Gossamer Threads of Cast Iron

A book, a skillet, and a hungry belly were the elements of a personal chemistry uniting in an emotional solution inside my head, the wondrous precipitate of which was to realize the sheer quantity of history held in my possession. The cornbread was fresh out of the oven. Black cast iron skillet gripped in one mitt-clad hand, wire rack held in the other, I flipped the bread over and on to the rack. Perfect. Balance had been achieved and honored. The unctuous sheen of glossy black metal unmarred by stuck bits of cornmeal testified to things right and proper, transfixing me on the spot in the kitchen. Something deep, something ancestral spoke.

Dinnertime had come around as it usually did. It beckoned to me to put down the book* I was reading and head into the kitchen. Hunger took precedence over a fascinating look at food and the people who raise and harvest it in modern-day Appalachia. The "mountain south" was not exactly on my mind as I puttered about, assembling good eats via practice, sense memory, and prized artifacts of the kitchen. Yet its presence hovered about. It wore like a light mantle spread across my shoulders, full of comfort and guidance. The touch was in charge of my hands, though that was in no guise very clear. My back brain was working on it all the while.

I did not grow up in the mountains of Appalachia. But my mama's mama (G-maw) and her people did. G-maw was born in West Virginia, close to western Maryland. She was of the mountains, of a holler. Her extended family, as well as my maternal grandfather, had deep roots clustered in West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. G-maw was a teenager when the Great Depression hit. That in combination with mountain life could not have been easy. It certainly was educational in that it taught her survival skills and granted a kind of wisdom that serves one well in life when making the best of what you have in hand. G-maw carried that experience to her new home in southeastern Virginia where she took up with my grandfather and began to raise a family.

Some of this was on my mind as I read that book. The language used and the descriptions of places, people, and food occasionally jolted me with the shock of the familiar. I recalled mountain topography from the occasional visits in my youth to relatives in West Virginia. The hollers, the switchback roads, the great green womb of trees hunkering by the roadside. Summer evening in a place not awash in light pollution or noise. The notion of snacking on saltines adorned with thick slices of bologna. That last one jumped from the book's pages to gob smack me, as I recognized it right away. As a youth, I ate more than my share. As an adult, the habit faded into memory. What the book did was to bring it back in full force. G-maw used to eat that stuff, and so did my family. I learned it as a tradition even though it was not taught as such.

Growing up in southeastern Virginia near the ocean is literally hundreds of miles from the mountains. Figuratively speaking, the soils of each were (and still are) two homesteads looking at one another over a river of time. With the exception of college (five years in the Blue Ridge Mountains) and a stint in the Midwest (five years near Kansas City, Missouri) all of my life has been spent in easy driving distance of the coast. My rhythms of life, speech, and eating habits all suffused with the coastal South, even when I tried for many years to downplay or hide my roots. I did not know as a young adult that to practice that sort of self-deception plants the seeds of anxiety and doubt. Seeds that will bloom later. Yes, they will. They catch up to you.

That time was a constant search. A longing I could not explain or fulfill no matter how many questions I asked. On the one hand I was pursuing the American dream mandate of job-marriage-2.5 kids-and a minivan. On the other I was losing sight of where I came from, and by extension, where I wanted to be. Eventually I was at loggerheads with myself. I lacked the insight to find the peace of mind or sense of ease in my own skin that I so desperately wanted. Anxiety, emotional numbness, and a serious digestion related health problem forced me into a corner. My search for escape routes led me smack into the middle of food, eating, and truly learning how to cook. And not just cook for survival, but to cook for some peace of mind.

G-maw passed away while I was a college student. Some years later I received the gift of some cast iron skillets that had belonged to her. I knew little about cooking well then so I had no idea of the magnitude of this gift. Those skillets followed me to my first apartment out of college, my first new house, an apartment and a house as a divorced bachelor, through changes in relationships and geography, to ultimately reside in the kitchen of my apartment not far from the Chesapeake Bay. In all those years, I learned a few things. including respect for that cast iron. The skillets were faithful and true, devoted as dogs tend to be towards those who love them. They helped keep me alive.

They spoke to me, those skillets. For years I did not understand what they were telling me because I balked at giving credence to spirits. To my mind that would have been akin to surrendering to the demons of depression, self-loathing, and melancholy that periodically seized hold of my imagination. The difference lay in the tone and quality of the voices competing for attention. What the skillets were imparting was delivered at a steady, quiet pace. Respectful and attentive, never overbearing or toxic. It was the voice of history, of my family guiding me along a path I was not fully aware of taking.

This is where cornbread stepped back in that evening just last week. I was making it in the very skillet my grandmother had used to make fried fish and hushpuppies for me and her, when I was a kid, washed down with iced tea spiked with lemon. My recent reading in that book about mountain food and people pushed to the fore memories of my time with G-maw. A lush scent of crackling crust and toasted corn filled my kitchen to trigger a thunderclap realization of my ancestry. 

