Month: November 2011

It was just after the last election, and the win was unprecedented, and unexpected. A fellow expat writer wrote to me in joyous tears, “I can now go home.” In the flush of newness that promised change, it did indeed seem possible to go home and return to a country that was familiar and known, and I watched the proceedings, and waited for the change.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

27. Facing West from California’s Shores

FACING west, from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western Sea—the circle almost circled;
For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia—from the north—from the God, the sage, and the hero,
From the south—from the flowery peninsulas, and the spice islands;
Long having wander’d since—round the earth having wander’d,
Now I face home again—very pleas’d and joyous;
(But where is what I started for, so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)

It came.

Scabs were ripped off of old wounds between race, class, and culture, and new wounds inflicted in a partisan fashion. Civil discourse disintegrated, and many gave up the pretense of tolerance and understanding in favor of rabid hostility and preemptive vituperation. As the economy tanked, desperate people with little understanding bellowed demands, and when just-add-water-make-it-better answers couldn’t be produced with sparkles and streamers, they loudly placed blame and planted accusations, destroying any hope of hearing explanation and answers.

Oh, yes. The changes we awaited. Not these.

In my quest to open the many flaps in my Advent calendar of Thanksgiving, I started with minutiae and the very personal, and then veered toward the slightly silly, and went all the way ’round the elephant in the room. I didn’t write about anything polarizing or political. I never think of myself as patriotic — but I can recognize jingoism easily enough, and avoid its easy trappings. Religion and politics are high on the list of Things We Don’t Discuss in Mixed Company. They’re… personal. The elephant in the room swishes its tail, and rubs its shoulder against a wall. The house shifts on its foundations.

It is polite to talk of other things.

Last Friday at UC Davis, the elephant left something unmistakable in the middle of the floor. And through sobs of pain and fear and rage, I silently asked my expat writer friend, How can we go home now?

Because Walt Whitman is essentially a patriotic poet – he wrote his best American epics after and referring to the Civil War – I think of today’s America from his point of view, and wonder what he would have thought, what he could have written. Would he recognize this place?

         (But where is what I started for, so long ago?
      And why is it yet unfound?)

How is it that we are so in the dark that these things seem okay? Will this ever make sense?

While I love my country, sometimes, I do not like what my county does very much.

And saying that feels very toddler-like, “I don’t like you, Mommy!” But, how else to express the disgust and the grief and the shock and the rage? I don’t like you, uncivil potty-mouths who appear in every newspaper, public meeting and on every discussion board (and in Congress, shouting) and tear down every suggestion. I don’t like you, police state, with your paranoid eyes and transportation security theater on planes, trains, and now roads. I don’t like you, hyper-criminalizing, fear-mongering bullies, who think it’s okay to ensure that essential liberties are suspended in return for the illusion of safety. I don’t like you, I don’t like you, I don’t like you.

And yet, I love my country.

It is a difficult patriotism, mine. Patriotism, by definition, should be difficult, perhaps. Unstinting agreement and zealous, unalloyed defense should be reserved for God or family, not government. Still, the passionate love of country that divides us is also the glue that binds us. A common note of culture, comprehension, and at last, of comfort. We still may not have found what we’re looking for, but home is the place you go where they have to take you in, and looking toward it, I can only be glad that it is there. No other answers but that: I am glad that it is there.

For the safe harbor of having a home to which to go, I am thankful. For the difficult, beloved refuge that is my country, one last time in my Thanksgiving Advent calendar, I am grateful.

(And thank you, guys, for hanging with me on the subject of thanks for an entire month. This was a good practice.)

---

Poetry Friday is hosted at poet Heidi Mordhorst’s juicy little universe.

If you colored in this cartoon a little, this is mi familia. Like so many others, we are beset, and throughout our entire group, many are barely keeping heads above water. Welcome to Thanksgiving, 2011. This is the reality.

Every year, the Hallmark commercials and, heck, even the grocery store commercials make a big deal out of the candlelit table, leaves strewn attractively, with well-groomed, gender-normative couples looking earnest and dewy-eyed. This is the perception we’re given of family. “We have each other,” they say, and smile into each others’ eyes.

