you’re sixteen-years-old, moseying through your local bookstore when you come across it.
you’re not usually into nonfiction, especially not memoirs, but the man on the cover is familiar. laughing over his shoulder with his eyes closed, relaxed in a turquoise button-up and jeans, standing with his back to the camera at a counter cluttered with leafy vegetables and mixing bowls.
from seeds to supper, the title reads, and his name is eric bittle-zimmermann.
you deliberate for a bit, picking it up and reading the blurb, the reviews printed on the back sleeve, the first page. the very first words of the book are hey, y’all! and your friend walks over at that point, and they see him and say—“oh, i used to watch some of his videos.”
so you buy it, because your friend said you should, and later that night you’re already deep into the stories of peach cobbler recipes and learning how to differentiate between living and surviving when they send you the link to the guy’s old youtube channel. it hasn’t been active for a few years, but that doesn’t matter because oh my god are there so many videos. years of videos, almost a decade’s worth, starting all the way back in the early 2010s and you get sucked into them all, laughing at the funny ones and tearing up at the emotional ones, watching as the guy slowly grows up from high school to college and beyond.
you switch between reading the memoir and watching the videos over the next few weeks. you see his video on introducing his boyfriend and you read the chapter on maple-crusted apple pie and how learning to love is a lot like learning to lattice a pie, slow and patient and sometimes messy.
you see his cooking challenge video featuring all of his friends from college and you read the chapter on homemade bagel bites and how family doesn’t have to be a four-course meal you’ve had reservations for all your life. sometimes, family is just frozen bagel bites and sriracha sauce crowded around an uneven table.
you see his two-part wedding vlog posted in 2019, nearly 10 years ago, and you read his chapter on red velvet cake and how the brain can get confused, something to do with all the nerve endings getting tangled up, because when love reaches the same heights fear does, you end up fainting into your then-boyfriends arms.
then, you see his final video on the channel, a farewell to his subscribers and a glimpse as to what’s next. it’s short and simple, just his husband and him sitting on a couch together, a toddler between them. and you read the last chapter of the book on chicken tenders and and how a seed in the garden never knows it’ll grow into a supper worth loving. it just knows it’ll grow into something, and that the growing takes time.
(a few years later, when you’re twenty and in college, you’re downtown with some friends and come across it. you still aren’t into nonfiction that much, but that one memoir always stuck with you, sitting on your shelf back in your dorm. and this one, with the guy’s back to the camera, tall and steadfast, standing in the middle of an ice rink, an emboldened number one across the back of his jersey. the name is familiar.
melting ice, the title reads, and his name is jack bittle-zimmermann.