I am more a child of the lowland and the sea than I am of the timberline and the holler, this is true. But the mountains are in my blood, evidenced by DNA and ingrained habits as a human being. I make cornbread in that skillet because that is what my grandmother made in it. The action made sense to me like water makes sense to a fish: you can be surrounded by something that gives you life and be oblivious to it and its inherent sacredness. You know it by its absence. To come back to it is to know comfort and connection. In the instant I flipped that cornbread out of the skillet I dove back into that matrix. I felt my grandmother's hands on mine, saw her smile from somewhere up in mountains much closer than I imagined. I was home, knowing that my heart beats in two places connected by gossamer threads of humble cast iron, well-seasoned by history and love.

---

*Victuals, by Ronni Lundy

Medicine Man (Heal Thyself)

If the saying "You are what you eat" has any certitude to it, then I am a walking antidote. A bulwark of mental insulation, wearing a flak jacket made of things that seduce my gullet. Ladies and gentlemen, in the past week I have had privilege and pleasure of playing chef to appreciative family and friends. Twice in that time I bestirred myself to arise from my semi-slothful existence and cook good things that we shared at the table. Twice I was honored with praise for my efforts, and by the ultimate compliment to any cook: those who ate wanted more.

Such words and a clean plate might give any human the notion that they could be more than amateur at the art of feeding people. Compliments and kind words have a tendency, at least in my case, to make me expansive. I get those urges to create a cookbook, write a food column (which I confess, I'd love to do) or even "can that stuff". There is a little whiff of that aggressive need, glossed with love,---which I suspect fuels more than one star chef ego in this world---to not just feed someone but to make them want to be fed by me. I find this stroking of ego to be energizing and disturbing.

It is a fire that I rapidly bank. I do this in part because I know that being a professional chef is not in the cards for my life. There is a learning curve and investment of effort that circumstances disallow at this time. Plus, I have been led astray more than once in my professional life by ignoring some blind spots in my career vision. I am diligent to avoid repeating past mistakes.

Eating should not be an act of coercion, I believe. Nor should it be method to shore up ones' flagging self-esteem by obligating others to give you praise. Hopefully, I have avoided and will continue to avoid that particular trap. I do like to cook, for myself and for the enjoyment of others, but the real reward should be be in the act itself.

This is my hope. I also confess that my enjoyment, rather, my need to cook is not altogether selfless. This was driven home today upon looking up at the clock with the realization that I had spent almost five hours straight in the kitchen. Five hours, that is, with no worries or anxieties beyond the immediacy of dealing with sharp knives, hot pans and the anticipation of "Will this be good?"

Watching my companions dish up, I knew with honed clarity this simple truth: my cooking in and of itself had been a source of sustenance far beyond the calories it would place in my belly. Chopping, measuring, mixing, stirring...playing with fire in a perfectly acceptable manner...having an idea and following the thread uninterrupted...ah, such joy! To finish the thought and then eat it is a marvelous gift, one that lifts me up from some dark, scary places.

That is, dear readers, my no-so-secret secret. I do enjoy cooking for the delight and company of others. But the deeper reality is that, some days, maybe even most days when I cook...I'm cooking to restore myself. I cook because it is good medicine, for me and for those I love.

A Brief Word on Words Not Yet Spoken

9:44 PM. It was a good day, in that I experienced some contentment. I have decided I will read, later.

A brief word, ladies and gentlemen, if I may scrawl a bit. I confess to you that I just spent the previous ten minutes or so standing in my living room with a book in my hand and another in my head. I was reading the one and thinking about the other. The decision on which one to read kept me still.

I say book in my head, but there is a physical specimen on my shelf. Each of them is a tome of natural history, written by two different authors, each of whom I greatly admire. Different styles, the two of them, one austerely spiritual---is this possible? I think it is---the other poignant, sharp and comedic. One book is about the ends of the earth and the other a travelogue on the deep Congo. I was inspired to read at least one of them by words in my head and the silences between them.

What Antarctica and Africa have to do with the things I find myself wanting to say to the people in my life, including one who may not yet be of an age to receive these freighted words, I cannot tell. I simply don't know. I will do my best to find out.

Of late I am often possessed of the urge to write of the things I hear inside. I feel the pressure, I hear the shouts and whispers, the sighs and curses that my mouth-heart want to spill. There are many things to say. Yet I have not found the courage to speak. This is a dam I have not yet determined how to break.

In heartbeats the voice seeks itself. Mine pounds inside, seeking fulfillment on the outside. But I am not ready. The stories are not ready. The blood in my veins flows like water seeking its own level while my heart rehearses the words in silence. They will find the surface, when they are ready.

I place one book on the shelf, gripping another by the spine. It fits in my hand like a the nudge of a long-lost pet, finally arriving home. I will read of the silences at the bottom of the earth, and in them, perhaps break my own.

