I
On fried fish Friday (fry day)
Residual heat from the cast-iron skillet
while cornmeal dregs sink to the bottom
Tilapia encrusted golden
Fried and napping in a basket
Perched on paper towels
A big pot of steaming grits
The scoop & slop motion from ladle to plate
is love
you say “thanks, that’s enough”
but she doesn’t agree.
You want cheese?
No time to answer before the cheddar starts to
melt and pool
While lava streams of butter
Flow in tributaries
Emptying out along the edge of your plate.
Then come the collards.
Then comes the cornbread.
Then comes the bread pudding.
Full.
Welcomes in mouthfuls
A wash of warmth from
Soul-filling things.
II
The second weekend after I moved in, I met the couple staying in the AirBnb next door. It started off as small talk. When did I get here, where am I from, how do I like the weather. They were from Georgia, in town for a few days to go to a funeral and see a few friends. We stood on the porch while our arms swung up like windshield wipers, shooing flies and wiping sweat from our foreheads. That merciless 3pm heat. We quickly got around to food, a subject that usually means that small talk won’t stay small for long. Do you like crawfish?
The wife went into the house and came back holding a large plastic bag of bright red crustaceans. My eyes fixed on all of the claws. The scent of ocean and Cajun spices seeped through the ziplock that wasn’t fully zipped.
Here. This is from the boil we went to last night.
I hesitated. You sure?
They insisted.
The next day they delivered a second large bagful from another boil they went to. A mélange of clawed things, corn on the cob, and potatoes that, combined with the previous day’s bag, took four days to finish.
III
On one hand, it’s not about being strangers, although the effect might hit deeper. On the other, it’s not about friendship either because friendship is not a prerequisite to sharing. Of course, strangers can develop a friendship through the rich soil of exchange.
The beauty about sharing food is that, while tangible and invokes all of our senses, it nourishes the invisible. A lifeline and a connector, a conduit of love and mutual fulfillment. Through it we learn how to recognize love and how to give it. Hand to hand to mouth to heart, all lessons in filling empty things. Bowls, hands, mouths, souls. “There is more happiness in giving,” proof of a multilayered truth.
On the receiving end
we say
I don’t deserve this.
How can I repay you?
We turn transactional when thank you doesn’t feel like enough. To exchange one thing of worth for another. Whatever we exchange, it’s a heartwarming scene. In this case, an extending and reaching out in which hands serve as a meeting place between the physical and the spiritual.