Real families are a bit different. If there are attractively strewn leaves on the table, they don’t stay attractive for long, because someone’s sleeve drags over them, nudging them that much closer to the oddly snapping, possibly smoking tapers, or one of the Wee Wild Men comes along and takes one. Or takes two chubby fistsful of attractively strewn leaves, and a bit of the tablecloth, and someone has to – Quick! grab the plates.

Usually it’s too loud around the table, and someone is annoyed that there are the wrong type of potatoes; someone wants cornbread dressing instead of walnut bread dressing, and someone else wants the traditional canned cranberry sauce, only some gourmand freak made cranberry relish out of shaved oranges and finely shredded onions and ginger and fresh berries, and it’s not even shaped like a can, and Lord, whose nasty idea was that??? The vegetarians practically carve a line down the center of the table, and the omnivore’s dilemma this meal is wanting a taste of the menu from the other half of the buffet, and trying to figure out how to get it without raising an indignant hue and cry of, “Hey! You’ve got your own!”

Sometimes real family is like one long, loud, bickering hurricane sweeping past.

Sometimes real family annoy each other. Sometimes, real family can’t stand to lose a board game, and become wildly competitive, loud, and finger-pointy about who put down a fake word, who won canasta by half a point, or who owes the bank money in Monopoly. Sometimes real family cheats. And sigh and eye-roll about stories they’ve heard before. And mouth lines during movies, and get things thrown at them. Or make fun of the actors in romantic comedies, and get run out of the room. Or have revisionist ideas of childhood or past parenting, and accuse us of things that never happened – or refuse to remember what exactly happened, even though it was only last year.

Sometimes, real family isn’t even related by blood.

But real families, when they see each other barely keeping their heads above water, never, ever let each other drown.

No matter what.

“We have each other” is not a tepid, second place, runner-up sort of phrase. It doesn’t come strewn with attractive garland and dewy eyes. It’s messy and non-linear and sometimes snappish and spiky and sarcastic and really annoying, grumpy and in a back bedroom by itself, trying to read, or off on an all-day, twenty mile hike because, ye wormy green apples, who are all these people? But it is fierce, this love, and it does not let go. It is a love that means a bit more than something passing and timid and waffling and commercial. It’s love like a rock – okay, sometimes the rock rolls over your fingers and squashes a bit, but when it comes down to it, you are grateful that it is solid.

And for the grace of family – those of blood, and those of belonging; those of chromosome, and those of choice, I am truly thankful.

Cartoon clipped from The Philadelphia Enquirer in 2009 and passed along via email through many people.

No, I’ve not had any “work” done, and if I had, I’m not sure I’d go with the can-shaped look….

I think any of my old doctors back in the states, if they read this post, would laugh. I avoided them like the bloomin’ plague. I am the person who goes to the doctor the last possible second, the day before my prescription runs out. I am the person who uses the two week run up time to reschedule the appointment – for another two weeks away. And then another. Even here in the UK, where I can just pop by a doctor’s office without an appointment, they send me stilted form letters, and “invite me” to come and see them for a chat. I have resisted recent blandishments thus far.

Mainly because I am just fine, thank you. Mainly because Tech Boy is a paid-up member of the Home Surgery Network™ and short of needing to lop off his own head, makes do on his own. (It’s a Doctor’s kid trick.) Sometimes it is inevitable that Doctors and I should meet, what with being in ICU for eight days after a nontuberculosis mycobacterial infection spawned six months of a horrific pneumonia and infection – just a tip, kids, if you can’t walk across a parking lot without wheezing, or up a flight of stairs without stopping, and you can normally do so, stop being stupid and go to the ER, okay? – but for the most part, we exist in happily distant spheres.