Reveries of the Ring

Sunday, May 5th, 8:12 PM. More Tales from the Belly of the Beast.

Memories in the shape of a open loop caught me off guard there in the deli aisle. There they were, lying in their refrigerated splendor, decked out in casings colored a brilliant shade of red. I speak of ring bologna, friends, a humble cured meat that roots me firmly in my childhood.

You do know of the ring bologna, do you not? Show of hands?

I'll understand if you have not. Ring bologna is definitely an old school culinary creation that has usually---in my experience---been far overshadowed by the plethora of prepackaged, presliced lunch meats that most markets carry. I will confess that as a kid I probably ate more than my fair share of such things. Convenience and a narrow food focus saw to that particular fixation. But in many ways, that is over now.

I still like cold cuts, but I do not eat them like I did when I was a child. My tastes have changed. These days a good salad or a bowl of pot beans are just as likely to be found in my lunch bag. This is a shift that I'm sure is good for me on many levels. While I do make a pilgrimage to the deli counter now and then, I have drifted away from a lot of that stuff.

Which makes my encounter with ring bologna on this lazy Sunday afternoon all the more intriguing. I was meandering in search of queso fresco and cotija cheese---my personal frijoles de olla do not seem complete without one or the other---and not really in the mind of meat. I was pushing the cart with purpose, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw them.

I slowed for a better look, confirming my initial impression. Almost obscured by the packages of who knows what hanging above was a humble stack of bright red loops there on the shelf. I stopped to look closer; it was indeed a cluster of ring bologna. My nerd brain took over, noting that technically they were open toroids, cylindrical shapes formed by rotating a closed curve about an axis not intersecting or contained in the curve...

...I told my nerd brain to shut up. This was the grocery store, not a topology lab. I nearly walked away from the case at that point, but something made me pick up one of the rings. When I did so, a flood of memories came to me. My maternal grandmother's kitchen. A plate of neatly sliced coins of bologna laying on the crazed ceramic surface, accompanied by a stack of saltines and a generous dab of mustard. G-maw squeezing lemon into her tea while I sat munching in contentment, making little sandwiches by placing a coin between two crackers.

The memories moved forward in time, summer days when she would come to visit and bring a ring bologna with her and leave it in our fridge. Me in my hormonally induced ravenousness ransacking the same refrigerator in search of protein and calories. Later still, finding a care package waiting for me in my college dorm mail room. G-maw occasionally sent them along with crackers and some sweets, soup and the now famous ring bologna. She would pack it in dry ice to help keep it cool.

To me, those packages represented an anchor. They were something that kept me from always having to rely on the dodgy dining hall for snacks and late-night sustenance, especially when my funds for such things were slim at best. My roommates would look askance at me, cocking the eyebrow and teasing me for having gotten "baloney" in the mail. I smiled, nodded, and did not bother to explain what they missing.

The food itself, I know, would be on many nutritional "bad" lists these days. The usual suspects: sodium, nitrates, saturated fat. But back then, it was food for kings, I thought. It kept me from going hungry, it reminded me of home, and people who loved me. I figured out years later that my G-maw had probably eaten a lot of this very stuff when she was a kid, and in her younger days. She did not come from money, and things like ring bologna were relatively cheap and "rib-sticking". To her, it just made sense.

I felt a little dizzy, swaying there at the edge of the refrigerated case. All those memories crowding their way to the forefront of my mind. The package felt cool and slightly yielding in my hand. All my dietary concerns clamoring for me to put it down, convinced that it was something I did not need. I hesitated, then slowly moved to put the bologna back on the shelf. Halfway there, I stopped.

It was true that I had no critical need for the stuff. But need and want are two different creatures. I scanned the package again, vision overlaid by the ghost of my grandmother in her kitchen, talking to me of everything and nothing. Saltines and savor on my tongue, that I could almost taste in their piquancy. I turned and put the package in my cart. The diet would survive this diversion.

Maybe it is true that you can't go home again, but the heart knows that sometimes the tongue can taste it and the belly can be filled, when we dine in the house of memories.

View from a Gurney

There ain't much dignity in a backless gown and anesthesia, no siree. About the best you can say of it is that you have the blessing of unconsciousness for a spell, until one wakes up and comes back to the world. When it happened to me earlier this month, my first coherent thought was: I hope no one can see my junk.

Because naturally the first thing one should be worried about after being knocked out and "worked on" is how strangers might judge one's 'nards.

Not surprising given the amount of pain killers coursing through my system, I suppose. My modesty concerns arose from the confusion I felt over not being sure if there were blankets over my legs. I could not quite raise my head yet, and my eyes---when they opened at all---could not focus enough. I managed to perceive dimly enough that the recovery room I was in was busy, noisy and crowded.

