They probably never will. But they've been sitting in my head together ever since. The first one was downstairs. She couldn't have been more than four or five. Sitting on the floor with a few plastic kitchen toys scattered around her. Tiny vessels. Tiny spoons. A tiny stove that would never get hot. I stopped and watched for a moment. She was completely elsewhere — lost in a world only she could fully see. And then I noticed something that made me stay a little longer. Every time she picked up a vessel, she used the spoon to lift it. Carefully. Deliberately. The exact way our mothers lift a hot pan from the stove. I stood there thinking, who taught her that? Nobody, probably. She had simply watched her mother do it a thousand times. Quietly stored it somewhere without being asked to. And now here she was — recreating...
