If I continue making food, I’m going to get a big head about my cooking.

An unmerited big head, mind you. All I’m doing is putting ingredients together, and I’m not even always doing that without any help or outside inspiration.

But still, sometimes I make something so good I want to cry.

Like a couple weeks ago at Steve’s house, when I made some garlic-lemon chicken. I’ve made this many times before, always changing it up a bit. But this time I put sautéed onions and pinenuts on top, and roasted the entire thing with the lemons still inside the bowl. Wow. I was ‘astonied’. (However, the pine nuts were Steve’s idea.)

Last night I wanted to make some dahl for us girls. We had a package of it, but when I opened it up, it was a teeny-tiny serving that might have fed our cat, if Lady liked Indian food. So I scanned the back of the package for the ingredients. There they were—“beans, tomatoes,” and about 15 spices. Well, we had 12 of the 15, so I “supplemented” our little hill of beans with a much larger heap. Mmmmm.

And this morning I made huevos rancheros. Stacy had been reeling off a couple recipes on our walk last week, so I tried this one, using her green salsa and some of my fresh herbs, topping it all off with sliced tomatoes and sour cream. Delicioso.

But before I become intolerably arrogant, I need to remember that, first of all, I’m just imitating others. Whether it’s my roommate, a chef at a restaurant, or the ingredients on the back of a box, I get these ideas from people, altering and adding where I see fit.

Second, I didn’t make my own taste buds, or the food that affects them so overwhelmingly. Have you ever thought about how amazing it is that we can taste . . . and that stuff tastes good? In A Wrinkle in Time, the Murray children travel to a planet where the food tastes like cardboard. Pretty gross, but there’s no reason why our food needs flavor. It would nourish us just as well without it, and I bet a lot more of us would eat our cruciferous veggies if they didn’t taste so bad.

And third, just because a culinary tour de force tastes orgasmically great to me doesn’t mean someone else won’t think it’s bland, gross, or even weird. Like the time when I was thirteen, and I insisted on making omelettes for my family . . . spiced with cinnamon.

Devin Adams is dead.

I sit here in Berrien Springs, Michigan, enduring yet more rain. On Monday alone we had three thunderstorms. The leaves are beginning to change--I collect them in my walks around the neighborhood, stuffing yellows, oranges, reds, and (my favorites) variegated leaves into the pocket of my hoodie. When I get home, I wipe them off and put them in my Bible to dry. I have a leaf mobile right now that I made last fall; this fall, I'm working on one for my friend Teresa.

And all while I'm doing this, Devin is dead.

She would have liked my leaf mobile. It's the kind of thing she went in for. I remember my first view of her apartment--scarves everywhere. Silk scarves hanging from the ceiling, over her bed, on chairs, on her tiny television--scarves of all different colors and patterns, brightening the room. Not that any room needed brightening, with Devin in it.

She was a human dynamo, a little fireball. She brought out a side of me that no one, but no one else, has ever brought out. I can be loud and animated and funny, but when she was around, we both just zipped around the room, commenting, laughing, being generally strange and uninhibited. Whether we were in Twentieth-Century Literature or in play rehearsal together, she got me . . . and added to me . . . in a such a dynamic, Devin way.

When I heard about her accident, I felt numb. I still feel numb. I was her friend, but I wasn't her close friend. At first I thought, "Well, that's sad, but I didn't really know her that well," . . . like I was looking for an excuse for feeling numb. But the truth is, she impacted my life a lot. The first time I met her, as a scared and homesick freshman at Union College, she took me out to eat at Garden Cafe. And through the time I knew her, she continued to give me things to make me happy--cookies, cards, clothing, books--even though she didn't really know me.

Hanging directly behind me is a collage of cards and images people have given me over the years. One of them, in the bottom middle frame, is a Welcome Back to School card she made me when my Jr. year started. It's on pink construction paper, with a stick figure in a skirt raising her arms to a rainbow.

At home, on my bulletin board above my desk, I have a poem she wrote me during class. It is one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read (and hey, it's about me!) so I keep it there on my "good thoughts" board.

In my closet, I have a blue wool tweed skirt, like the one Maria wears in Sound of Music. I love that skirt--I wore it in "I Never Saw Another Butterfly." Devin was our costume and props person, and she had bought the skirt with her own money. After the show, she said I could have it. It always makes me think of her, this thick warm length of cloth hitting my knees on winter days.

And in my bookshelf, "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli. How many other people did Devin introduce Stargirl to? Who introduced Stargirl to Devin? In my mind, they are inseperable. When I read that book, I see Devin, and smile.

The more I thought about it, the more memories I've uncovered. Her small cat, Luna; her bright blue eyes topped by whatever color her hair was that month; the songs she wrote and performed on her keyboard; her clothing, that I both envied and was amused by; her passionate activism.

It is this last memory that makes her dying on her bike so gut-wrenching, because if you knew Devin, you knew she was riding her bike for a reason--to save the environment. To save the animals. To save the refugees. To save the war-torn areas. To save the world. And that, really, is Devin. A generosity of self and spirit that showed in her whole attitude.

She would have liked my leaf mobile a lot, I think.