A few minutes passed. Feeling of a sort gradually returning to my cold limbs. Thankfully not so much that I could have felt the necessary violence inflicted upon my lower right belly, but just enough that I then felt the blankets on my legs. I carried on a conversation of sorts with the care nurse responsible for overseeing my groggy self. I do not recall what we talked about but I do remember making her laugh.

Hopefully not by uncorking some relatively harmless but embarrassing personal anecdote, but what are you going to do?

More minutes passed. Awareness began to increase as I could now keep my eyes open for more than two seconds. The sounds of the place began to sink in. Beeping machines. Moans from the other recovering souls coming out of surgery. The incredible range and depth of noises produced by humans in pain and under stress was mind-boggling. It was a testament to the effectiveness of the medications administered to me that I was not bothered very much by some of what I heard.

I was not bothered much by the sight of inert bodies being wheeled in and out of the room, either. That is, until the "new guy" was brought in directly across the aisle from where I lay. The poor gent had some sort of stomach surgery. He was hooked up to more tubes and wires than I was by far, including the dreaded stomach tube. That sort of thing gives me a case of the yammering fantods to merely think about, much less see it in real life.

And there it was, big as day, and in my field of vision. I could not get up to walk away. Even my options to turn my head were limited. I did the best I could, and tried to look every where but there. It proved nearly impossible.

I kept my eyes closed a bit, but the constant noise and questions kept making them pop open. I had to answer questions from my nurse, and I could not shut out the dialogue transpiring between the stomach patient and his nurse. I tried not to look, but lawd, it was the proverbial train wreck.

I saw things that, while not earth-shattering, are for most purposes better left unseen. The poor fellow was in a lot of discomfort, and I know he wanted that tube gone, gone, gone. After seeing it in action, I wanted it gone, too. Or me out the door.

Maybe it was the pain medications, or maybe it is just that I have gained a better grip on empathy as I have gotten older, but either way I felt pity and sympathy for that patient. I watched him wince and groan while the nurses and doctors did their thing. I tried not to look at the tube and its contents as it too fulfilled its purpose. But it was then I had a revelation.

Laying on my own gurney, afloat on a raft of opiates, I felt kinship to the people around me, the sick, the damaged, and the healthy charged with their care. The difference between those in pain and those managing that pain is only a matter of fortune and degree. I set aside my discomfort and reveled in the humanity of it all.

Magpie Tales 139: Broken Bread

Midnight Snack, 1984, by Curtis Wilson Cost via Magpie Tales

Gunnar set his ruck down next to the worn alloy post holding up the gate. It didn't look much different than when he had left. Gunnar shook his head, reckoning the eighty-three years local time he had been gone was a drop in the bucket for a metal that was supposed to last for centuries. The gates, though dulled by time, were in good shape. Gunnar knew his brother Hallvard was many things, and lazy was not one of them.

"Hallvard's up, I hope," the worn soldier muttered. His eyes misted briefly, picturing Hallvard at the worn petrowood table in the kitchen. More likely than not, there was a block of fragrant gammel ost and a huge loaf of brown bread laying there, chunks missing where the hungry farmer had taken what they jokingly called the "Midnight Sun" to fill his belly. Gammel ost in this case a name, remembered across the gulf of the galaxy and a home soil left behind in the dim past. Gunnar chuckled, mouth watering at the thought of the cheese he hadn't tasted in decades. The taste of home.

His stomach lurched. Decades. Hallvard was certain to be an old man now. The clinics in the city were the best tech that had survived the Passage, but Hallvard was stubborn. Gunnar imagined his brother hadn't set foot in a clinic for a bad tooth, much less than the gene tweaks that would have kept him alive and unworn all these years. Still, the light was on, and that was a good sign. The soldier shifted his weight to his better leg, leaning down to pick up the dusty ruck. A dull gleam of circuitry limned his forearm, shining through the ballistic fabric of his tunic. It reminded him of the cost he had paid to get back, and how good that cheese would taste on a slice.

Gunnar glanced at the hologram clock hovering just inside his right eye. It was a minute after midnight. He stepped forward, pushing the gate open with barely a whisper, striding down the gravel path towards home and broken bread.

Love, Between Stations

3:58 PM, BWI airport, at the gate and longing...

Heavens above, my daughter's presence leaves me stunned. Charm, beauty and smarts: a killer combination on a hapless man such as I am.

I am traveling again. I hold station in the Mid-Atlantic, awaiting passage back to what is my new home. The tension I feel is that of a wayward moon caught between suns. Longing for orbit but riding the invisible waves of gravity, seeking rest. 

I am between stations. This body of mine caught in a temporary Lagrange point where the stasis tightens the mind. It cannot and will not last, I tell myself. Yet the heart...the heart feels different. It holds its own baffling and anxious counsel, confounding the logic and reason on which the mind lays its foundations. It is the heart, after all. 

