The young Chef asked me to taste the soup before service, not to carry it, to taste it and tell him what I thought. I said it needed a little more pepper and he added some without explaining his training to me. It made me happy, I will say that. I have cooked food longer than he has been alive but normally I am only the man who washes what he uses. Then another worker came in and called me Chef's assistant, laughing, and I told him to mind his work. Perhaps I spoke too sharply. I did not want the small good thing turned into a joke before I had even finished enjoying it.

My little grandson wanted to race me along the shore and would not accept that I was wearing my church sandals, as if running is only a matter of agreeing to run. I gave him a small start and went after him, not far, but enough to feel the air coming into my chest properly and the sand moving under my feet. The left knee complained when I stopped, so I stood looking at a boat until that passed. The boy came back to ask why I was taking so long. He has no respect for a man who has just allowed him to win. I was still warm when we sat down and he kept leaning his whole hot head against my arm.

My wife says I remember every word my father spoke about that cocoa farm, but I cannot remember where I put the paper from the last meeting. These are not the same kind of remembering. I can still see where he was standing when he told me the land would be mine, and which shirt he wore, because that was my father speaking to his son about his future. A paper is a paper until somebody suddenly asks for it eleven years later. I have looked in the flour tin where we keep the older documents. There are school receipts from children who now have their own children, but not the one thing everybody wants.