Not lacking for kitchen knives

  1. On his birthday, I tell my father about toting my Global knife — a present from him — to my boyfriend’s house in order to slice vegetables for dinner. I wrapped it in a napkin my mother made in the ’70s, though I left this detail out during the phone call, and carried it and a cheap plastic Ikea cutting board in a brown paper tote bag left over from a trip to Eastern District. I did this twice, actually, once with a jar half full of Manhattans. The jar still smelled a bit of bloody mary mix, but it didn’t ruin the drinks.
  2. My dad says he may have extra knives. I know what this means. He has a lot of knives. New ones and old ones. There is a reference to having more than one knife block.
  3. A box of knives is promised. He says there may be overlap with what I already have. I refrain from mentioning that I left Oregon with only the knives he’d given me — the Global and two paring knives — and a bread knife that was a gift from friends.
  4. Some time later, I come home to a box in the entryway. The box is full of knives, carefully packed, one in a locking safety sheath. There are five of them, including an enormous chef’s knife and a bread knife, which I immediately set aside to fill the knife-shaped hole in a certain other apartment. Another knife clearly has a specific purpose, though I’m not totally clear what that purpose is. A filleting knife? A boning knife?
  5. After the knives are pulled from the box, I stand over the sink, carefully sorting the dissolvable packing peanuts from the non-cornstarch kind, before putting the rest of the knives away (carefully making sure the blades are not touching each other, as I do not have a knife block). I am not sure whose child this makes me, but I’m going to write a thank-you email soon.
Not lacking for kitchen knives

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