Yesterday I looked longingly at the room where the local church choir meets once a week to practice. I even saw one person enter. These days my musical activities involve operatic renditions of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ in which I mimic the vibrating ‘Eeeeee’ sound the washing machine makes when it is in the final stages of a cycle. I also sing Nature Boy on loop. I love the idea of our toddler being subjected to the song’s core, that the greatest thing one can ever know is to love and be loved in return. I eat the word ‘return’ so I can begin again. He falls asleep at some point. I continue until I am sure he is ‘out’. I like being able to exercise my vocal cords, but it is not the same thing as singing with other adults in a choir, training one’s voice to improve its stamina and breathing in and out at the right moments to hold a note. I joined a choir when I was seven or eight years old, so singing has played a formative role in my life. I didn’t expect to miss it, but when I hear the choir sing here, I am so seduced by how marvellous they sound, I want, badly, to be in their number.

These days, because I am also slowly making my way through the final episodes of the second season of The Bear, I have also been missing having the time to cook with elan. It is another thing I am ‘good’ at, another thing I have been doing since I was six or seven, that feels somehow ‘in my blood’. I do cook almost daily. But as parents of a toddler, our daily menus are more practical than culinarily inventive. I cook once a day and make larger portions, so we can eat the same meal twice. We have found this to be the most effective form of time management. We make soups twice a week, and the rest of the time alternate between pasta and rice. I miss the luxury of being experimental with my cooking, trying out new recipes or finding ways of infusing more complex flavours into dishes. I remember when I was child-free, I used to manage the anxiety that often crept up while falling asleep by thinking about how to plate certain dishes or creating three-course menus for no one in particular. Cooking feeds my creative impulses and my desire to articulate to another how much I care for them. I hadn’t necessarily thought of myself as ‘good at it’ until I began living on my own and cooking for friends. I miss making feasts for 20 or 30 people. I long for the opportunity to cook for many of those friends again because I am an even better cook now than I was then.