Just behind my dad’s left ear, the faint blue LED light from the oven clock reads 12:06 a.m., reminding me that I've been talking for four hours and 18 minutes.
Somehow it doesn't feel long enough.
My tired body forces my arms to push off the counter. As I slide down, I realize that this granite surface has never been just about food; it’s been the foundation for growth, connection, and preparation for life.
These late-night conversations follow the same rhythm each time. I step into the kitchen, where my dad and stepmom wait at their usual stools at the raised counter. One question is all it takes before I'm sitting crisscross applesauce 10 feet away from them. The normal talk of college comes up, and we finally enter the question of the future. Soon, I’m asking the same questions I can never seem to answer: Am I ready to leave? What if my future doesn’t match the plan? Am I enough for the future I imagine?
But then, I remember, just like counters, life is built in layers: Messy, imperfect, yet strong enough to hold me up. The kitchen counter has always been there to provide stability when everything around me was changing. Whether at my childhood home, where I watched my mom leave for what would soon be considered “Mom’s House,” my dad's new house, where I said goodbye the first time my brother left for college, or my mom's new kitchen, where my dog left a scratch the last time he snuck on the counter for a bite of our dinner. No matter what it has been through, the counter remains, holding the weight of my oatmeal and my silence the next morning.
At the counter, my dad teaches me the value of ambition.
At the counter, my stepmom pushes me to pursue passion over fear.
At the counter, my mom helps me untangle broken relationships.
Each conversation rests on the same foundation: A cool, solid surface that holds not just plates, but pieces of our lives. It's not just food that's prepared on the counter, but me. I climbed onto it as a child to reach the impossible, and I’ve sat on it as a teenager when the weight of the decisions felt too heavy.
Growth doesn't happen at once: It happens in the everyday moments, when life feels overwhelming, spills over, and gets wiped up-even if it leaves a stain. Each counter, old or new, carries a piece of me in every nook of its surface.
I believe sometimes it only takes climbing on the counter to look out and see how far I have come.
