My name is Edith Ann

with knife, for scale

I’ve been in bed this week, sick with a cold. My head is so congested I sound like Edith Ann, the child played by Lily Tomlin who sits in a huge rocking chair and tells nasally stories on Sesame Street. It sounds charming on children's television, not when you’re almost 50. So this afternoon I decided to relieve some of the pressure with a good old salt water rinse. Ocean life makes it easy - just jump in and let the salt water flush in and out until you can breathe again. But it’s September, I’m back to downtown living, and wearing mens pyjamas that I found at a Value Village. The bathroom is my outer limit. 

I first witnessed saline nasal irrigation at a student house during university. We were standing in the kitchen, all of us under the weather, probably some with a touch of scurvy, when a visiting student from California suggested a quick neti. “My mom does it all the time,” she said, pouring salt into her cupped palm and mixing it with a little warm water with her index finger. “She learned it in India.” The sink was full of dirty dishes, but she leaned in and bent over, tipped her chin back and poured the salt water into one nostril until it drained out the other and onto the dishes below. Eventually it was my turn. I inhaled the salty water and suddenly I was a little girl learning how to somersault with pool water rushing up into my head, prickling and burning. But it worked.  

The world of commerce caught on to neti. You can buy neti pots that look like tiny tea pots with spouts just the right size for a nostril. The internet has been listening in our house; electronic neti pots  (alongside perimenopause books and posh dogs beds) have been popping up on my feed for a long time now. Needless to say, we now have a battery powered neti pot, complete with saline pods that click into the machine as if making a Nespresso. 

Standing at the sink with my neti pot is different now. I’m in the bathroom, not suspended over a kitchen sink. The door is closed; it’s a private, vulnerable activity now. But I still get the willies every time our new battery-powered machine fills my nostrils with extreme pressure before the salty water is released into my nasal passages. I am Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall wrestling with a homing device traveling through my nostril. I squeeze my eyes and then, I feel lighter. It’s over.

This is all too much information. I know. But we had to travel through the discomfort to get to the place where I felt well enough to cook again. I started with a lone pattypan, larger than any I had ever seen before, left like an abandoned spinning top on the kitchen counter. It was gifted to me by a friend, before the storm, before I got sick. So today, finally, I sliced through it, scooped out the seeds, chopped it into chunks, tossed them in olive oil and sea salt, then roasted them for twenty minutes along with a lone sweet potato also looking for attention. Later that day, after I washed those sad pyjamas with the rest of laundry, I simmered a cup of farro in salty water, strained it, and tossed the tender grains with the roasted vegetables. I made a garlicky vinaigrette¹, one that would flavour the mild squash and cut through a cold, then I fried up slices of halloumi. Oh how I love salty halloumi. A hearty green would have been great here - spinach leaves, arugula, torn kale - to balance the weight of the ingredients. Pea shoots, left over from last week’s coleslaw, was all I had. They looked thin amongst the hearty cuts of squash and strips of fried cheese. But I liked the slivers of green. 

My guys grimaced at the salad. They don’t like roasted squash, or any kind of squash for that matter. So I had this bowl all to myself while they ate frozen pizza and discussed 1990’s science fiction movies. It’s time to watch Total Recall again. 

1. I’ve been making this one on repeat.