Rather you hate me or not, is what I was told. The mystery of his voice echoed throughout the halls, which belonged to this chef, as we walked into the room one by one. As it seem we all looked like just objects with numbers on them, none of us even said a word as we listened. Yet slightly I whispered to ask my neighbor, “Who is this man:” yet his reply was “I’m not really sure, but I’m nervous from my head to toe.”

   I imagined that what awaited us in the next rooms, would be of the same; an unknown face that we paid to hear him or her speak. Yet two days later the day finally came. I walked into the room with no clue of what was going to happen, yet then a man ran out of the kitchen with blood on his apron. The stains of red, the color of dry dullness that had oxidized from the connection of air, and yet he didn’t seem to worry. This was my first impression, the first of wounds, the cut that lingered on his finger, and the very first of fears that awaited me around the next corner.

   Yet as the days went by, I learned every single carve and dented bang in those kitchens. The slightly tap of metal on metal, the pure ripple affect of desires that curved my attention, and yet I couldn’t help but wonder how I got here. As I stood there with a hand filled of things to be done and peeled potatoes that always seem to be deformed and oxidizes before I added them to the water. I drifted away from that very single moment of existence, as I indwelled in the passion that gave me this itchy sensation to cook. I saw my former self; a shadow of my image and there I was, a child who played in white flour.

   The sense of humor as I ran in my diaper; as I tracked white flour all over the floor leaving behind my thoughts. Was this my significant form of expression? The footprints of memories shaped in little black baby feet and there I laughed to myself saying, “life couldn’t get any better than this.” Those early mornings as I climb out of the bed to ran down the stairs and there he was, my significant other, my yin to my yang. I would smell the aroma of fresh baked bread, as I watched him in the little crack of the fabric that covered the door, as he painted his thoughts away.

   He would have his back facing to the door with his blank canvas in front of him. He always said he never wanted the sunlight to throw him off, as he tried to catch his desires in one image. This one significant other, he was my grandfather: a painter, a hard worker, a father of many, a singer, a cook, a handyman, a construction worker, and most of all he was my significant spark of light. So this is a little tale of a young boy who never stops craving for his creativity: his art, his passion, the motivation that wouldn’t be smothered, the smells of flavors that lingered, and he stills leaves his footprints in the flour below him.