Back Home

There is a song by John Denver that rises in memory in this predawn light. I am back from a 10 day European vacation and the time zone switch up has me wide awake at 4:00am ET. As the house slumbers and the pets wonder at my industry in the dark, the quiet repose is filled with memories and images of a wonderful time spent with two of my siblings. The soundtrack this morning is a song from my teens:

… Hey, it's good to be back home again, you know it is,

Sometimes this old farm feels like a long-lost friend

Hey, it's good to be back home again

I said, hey, it's good to be back home again..

I missed the discipline of coming to this page for the past two Mondays. My days were packed with touring, and learning, and cooking, and exploring. I also left my laptop at home and there is no way my hunt and peck fingers on the phone would have worked to sort out my thoughts and let them flow into words. Most of my process the past two weeks was captured by photos. Now that I am back home again, the process of mining the images and experiences and articulating them into story begins. Here is the first fruit.

My younger sister and brother and I went to the food basket of Italy. We participated in a cooking school. https://letseattheworld.com/course/lets-eat-parma-tour-culinary-holiday-italy/ We went to the Emilia-Romagna region. It was such a gift to share this experience with my foodie siblings. We ate, we cooked, we laughed, we loved. Out loud. Often. Unabashedly. The Italians know how to do this. An Italian dinner table is the centre of the world, the centre of the family, the centre of abundance. Whether the meal is a full course extravaganza or an antipasto, breaking bread and sipping wine together is the love that binds. Ten days with two of my siblings underscored this. We do not have a drop of Italian blood in our lineage, but perhaps this is what all indigenous people know and the Italians have not forgotten it, communion is the coming to union over bread and wine. Perhaps that is why one of the most profound rituals given us by religion reenacts this. Do this in remembrance of me…

The world is large. The family of man diverse. The reasons to divide us extensive. Yet, when the wine is poured, when the glass is raised, when the bread is broken, when the hand that passes the plate is brushed, perhaps there is more that unites than divides. What if we remembered this? Remembered this in the full sense of the word - returned this to our members - our bodies. What if we stopped eating in a fast food rush or in a pre-packaged pittance? What if every meal were a gathering of the best ingredients, the careful preparation deserving of the bounty offered, and the table laid with gratitude? What if those whom we call to the table were called to nourish the deepest and hungriest parts and most neglected parts of us? Nourish us with stories. Nourish us with memories. Nourish us with longings. Nourish us with laughter. Nourish us with love. Ah, but what a meal that would be!

At the most recent funeral of my sister-in-law, my husband told a story of his Great Uncle. Told us all how until the last person who knew us and our stories has died, we live. We live in the stories told around the table. How so long as we gather to tell the stories of those we love, there is no such thing as death. Rumi poetically reminds us, “Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” What if eating were the same? Do we eat only with our eyes? Do we eat with our hearts and our souls? Do we take the time to remember?

On the plane ride home I watched the movie Little Women. The movies is an adequate adaptation of the classic Little Women, a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes, in 1868 and 1869. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. It seemed a suitable bookend to my grand European adventure. It spoke of sibling love in the face of adversity, rivalry, sickness, even death. It underscored how those first dinner tables of childhood continue to live in the heart and reenact and recreate those first communions. Like the March sisters, ours was an austere childhood. Perhaps more-so. Today, we marvel at our coming together as adults on this European adventure and partaking of such abundance. We recognize that although the soup pot may have been scarce in our early shared childhood, the love was ever-deep and the chalice of laughter overflowing.

I said often on this trip that we were making or maybe even remaking core memories. Seeing my brother rock the risotto, or my sister rule the ricotta, uncorking another bottle of wine in a street pizzeria, laughing together until our sides hurt, weeping unabashedly over the love we share, was by far, the best meal served. I was well nourished. And my prayer is this, back home, at the dinner tables on this side of the pond, we will continue to break bread and raise our glasses to love, for as long as it lasts. For as long as it lasts. “Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”