And then one day, everything was different.

The day before that, I showed up to the kitchen early on a Sunday morning to help prepare the food that would be served at the private memorial service which would be taking place later that day in the restaurant. I put on my chef coat and my kitchen homie and I took a pause to honor the dead and to commit to putting love into the ingredients that would feed the friends and family that would soon be gathering on that cloudy Sunday afternoon in Chinatown.

Aretha Franklin joined us in song as we dove into our chopping and stirring. It felt like honor to prepare this particular food. Later, the daughter of the deceased gathered us by the kitchen door, poured us a shot and raised glasses to us in gratitude as we raised ours to their family. There were thank you’s and you’re welcomes and even hugs. This was not the usual “event” that takes place in our restaurant, this one swelled with deep meaning. We have hosted baby showers, business meetings, pau hanas, weddings, and so on, but only in retrospect did we learn that this particular gathering would be the last before the entire restaurant industry collapsed.

Just like that everything was different. The next day the owner of our restaurant decided to temporarily /indefinitely close the doors. It had been coming for a while, and now was the time. I came in to help as we began to clean out the refrigerators, break down the hot and cold lines and begin the clearing out of our little work habitat.

At the end of the day, we held a glass of prosecco in one hand and in the other the flimsy hope that those doors may once again reopen after the dust of a pandemic settles, that we would continue to flesh out the new menu that we were working on, that we would continue to host workshops and events and feed our regulars in our beautiful space. But probably not.

I came home later that afternoon and booked my daughter a ticket to fly home from college the next morning. Hurricanes blow through our islands frequently enough to recognize that eerie stillness and amping up of energy in the calm before the storm, and this was every bit that moment. The calm before the storm. I needed to gather my ducklings close.

Now what? My barren pantry required attention. I cook for a living, but comparatively, not very often at home. I went through my fridge, got some supplies, and waited for all of my babies to be gathered in my nest. It was not a night for sleeping, so I did the only thing I could. I pulled the chicken carcass from the freezer, the stock pot from the shelf and began a chicken stock that would simmer for hours while I watched the sky change to morning outside my window and my daughter flew across the Pacific Ocean..

She arrived the next afternoon. I had continued cooking, chicken soup, french bread, spicy tomato jam. Over the next two weeks, we settled into a new, strange, slow, suspended in mid air, kind of pace. We followed the news, we talked about how it sucks but why it’s important to do what is being asked of us and distance ourselves from all of the friends who want to hang out.

Yesterday would have been my youngest daughter’s senior prom. As I was outside grilling dinner, and the sky was turning pink, she came over and said, “today was supposed to be prom”. Shit. I put down my tongs and we talked about how it’s ok to be sad. She says how she feels silly being sad when there are such bigger problems in the world right now. I remind her, that the only way out is through, and that for her this is what loss feels like right now, and it’s importan and okay to feel it. Instead of a fancy ballroom at the Hilton, we stand under a string of lights in the yard, I pull her close and I know that this is only one of many moments just like this.

I don’t know what these next months hold. I do know that right now, everything is different. It has been almost three weeks now. In just a few days my son will turn twenty one years old. He won’t be going out to a bar and celebrating with his friends. He will be home with his sisters and I. Maybe we will open up the bottle of 1999 Cabernet that I have been saving for years to give him on this birthday. I will make a fantastic birthday dinner and even a cake. We will talk and laugh and I will wish for him a magical year of health and growth in a year that will surely be like no other.

And we will carry on. All of us. We will show up for our people. We will cook, we will knead dough and grow vegetables, and talk about our fears and our vision for the future over a plate of food and a sexy beverage.

And so for me, and for Swigs and Grinds, we’re not going anywhere. Working from home will look like digging in the dirt, shaking up a cocktail, working on that cookbook project, recipe testing, writing those stories and experiencing the metamorphosis along with all of you.

You can follow along on Instagram to keep in touch and for some quick recipes, and snapshots of life in the kitchen and in the garden and in the world of sexy food and drinks.

Until the next time that we can raise a glass in person, I send you wishes of good health, good food and good drink.

Cheers, H