I hugged her, the radiant vein of my heart,  not two hours ago. It was my own attempt to bend space and time, extend the moment, or perhaps knock us both into an alternate reality where it was a hug of welcome, not one of goodbye. Her composure was impressive. Mine, less so. The dam held long enough for me to buckle her into her seat, kiss her on the cheek, and tell her I love her one more time. The closing of the car door had the steely finality of a guillotine. I stood in the heat of a sweltering Baltimore summer, waving my hand and watching the car recede down the parking deck. The sun was a blinding pinwheel diffracted by liquid prisms cascading down my vision.

I returned to a station abruptly transformed into alien country. A filter sliding into place over the minds' lenses, shifting to blurred edges and strange colors. The effect was not unlike stepping from shaded bar into a bright sidewalk. Like that, only missing the rounded edges provided by the dubious graces of alcohol. That is not an escape I will allow myself. Not here. Not between stations.

What shall we call this strange sensation, this unsettled rootlessness of the heart? I'm sure the Greeks had a word for it. It troubles me that I cannot recall what that word might be. Me, a man who prides himself on knowing the best word to use to describe anything. I am at a loss. Appropriate, perhaps, for a temporary stranding here amongst seething shoals of humanity.

There are no howling wolves here, no banshee winds blowing apart the lost and anxious heart. There is only the susurrus of a thousand muted conversations cut by the wailing of infants and machine noises. It is a landscape of the modern condition in this country of abundance. I cannot claim to be on the run from anything. 

Still, this limbo between loves is desolation. 

The sky darkens, a pewter the color of thunderstorms. I hear over the loudspeakers that my flight will be delayed nearly an hour. It is to my credit that I do not shed a tear, only utter a small curse. The petty frustrations of the wayfaring life, I grant you. 

It is difficult avoiding the urge to lay down and sleep. Saying goodbye to love, however temporary, is an exhausting business. Exhaustion of a sort that can only be allayed by finding one's way home. Between stations is crowded, but home is not to be found there.

As I recall her laughter and her voice, the sting of my earlier goodbye begins to fade. It is a small ember succeeding a red-hot coal. The image of ashes and fire makes me grin. Stop being melodramatic, I berate myself, it is pain of my own creation.  I know that to be true. I temper myself to remember that, while I left love, I am returning to it.

The journey back makes me smile. I am traveling between stations, knowing I find love at each end of gravity's tether. For this I shall be grateful. It is a rare traveller indeed who knows his heart resides on both sides of the universe. Our partings are temporary. Our love is permanent.

Shelter for the Traveler

The tick of the clock overlays the bacon-frying-sizzle of wheels over wet pavement. Train horn sounding in the distance as I sit alone in the living room of my parent's house, gazing at the Saint Christopher medal hanging on a chain around my neck.  I am not Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, nor am I devout of any persuasion, so the medal seems incongruous. It is a gift from someone very close to my heart, and thereby has become something sacred in its own quiet way.  I treasure it for that, knowing this gift was given out of love.

It is late evening.  I have returned from a day at the hospital where I was helping tend to my ailing mother. My father is staying at the hospital with her overnight. She should be home tomorrow, if things continue their positive course. It is my wish, my hope, that she also receive blessings on her journey.

I have to pause a moment, listening to the clock and the train.  My right hand steals to the medal.  I run my fingers over it, the golden metal of it feeling warm and slightly slick. Closing my eyes, I hear rain falling on the roof to add its own counterpoint to the rest.

My head rests on my left hand, the medal clasped in my right. It warms to blood temperature, almost as a living thing.  I breathe, I rest, and my heart grows light and warm to know that someone watches over me on this road I am traveling.

Travelling Riverside (Un)Blues: Meditation

"God expects spiritual fruit, not religious nuts."
-Church sign, Highway 17, somewhere near Tappahannock, Virginia

Heading north on Highway 17, through the Middle Neck region of the state of my birth.  It is a gray day, fog and mist making the world seem like the inside of a back lit oyster shell.  The Wee Lass and I are on our way back to my adopted state of Maryland after a long weekend visiting with her grandparents in the southeast part of Virginia.  She was sleeping when I drove past the sign with that quote on it.  My chuckle didn't wake her up.

I was dreaming, too, but wide awake and on matters entirely different from hers.

The gray gauze that wrapped the countryside made it a day fit for dreaming.  The road was sparsely populated, and the car seemed a cocoon and not a machine.  Long stretches of nacreous light with trees fading into view like ents or spirits. The quiet in the car led me to a long meditation on blood ties, family, God and what it means.  We seemed less on the road than in space somewhere between the stars.

The road out there plays a bit of a sine wave with the Rappahannock River.  It veers away, then close, but for a while you can always tell it is there. There are subtle shifts in light and vegetation that let you know the river exists.  There is a presence of this long silver rope that has touched so many, given some a way of life, and many sustenance.  The river exists and we flow along with it.

