Dots that Connect To the Future- My Culinary Prophecy

    When I was only 9 years old, I created something that would follow me many years later though at the time it did not click. I made a space in our clothes closet and stacked two small empty drawers on top of a small table. It looked like a small china cabinet. Then on the small table, there was an aluminum pan that resembed a sink. I loved taking my tea set, plates, and other miniature things which I arranged on the tiny china cabinet, and pretend I was washing them. I remember that the wooden floor under me was warm due to the length of time I spent in that tiny home manufactured kitchen. Jumping forward to literature class when I was 15, we were asked to create a pseudonym that we could use to author our short stories and poems. I chose "CookieZeal". 

    The first name was reflecting a playful and childlike name. The last had to reflect how I would like to be known. I chose "Zeal", as the virtue attracted me as enthusiastic, energized, and even flambouyant. It took me an extra 40 years to realize this. Yes. When I was 55, and enjoying the artistic approach to cooking, I realized why I was inspired to choose that name. I have practiced on cooking, smoking meats and barbequing, wonderful foods that required time and study by trial and error, which fulfilled the cooking portion. 

    I also have spent more time in the kitchen than anywhere, including my study while writing, because of all the dishes I've washed. How do I pull this together as a big picture? The closet symbolized the cacoon of my future travel. Burrowing in this infantile sac, I was unknowingly rehearsing my adulthood with all the premature versions of cooking. The pen name venture was what I thought could be used for authorship, being a young writer of the 60's with little or no mentoring on how to become published by my real name. Being introduced to the internet, I thought it be just as well to cloak under that name as well. I did not want to be an imposter, but I was being precocious of my identity. The dots connect again, when in these later years, I not only am collecting social security, but my spiritual awareness is showing me that God had a pick in this whole marauding of identity.