Nobody likes shots, to be prodded and poked, and to have our private areas revealed, via flashlight and tongue depressor (and yes. My throat is very private, as are my ears). Nobody likes to be told to lose weight and get more exercise, to eat more fiber, to eat less salt, to get more sleep, or to lay off on high impact aerobics, because you only get one set of knees in this life, and any replacement set really never works as well. No one likes to be looked at, judged, and bossed, and so doctors get all of our muttering under our breath and rolled eyes and ignored orders… until we’re in pain or feverish or, you know, passing out every time we lie flat and our lungs fill up with fluid and we start to drown. Then, we listen (mostly) meekly, and swallow a bitter spoonful of “for your own good.” As anyone knows who hasn’t had access to them when needed: doctors and medical care are a luxury. A necessity. A privilege. Even when you have to fire them sometimes for not actually listening to you, as Mom just had to do, they are a privilege. A necessity.

My friend Beth served a clinical rotation in Tanzania as part of her medical school work. She wrote about the things she saw, the things she experienced; the parents who went without food so that their children could receive medical care, the crawling insects, the needless death. When I say the words necessity and privilege, I mean them, and I hope that my country can continue to have intelligent discourse on access to medical care, and its affordable and equal distribution to all people. I know what we could have, and I know what we hope to have… and I’m grateful for what we have.

So, for the grace of a sterile room with IV saline, a padded table loomed over by a lurid plastic skeleton; for posters of STD illustrations, pharmacy calendars, a “sharps” box, and autoclaved blankets, I am thankful – truly thankful, with no corner in my heart left dark and begrudging. It’s nice to know that the medical establishment is there, as long as I don’t have to see it up close.

How I longed for a pool when I was a kid. Oh, my goodness, all the cool people in the world had a house with a swimming pool. Even all of the books about cool kids I read had kids with pools in them. We, alas, were Not Cool. And we would never have one. Never mind, that my friend Norma (who always told me she was 5’17” and it took me years to figure out that people don’t figure height that way) let my sisters and I swim at her pool every weekend. Never mind that my Uncle Gene and Aunt Joy let us enter their backyard by the side gate, even when they weren’t home, and let us leave our suits in their pool house. Life was tragic, because I had no pool of my own.

The one girl who had a swimming pool in our eighth grade class ended up class president. Coincidence? I didn’t think so. All the people who had pools had a mob of friends, fun parents, cute bathing suits, and could do a perfect backstroke. They had all the advantages I lacked. I determined that someday, I would make up for it.

The first three places out of college that I rented I was more concerned about being able to afford, but when Tech Boy had his first tech gig out of college, we moved, and rented the most wonderful house.

Technically, it wasn’t wonderful. It was terrifying. It had white carpet. It had glass fronted gas fireplaces. It had a deck. It was built for entertaining. We really couldn’t afford it. But, we had it, because… it had a pool. Friends and family brought their friends and family. We were, for the year we were there, Party Central. It was — well, actually, kind of overwhelming. But! We had a pool.

Our next house was older and more comfortable, and we were there for five years. I had pool parties for myself and for my siblings for every summer birthday and holiday, and we were in every Spring as soon as we could be. Every Fourth of July found us grilling and waving sparklers and watching the fireworks from the front lawn (we had a house situated between two fairgrounds – it was excellent). Rainy autumn afternoons we sat in the hot tub and let the rain fall on our heads, and stayed warm. One Sunday, during a heat wave, my father took a chair into the shallow end and sat there for most of the day, reading the paper, wearing a straw hat. The picture of that is just …priceless. We all loved my pool — actually, I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason my family came over all the time, because I had a pool. I was, at last, cool. And it was good.

There are indoor pools here, and though they have cool acrobat rings and a trapeze above them (!), I generally only use them for exercise. My sloppy backstroke is … still sloppy. I’ve gotten over the need to make sure my family loves me by having them over every weekend – now that I can admit that I am an introvert, I can admit that, good grief, all those people wore me out. (What was I thinking??) I’m even over my need to be cool. (Mostly.) But, as we prepare to decamp for warmer climes, I have been finding myself dreaming again of the water.