In my mind the river and my family were merging, becoming blurry, as I glanced in the rear view at my daughter sleeping; this visit was particularly important because my blessed mother has been ailing quite a bit in the past couple of months.  There was scary episode (scary because it was life-threatening) last month, and there are complications because it happened on the heels of another serious condition which is still causing trouble.  It has been the sort of trying times that would make anyone reach out and want to have close as much love as possible, because love is what keeps us afloat, sometimes, on this river we call life.

In that gray blanket of fog and humming tires I recalled the laughter of my daughter and my mother as they played together in the living room of the home of my youth.  That laughter, and the banter, I could hear it as I was in the kitchen on Sunday making dinner for us.  That laughter was a tonic, a salve to make a sore heart a soaring heart.  It pushed back the great gray wall of melancholy that hovered just outside the limits of direct perception.  I could hear the life that was flooding back into my mother's weary voice, see the smile on her face and know that the life I helped bring into this world would not have been possible without the life that brought me into this world.

The tires hummed.  The mist swirled.  My daughter slept, her angel face pressed up against the side of the booster seat. She may not have known, maybe did not understand the vitality she brought to her grandmother.  But I did. I saw my future and my past come together in a brilliant Now, one that made my heart sing and throb to know that my family was blessed to be together, right then.

The gray sky and dripping trees passed by in a dreamy blur.  I swallowed some tears and smiled.  I had looked at my daughter and my mother, seeing joy on the faces of youth and wisdom.  The taste of bittersweet candy rolled around in my mouth. There was a lightening of the sky as I came to understand that stories begin and stories end, but we are blessed to have stories to tell.  This is a story, written in joy with the ink of Love upon our hearts. I looked out the window at the river just through the trees. I was convinced then that the world is not so gray a place as had I let myself believe, by the mighty silver river of love flowing through my heart.

Adventures in Sub-Saharan Virginia: A Wedding Story

Ah, summer.  Long days. Hit nights. Vacations. Travel. Hit nights. And hot days.  Chillaxin'.  And hot days and nights.  We all love summer, right?  What better time than to load up the car, throw the chillun in the back, and road trip out of state for family visit and a wedding!  Woot!  That is precisely what I did this past weekend.

Well, I'll tell you what would be a better time:  a road trip that doesn't start in the afternoon of one of the hottest, if not THE hottest day so far this year around these parts.  A road trip on said hot day during which the car air conditioner stops working about a half-hour into a 4-1/2 hour road trip (excluding dinner break and hopefully not getting any speeding tickets).  A road trip on which I have a nearly 7-year old daughter in the back with nothing but a Leapster to keep her occupied.

It. was. hot.  Like, hell hot.  "Hotter than the Devil's hatband" as my dad often says.  Temperatures were in the triple digits and humidity was near or at 100%.  Not to put too fine a point on it, it sucked donkeys.

I had left straight from work and in an effort to save time skipped going back home to change into shorts.  I ended up driving down the highway with my pants legs pulled all the way up to my knees, and leaning forward in my seat so I wouldn't sweat out my kidneys.  The Wee Lass usually complains about wind in her face but this time she had her window down all the way, face into the breeze blasting through the opening.  From time to time I would glance in the rear view mirror and see Her Royal Cuteness lolling around like a boneless Weeble, slumped in her booster seat with tongue hanging out.  Fortunately, I did have some water on hand, and we topped of big cups of iced tea at our dinner stop.

The drive through Virginia was, to my relief, not as bad as it could have been.  Traffic cooperated, and to her credit the Wee Lass complained almost nil.  We sang songs and looked for traffic signs.  Amazingly, we arrived at the ancestral Gumbo homestead with sanity intact, if a little soggy and wrung out.

The next day was wedding day, for my nephew (Son of Big Bro) and his fiancee.  They had planned an outdoor wedding, on the water, and the show was going to go on.  Poor things, there was no way for them to know that on their wedding day, the temperature was going to be over 100 degrees.

Did mention it was hot?  Like hell hot?

But in the end, it really wasn't that bad.  The wedding party held up well, no one fainted or threw up and the ceremony was beautiful.  My nephew is quite a handsome lad in a tux (and taller than I am!), and the bride...well...the bride was in a word, gorgeous.  Watching the two of them exchange vows, and the emotions that crossed their faces, reminded me of just how precious love is, and what we as human beings can mean to one another.  For a few minutes, the heat and the discomfort and the fatigue of travel disappeared, and we all basked in the radiance of love.

It was wonderful.  I know my Big Bro was watching from somewhere, with pride, at the joy that is his son and my nephew.  He was there, too, I think, because we carry him in our hearts.  

Later, as the newlyweds were leaving, we blew bubbles and wished them well.  Their road trip is just beginning, and it is my dearest wish that it be a long and fruitful one.

Sometimes a little adventure is what we need, to appreciate the quiet beauty of life all around us.

