As part of the decontamination project, I got the opportunity to wash all my clean tea towels and dish cloths. Wren helped me hang them out on the marvelous Breezecatcher line back by the compost. Tea towel culture is a relatively new thing for me, but I’m grateful that I finally get it.

The first tea towel I remember being given was this linen Y2K tea towel, and I thought of it more as a joke than anything else. But look, it’s 24 years old and as sturdy and useful as it ever was. The next time someone gave me a tea towel, I was disappointed: I had expected something more special, more personal, perhaps even more expensive. I was insufficiently grateful for both those tea towels, and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t really know how to incorporate tea towels into my daily kitchen routine. Only after I saw a stack of tea towels on Amy’s kitchen counter, and watched her reach for one to clean up a spill on the floor, another to dry a pan, another for something else, all in one evening, and then throw them in the wash that same night, did I begin to see the value in having a lot of tea towels.

Long before that, I had bought a set of embroidered days-of-the-week towels at a local antique shop. They were cute and inexpensive, but I was afraid to use them hard because — because I don’t know, I still didn’t get it: use them for everything, wash them, use them again and again until they graduate to being rags, and the more you use tea towels the more tea towels will come to you. Or something. Saturday and Tuesday are the last of these towels remaining in the kitchen, and Tuesday is so tattered it’s about to graduate.

Another towel that’s just beginning to fray is this gift embroidered by a friend no longer living. It will be hard to relegate, I mean graduate, this one to the rag bin. It gets light use these days, in baking rotation, covering bread or rolls as they rise.

This is the latest tea towel to join my collection, one of three tea towel gifts I received this holiday season. Where once I may have looked askance at a tea towel, I now appreciate the thoughtfulness and fun in these gifts from friends. They show that these friends know what I like, what’s meaningful to me; they remind me that I am seen and known. And I’ve learned to give a nice tea towel, too, from time to time.

There’s no need or time to share photos of all the tea towels in my kitchen, but here are a few more of my favorites. I’m grateful for tea towels, for their utility and their beauty, for the connections and memories they represent, and for the sense of belonging in a culture of wise women who love being in their kitchens, cooking and caring.

And in the kitchen last night, among the clutter of the half-cleaned, I made farfalle Alfredo, having no fettuccine but instead this wonderful pasta from Italy. I used mushrooms instead of chicken, and ate two-thirds of it last night because I couldn’t stop. So simple, so delicious!

Meanwhile, the Alluring Fox puzzle continued to delight, and offered up a final sweet surprise as I placed the last piece. As Liberty has an eagle mascot, the Unidragon emblem is a curled baby dragon that I saved til the end, and found that not only did it fit right in the center, the heart of the puzzle; it also completed a perfect miniature of the fox design. Noticing gave me a little jolt of joy. I’m grateful for other people’s clever creativity.