Maybe it’s because it’s symbolic of our unconscious thoughts. Maybe it’s because underwater, I am at last graceful. Maybe it’s just because when I work out, in the water, I’m never overheated. For whatever reason, once I get into the pool, it takes some hard convincing to get me out. I feel like I am at home, in water.

In the water, I can stand on my hands, which I cannot do on dry land. In the water, the world is softer-edged and more forgiving than it is elsewhere. In the water, I discover that playtime doesn’t end when childhood does. I’m a mermaid, a fish, a naiad. In the water, all else is silenced, and I can at last hear the cadence of my heart.

So the little flap on my Thanksgiving Advent Calender is open to a window of sunlit blue. For the grace of weightlessness beneath the waves, I am truly thankful.

My young photographers have both turned twenty-one. Scary, huh?

One fine, sunny morning in college, I got lost.

I got lost on the campus of my college, that fine, sunny morning, and as I was one of the vast hordes of Freshers running around that year, maybe it didn’t seem that unusual to anyone. That it was months into the school year – nearly May – should have been a telling point, but no one noticed.

I was climbing one of those long flights of stairs and I, mid-step, was lost.

And I couldn’t breathe. And my hands were slick, and the sky wheeled in sickening loops around me. And I wanted to get away from it – from beneath it – but it was so huge suddenly, and there was nowhere to escape it. Every surface looked pitiless and hard, every building foreign, and I just knew that awful was three millimeters from happening to me. People walked by, I guess, but I was gripping onto a light post with all of my strength, and trying to stop the world from spinning out of control. And trying to breathe.

It was a profound experience, which is laminated in memory. The flight of stairs from the gym to the building below the library – some technology hub – to the three flights of stairs near the flowering cherry trees was all I could see. Going up those stairs would have put me in line of sight to the asphalt-paved road that led to the parking lot next to the English building, and my dorm. Five hundred feet, and I would have been able to see my way to safety. But, I couldn’t move that far. I slid down to the ground gripping the light post, and hyperventilated.

Eventually, I managed to get up. I was going to ask someone if they knew where I was, when suddenly, at the entrance to the library, the landscape snapped into familiarity. I was able to inflate my compressed lungs, and stop panting, straighten up, and walk stiffly – my hair and back soaked from perspiration – to my dorm.

I remember I was so ashamed. So, so mortified. And felt really, really stupid.

Sooo, I never told anyone.

I mean, would you?

It happened again. And again. And it happened at the American Library Association Annual Convention in D.C. in 2010 where I was being honored for MARE’S WAR, and I had to walk out of a room full of authors getting ready to go on and do presentations for thus Speed Dating thing. I was soaked with sweat, and trying to breathe, and thinking, “Everyone knows. Everyone here is A Cool Author who Does Stuff and Knows Stuff, and then there’s you. Everyone knows, and you are such a fraud.”

Sooo, when I read of Robison Wells, Cybil-nominated author of VARIANT, losing his day-job because of a panic attack, and being just unable to do what was required of him, I teared up immediately over his struggles. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt. It’s thin and tattered and usually rank with sweat.

Sometimes, I feel so flawed. I think, “Gah! Isn’t it enough that I’m introverted and shy? Did I have to be flat-out mental (our Ms. G‘s word), too? I don’t always have an answer for that. I’ll be honest: I don’t come off as Sunny Suzy after freaking out. It’s something I can’t control, and I really prefer to, honestly, control everything. But, I do know this: I have seen the world from the point of view of someone broken. When I am at the top of my game, and you are at the bottom of yours, I’ll know how it feels. I will understand, and be kind. I will consider the courage of Rob Wells, and when I am wrecked, I will remember, “Yes, but –” and, once the clouds of doom part, go on.

It’s a tiny gift, but one I will hold onto, and not let anyone pry from my death-gripping, sweaty hands.

For the thorn, and for the rose. For the grace of courage, and the gift of empathy, I am truly thankful.

“Daily” bread. Hah! I wish. Actually, no I don’t. I’d turn into, as my friend Eli says, “a telly tubby” if I baked fresh bread daily. We bake it weekly, or at most, biweekly. (Or, fortnightly, as people say here. Which sounds much less frequent.)

