In Which Jeremy Breaks In The Kitchen

Jeremy pulled out his coffee bean roaster for the first time since he arrived home back in August.  It used to be that every Sunday our kitchen would be filled with the grassy, slightly acrid smell of roasting coffee beans while Jeremy hovered over the counter, watching the process with an expert eye.  And like clockwork, every Sunday our smoke alarm would go off because Jeremy, in his zeal to get roasting, would forget to turn the oven vent on.

Jeremy hasn't been able to roast his own coffee for so long because he wasn't able to access the kitchen in the apartment.  The galley-style kitchen wouldn't allow him to use his wheelchair, and standing for a long enough period of time to be able to roast his coffee beans and then use his espresso machine wasn't very feasible.  So he'd been making due with pre-roasted beans and a little French press, which just wasn't the same.  The man is serious about his coffee. 

The new kitchen is wonderful because it allows him to return to so many activities he enjoys that he's been unable to do.  He's cooking his own breakfast in the mornings again, has talked about pulling out the bread maker, and of course the espresso machine-- a little worse for wear after being shipped back from Afghanistan-- has once again been unpacked and now has place of pride on his island work surface.  As I'm writing he's in there doing the dishes-- not an activity that he necessarily enjoys, but one that I certainly appreciate and that he was unable to do in the apartment.

He seems so much more comfortable in this space, which makes me very happy.  Today when the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen the sound to me seemed more like a joyous shout of triumph than an extremely loud annoyance, even if I couldn't figure out how to turn the darn thing off and ended up bracing Jeremy's legs (who as the instigator of the alarms has a lot more practice at turning them off) as he wobbled on top of a chair to take out the batteries. 

I sat down in the living room afterwards and listened to Jeremy putter around the kitchen, making his coffee and telling happy falsehoods* to Connor about the fire alarm.  I didn't have to do a thing for Jer-- he was just fine on his own in there.  It feels like we've regained something that's been missing since August.

Feels like home.

~Jess


*"You should always yell hysterically when there's a fire, Connor.  Like this: AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!  Fires hate that."