Because apparently a thousand-word love letter does not seem to be sufficient, I want to tell you one more story about my beloved, battered-and-beaten Le Creuset Dutch oven, and why I felt the need to write an essay about it in the first place.

In early October, my brother Phil came over to have some takeout BBQ and watch the Yankees-Red Sox playoffs with us. At some point during the game, while eating honey-glazed chicken wings and looking on as rookie right-hander Cam Schlittler struck out twelve unsuspecting hitters, the subject turned to breaking in baseball gloves. I didn’t know this, but when we were kids back in the olden days of the 1970s, breaking in your baseball glove — softening the stiff leather, molding it to your hand — was a rite of passage for young little leaguers. My brother remembers oiling his, pounding it over and over, and of course, playing ball with it, growing with it, working it, working with it, until it felt right. (Key word there: working.) Nowadays, Phil told me, it’s different: You can buy them for your kids already broken in, no work necessary. I’m not sure why, but hearing that depressed me, and launched me into a well-trodden “remember-when” spiral, featuring greatest hits such as Remember when kids read books. Remember when we didn’t have to wonder if a photo/video/essay was real or created with a single ChatGPT prompt? Remember when expressing affection took more than pressing a Like button? Remember when playlists came in the form of mixed tapes from your crush and not algorithms from your streaming service?Sometimes, I really dislike having Perspective.

When I went to the kitchen a few minutes later, I saw my stained and streaked, charred-bottomed, once-vibrant-orange Dutch oven, sitting on the stovetop as always. Well, I thought, appreciating its general well-loved-ness, at least that patina is something people can’t shortcut or fast-track or optimize. And then, another thought, as if delivered by lightning: You still have to live in this world. People say it for all kinds of reasons, but in this moment, staring at the heavy, hulking, realness of the pot in front of me, the concept felt almost like a religious mantra. The world may be changing at an alarming clip, I thought, but living and breathing and being a physical person in the world — specifically being a physical person sitting with my brother and my husband eating honey-glazed chicken wings and cornbread — as overwhelming as it can all be, that’s not changing. My two feet were on the ground, I was watching a live baseball game that I hope wasn’t manipulated by FanDuel, I was breathing air, I was eating food.

I swear I was not high!

Anyway, the essay evolved into something else, but it was important to me to tell you about the epiphany that inspired it, especially as we head into a new year where some of us might be looking for daily, right-in-front-of-us ways to feel more grounded. The answer, at least for now, seems to be: Cook dinner, share it with people you love. (You don’t even need a Dutch oven to do that!) Not always easy, I know, but hopefully we can all help each other along in this space in 2026.