“May I have the knife?” I said, as we were cooking with garlic and dough in the heavily scented kitchen where your mother grew up; deep salty waters and high altitude slopes of Halkidiki. You set down the knife – just from good manners, and slide it towards my floured hands. “Why didn’t you just hand it to me?” I sounded unsteady and young. “Why, we wouldn’t want a knife fight, would we?”