Overnight, Tech Boy sets a poolish to gently fermenting on the counter. The following morning, I stir in a quarter cup of flax seeds (or linseeds as they’re called here. Yes, you can imagine shopping was great fun at first), or oats, about six cups of flour, and leave a massive, sticky ball of sourdough to raise. An hour or so later, Tech Boy divides the ball into loaves, rounds, baguettes or pizza, and in their oiled pans/bowl/dry stone, they raise another hour, and into the oven they go.

A simple team effort, to fill the house with the glorious smell of freshly baking bread.

I often imagine being in one of those cultures which makes bread every day (including that elusive tribe of People With Bread Machines). Flat breads, tortillas, lavash — a little labor-intensive, this daily bread business, but oh, the smell. And the end result, smeared with butter and jam, pb&j, or topped with melty cheese and tart, crisp pears or rings of yellow bell pepper, onion jelly (another one of those “only in the UK” things)(it’s like chutney)and sharp regional cheese …

I have to restrain myself around fresh bread, and limit myself to no more than two (thick) slices. Somehow, when it’s hot from the oven, there’s a peculiar alchemy within the brain which insists it must all be eaten now, while it’s fresh. I ignore that part of my brain now…

I know people who don’t like bread. I know people who turn up their noses at it, baked fresh in braided coils, loaves or in baguette. But, carbohydrate calories aside, symbolically and literally, bread is the stuff of life, and the “dailiness” of the bread, which we might set aside as the stuff of boredom, or take from our table, for fear of courting bulges, is the simple food that, in varying forms, feeds the world.

Bread or roses – in a country of wealth, we can have both. For me, bread suffices for both beauty and basics. For the grace of a need supplied in a most luxurious way – with such a heady fragrance, and such a hot and toothsome mouthful, I am truly thankful.

XXXII. Our Daily Bread

~ C. S. Lewis

We need no barbarous words nor solemn spell
To raise the unknown. It lies before our feet;
There have been men who sank down into Hell
        In some suburban street,

And some there are that in their daily walks
Have met archangels fresh from sight of God,
Or watched how in their beans and cabbage-stalks
       Long files of faerie trod.

Often me too the Living voices call
In many a vulgar and habitual place,
I catch a sight of lands beyond the wall,
       I see a strange god’s face.

And some day this work will work upon me so
I shall arise and leave both friends and home
And over many lands a pilgrim go
       Through alien woods and foam,

Seeking the last steep edges of the earth
Whence I may leap into that gulf of light
Wherein, before my narrowing Self had birth,
       Part of me lived aright.

May you find the extraordinary in the ordinary today, lemon cake, where you expected merely your daily bread. More extraordinary poetry hosted at The Opposite of Indifference.

Poem by Clive Staples Lewis, from Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics London: Harcourt Brace & Company, © 1984. First published in 1919, when Lewis was twenty, a far-too-young veteran of WWI, and an agnostic.

I was in college the first time I got a cookbook.

To be fair, it was from my Mom, and that was fine, because it’s in The Rules for a mother to launch you off into the sea of life, equipped in your frail bark with All That You Will Need (that she can give you). Soo, I had that one cookbook, Healthy Homestyle Cooking, whose title suggests Mom knew a thing or two about my habits, and was trying to throw me a life jacket before it all went wrong. (Good intentions, Mom. Too bad I didn’t really pay any attention…). And then, I got college girlfriends, one of whom gave me …dishes. And then, others gave me cookbooks, because, after all, we were looking ahead in our lives, were we not? And we were going to Set Up House (kind of like Play House, only not different) and Make Homes, and we would need cookbooks, because doesn’t everyone need a cookbook?

