Last month I returned to my mother's birth and final resting place, Tuscaloosa Alabama. I spent time with my cousins and rested in the bosom of my family. We laughed, we ate, we watched TV. We commented on the family behavior and how it demonstrated itself in what one of my cousins may call more libertarianism and I would refer to as independence. What ever you call it the tornado tore right through the geography of a lot of families.
I was taken on the 'Tornado Tour'. An event most of the town had already gotten use to was jaw dropping to me. Entire communities wiped out. Vanished. What had been damp and shady with old growth trees, perhaps more in the bayou sense of things, was now as flat and dry as the Serengeti. Then there were the comments spray painted on houses, 'too windy, we moved', 'it got drafty, had to go'. Then there were questions asked as statements, 'dog missing', and then sometimes answered, 'dog found'.
A couple of sorority and fraternity houses spent the first several weeks making massive box lunches so that people could be sure of at least one solid meal. Stores still standing opened their doors letting people take anything they needed. The grace that comes from a disaster, where people just open their arms wide and embrace whatever they can happened on a grand scale. To see the ruts in the land where the tornado ran through the ground is awesome. As in, filling one with awe, not as in a slangy sports term. Things are more cleaned up, except the poorer neighborhoods, which remain about the same as they did a month after the tornado struck.
It was totally random and could happen again. I am grateful that my family was spared, aside from a broken collar bone due to bicycling in the dark after the tornado hit. An error in judgement, not a freak of nature.
Meanwhile, I ordered a foot marker for my mother's grave and shipped a few pieces of remaining furniture up north. I ate BBQ and had banana pudding. Strangely for the first time. It was very tasty.
I grew up with the Vanilla Wafers part of it, but not the whipped cream or bananas part of it. I guess my mother preferred the cookies over the dessert. Or wanted to save the calories. Vanilla wafers was part of my home landscape along with cantaloupe with cottage cheese, bagels, herring in cream sauce and halvah. People in the south think banana pudding is a national dessert. I use to feel that way about bagels. Now bagels kind of are national. Not necessarily in quality. But you can get very good banana pudding at Magnolia bakery in NYC. I guess I had to go down south to figure that out.
Also my cousin built a chicken coop and is now a custodian to a fleet of very pretty sweet hens. They like to hang by the pool in the afternoon (see photo). And they lay about a dozen eggs a day. A dozen AMAZING eggs. Amazing in the sense of truly awesome. Grocery store eggs are another product, in the realm of American cheese. After having a simple omelette from these eggs I felt more nourished than I had in awhile. It might have been the R & R and family time too. But the eggs were really superb in that way that fresh can be.
How did I get from a tornado tour to food? We all want to feel secure, safe, comfortable. We don't know what will happen tomorrow. The news makes us anxious in general and annoyed in particular.
Eat something that tastes good and it all seems bearable. Or at least what you've eaten tastes good.
Somebody say 'Amen'.