Because Bird is the Word

The night before Father's Day, I was winding down from a relatively busy day for a weekend.  Chores were done, belly had been filled (spicy home-made bean and linguica burritos, if you are curious) and I had the luxury of some quiet moments with no agenda.  As is often my wont, I began to follow the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.

In this case, it meant a session on the interwebs and time in on the good ol' iTunes store, from whence I purchased some music.  What music, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you:

Stone Rollin', the new album from Raphael Saadiq and...the single of "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen.

I know, I know...you're probably wondering WTH?  How does that even tie together?

Honestly, I'm not sure.  I hear things and I jot them down on scraps of paper and napkins and stuff, so I won't forget.  The end result, especially when it comes to music, is usually eclectic mental flotsam.

Anyway, Stone Rollin' is an excellent album, Saadiq has talent and skill to burn, and discussion of it is a subject for another post.  "Surfin' Bird", well...it got me to thinking about Father's Day and my Big Bro, and how much I miss him since he passed away in 2009.

When we were kids, we heard "Surfin' Bird" on the radio, and we got a lot of hilarity out of it.  This was long before Family Guy got a hold on it (which, BTW, is one of the funniest things I've witnessed on television).  Big Bro and I could both do a credible imitation of the vocals.  Admittedly, that may not be much of a stretch, but we were good at it.

Hearing it again brought back some of the life he and I shared, so long ago.  It made me a little nostalgic for the silliness we could get into, and thinking of him made me think of what he was as a son, brother and father (to my nephew).  Big Bro was an imperfect person, but he had a big heart and an translucent soul.  He tried his best, straining against his limitations, to be the best dad he could be given the circumstances.

And we loved him for that.  Still do.

Happy Father's Day, Big Bro.  You still are the word.

This Tree

We are on the road again, my daughter and I, heading back to my house after an all too short stay at the ancestral homestead.  A hazy Sunday afternoon somewhere in the Middle Peninsula region, with the Rappahannock River whispering to us from beyond the trees and fields to the east.  The trees are in full leaf now.  It is a very different scene from that of the winter, of the Februaries I wish to leave behind.

It was an occasion to celebrate life and a growing of the good green things in our souls, rather than assemble in the woods to mourn the falling of yet another mighty oak.  It was the first time in many years that I had the blessing of being among extended family for the sole purpose of being in one another's company because we could.  I saw some cousins I had not seen in too long, and met the next generation of the family.  Wee Lass was able to meet some kin she had not seen before, and I...well, I had the honor of basking in her glow, while she played in the pool with the other young ones.

I had forgotten how good that felt.  Back in the day, we used to have these gatherings all the time.  As you may have guessed, I didn't fully get how cool that was when I was right in the middle of it as a boy.

But I know now, yes, I do.  I knew it with each hug given, each kiss on the cheek and every laugh shared.  I felt in in my core as I watched the kids playing in the pool.  I live too much in my own head most of the time, which is really no true home; there in that backyard and for a few precious hours, I was home.

I had the singular gift of holding a four-month old baby, the beautiful daughter of of her equally beautiful mother (a second cousin of mine), and when that baby snuggled her face into my shoulder I felt a circuit trip somewhere in the earth.  The current I could feel flowing through my veins and into my heart.  It was still humming along when we had to leave the next day on our road trip home.

The corn and soybeans are beginning to sprout in the fields.  The crows and the hawks watch over everything, and the trees stand green and proud and harboring deer and rabbits among the undergrowth.  I could see those stands of trees across the green-gold of the planted acres, and it was then I felt another circuit close in the blood of my blood, the laughter in my ears, and the arms across my shoulders.

In the white gold sunshine of the eastern Virginia countryside, I had a revelation. I know how the tree feels to sink its roots deep into the soil from which it sprung.  I know how the tree feels when it becomes aware of the forest, and knows that it is home.

---

It is Memorial Day, and a time conducive to meditation amongst the cookouts and the sales, and the hoopla of modern American life.  I had plenty of time to think while driving home on Sunday, about what we are supposed to remember, and what we seem to actually do.  I've never been one prone to overt displays of patriotism, but neither have I totally lost sight of what this day is about.  Regardless of where we stand on the subject of the wars and aggressions America has initiated or been drawn into, it is certainly true that quite a few have given so much, including their lives, in the service of an ideal that does represent the best of our desires and intentions.  That service, in part, has made it possible for me to live the life that I do, and for me to enjoy being with my family.  For that, I am truly grateful. 

Homecoming

Old bed, new boyhood,
Worn wood, white plaster above
Dreams of youthful sun

Compass Rose

I'm writing this ahead of time, I'll be on the road later this day.  The Gumbomobile will be loaded up with the essentials and my Wee Lass and we are headed for the Gumbo ancestral lands in southeastern Virginia.  Its a trip I'm looking forward to, for some much needed R & R, and much needed face time with the family.

The compass of the heart ever points to Home.

I See Her Picture

Today I picked up some photos from the lab, three rolls of medium format color film that I had taken in the past month.  I have one roll of black and white still in process.  I can hardly wait to get them back, too.  These are pottery shards in the archaeological dig of my life.  Some of them are damaged, blurry and maybe don't tell much of anything.  But others, well, others are these glimpses of startling clarity through the mist of time.  Sometimes I hold a particularly good picture in my hands and think I am cradling a new Rosetta stone.  A stone that will allow me to translate the languages I see rather than speak.

What made these particular images significant was the relatively high number of truly good results I achieved.  By that I don't mean pure technical proficiency.  It is more an aggregate of all the things that make good photographs: light, shadow, mood, setting, subject.  In this set of rolls, I had all of those.

Particularly my family.  I took some of the best pictures I have ever taken of my parents and my daughter.  I even ended up with a pretty nifty double exposure of my nephew and his lovely fiance.  Pure accident, cool result.  I don't credit this to any brilliance in talent.  Rather, I think it was a letting go and being in the moment that allowed me to simply take the pictures rather than overthinking them.  And it worked.

The ones of my daughter in particular absolutely floored me.  Wee Lass and I went to the photo lab together to pick them up, and as usual she was excited to see them right away.  The lab is in a building that has a nice lobby with some seats, and she always likes to go sit there and leaf through the pictures.

We had a grand time of it.  She was smiling and commenting.  I was amazed and grateful.  Here's me, this oafish lad who fancies it to take pictures of stuff, and hopes his success rate is like that of a .333 hitter in baseball: you can be unsuccessful two-thirds of the time, and still be considered pretty good.

Looking at the pictures, those blue eyes and that megawatt smile...I got my grand slam.  Somehow I managed to get a snapshot of the heart of the sun.

Least of Three Bodies

La·gran·gi·an point (l-grnj-n)

n.

Astronomy - Any of five points, stable with respect to gravitational forces and in the orbital plane of two bodies, one of which is much larger than the other. A third, smaller body placed at one of these points will remain in equilibrium with respect to the other two bodies.

---

Amidst the churches and farms
a country highway stretched on forever
beneath a sky of hammered pewter
past trees of gilded dust and bronze

Car and driver weightless over distance
the tug of one gravity lessens before another,
somewhere between silver river and green rows
a heart fell into equilibrium far from both

What is this gravity called love? he sighed,
the crows had no reply, from their weathered perch,
except to flutter wings of feathered ebony,
bidding adieu to this least of three bodies

Art Thief

I sat down to write something completely different, or rather that was the plan I held from days ago.  But to paraphrase, no plan survives contact with reality. 

I like to to think that we as human beings are works of art, running the full gamut of whatever "-ism" you care to throw at us.  All of us, great and small, beautiful and maybe not so beautiful, abstract and realistic, wondering this interactive art museum we call Earth.  It's amazing and beautiful and complicated, and a lifetime may not be enough to comprehend or understand it all.  We sure can enjoy the effort of appreciation, can we not?  Maybe this is what we humans end up calling "love".

I fancied today that God is a great appreciator of art, too.  This is why every so often He/She/It steals these works of art we call our friends and family, leaving us with empty frames and memories.

In my more optimistic moments,  I picture God as one of those uber-wealthy collectors, who just has to have the beautiful, the rare, the sublime in his own personal art gallery, thus sometimes leaving the rest of the world a little bit poorer.

Be that as it may, if the analogy holds true...I hope when its my turn through the door of the heavenly gallery, I get to see all the art I've come to miss.  That kind of beauty deserves to be shared, just like love.

---

In memory of my Aunt L.

River in Our Veins

I have had much on my mind (as usual) since I wrote this post, and my hindbrain was chewing on some ideas for responses to commentors' thoughts on what I should write.  The one that has piqued my interest the most was TaraDharma's (although they all are good) and was what I had planned on writing about for this post.

The universe had other ideas.  I was redirected by small miracles and revelations, profound and terrible, beautiful and sad.  They all had me thinking about love for our families, our kith and kin.

I mentioned back on January 17th in this post that a cousin of mine was due to have a baby in the near future.  That small miracle has come to pass, as of yesterday, and mom and le bebe are doing fine.  She has a little girl, a beautiful little girl of her own.  The pictures I have seen were quite the tonic for the weary heart I have been carrying through this winter that won't seem to pass.

The terrible, sad thing I won't discuss in detail here, but it involves a personal revelation made to me that took my breath away, and granted a clear bolt of insight and illumination into understanding another human being.  The context and the content were mind boggling, and truly altered my perspective on the life I have experienced in the past few years.

In sum, here's what I was thinking, as I drove home from work tonight:  Hold your kith and kin close, don't let them slip away, and make sure they know you love them.  The blood that flows in our collective veins is a mighty river in which we may sometimes not want to swim...but flow it does, into the sea which gave us life, and love.