Not actually. See, the thing is, my mother didn’t really use cookbooks. And, when she did use them, it was only the first time she made something. After that, she briefly referred to the cookbook only for ideas. She only had one for reference, when I was growing up. It was titled, THE OATS, PEAS, BEANS & BARLEY cookbook, and it was serious, big-time hippie food. Oat, peas, beans and barley, that’s about all there was in it. The cookbook was vegan and crunchy granola (there is a great granola recipe in there), and all Mom ever used, for years and years, except for the classroom collection cookbooks we got from the Room Mothers in grade school. (I never actually saw her use one of those.) When we were older, cookbooks became part of the “things to give Mom” list for Mother’s Day, and so my mother has a few more, and her old cookbook is beyond tattered and stained and falling apart.

I, on the other hand, had tons of cookbooks.

Mom’s a better cook.

(I’m pretty sure there’s some connection there, but I’m assured that causation is not necessarily proved by correlation, so I’ll leave it alone.)

I’m not a dedicated foodie – in truth, I’m actually kind of a lazy cook, and Tech Boy is the one who is always experimenting and coming up with new things. Because of this, I made a concerted effort this last move to trim down my cookbook collection. I mean, enough is enough, right? I’m not the cook, and yet, I’m responsible for a fairly heavy box come moving time! So, the cookbooks just for bread? Gone. The one for restaurants to which I’ve never been? Donated. The County Fair cookbooks given as a joke? Gone – although I sigh a little sadly that I’ll never be able to make my own funnel cake. (Eek.) What I’m left with now is what I want to have in the kitchen: great Asian food. Food cooked with fresh herbs and food from the harvest. Food for fun lunches and parties. Food commentary by Alton Brown.

And the cookbook Mom gave me. Which — shhh! — is the only one I really use.

For the books of instruction and the font of ideas which line my kitchen shelf – and which I routinely ignore in favor of the one my mother gave me – I am grateful. Hopefully this gratitude will translate into me becoming a much better cook someday… Or not.

I don’t get a lot of contact with my readers, for the simple fact that, hello, yes, I am in Scotland. (This is soon to change, but as it stands: I am here. You, mostly, are there.) There’s also the fact that young adult and teen readers aren’t as apt to get school visits from authors because by junior high, it’s all about getting your SAT stuff together, and there are tests to take, those little bubbles to fill out with No. 2 pencils, study groups, and not a lot of time for deviating from the set course. So, the contact I receive from readers is in the form of email – and I just feel so appreciative of the time people take – some parents and teachers and librarians, and some young adults – to put down on paper – theoretical paper, anyway – some words to me.

As I am not inundated with mail like, say, J.K. Rowling or Suzanne Collins must be, I answer them all. But, the letters I receive are… priceless. They light a fire in me to do better, they light the way back to sanity when I think I can’t do this, why do I bother, I am such a hack. They are warmest, brightest light, like candleshine on gold and silver.

~ from Gretchen S. ~ “…Mare’s adventures in the WAC were incredible! I am not sure how you did it–but I see the same element in the “thoughts” section of your website–you manage to convey an account of injustice and tragedy with authenticity, all the while keeping away from any tone of self-pity or bitterness, or shallow condolences. What a gift you have!”

On days when the words just will not come, when I delete more than I add, I re-read Gretchen’s note, and am reminded that at our best, we are better than we think we are, and worth of the effort we put into our work.

~ from Lin ~ …”But go, you. Wow. Your book is incredibly voiced and compelling. I feel so proud of you and I don’t even know you.”

And Lin has no idea how happy that makes me. She didn’t set out to make me happy, I don’t think. She just wrote something gracious, from her heart, which reflects on her kindness, and doubles the light of that back to me.

On the day Chris tweeted, “Reading Mare’s War – now THAT’S how you do voice,” I was beyond humbled. Chris is an author himself, and I remain – wow – honestly floored by his words.

A word is such a small thing. But, like the “sticks-and-stones” we learned about when we were kids, the opposite is also true; a small word can act as glue, and for awhile longer, hold everything together.

I am so grateful for Francesca, Jaleesa, Jonathan, Liz, Marco, Julia and all the rest. For the grace of the right word, correctly spoken at the right time, and for all the shining lights of people who write to authors and never know how much their gratitude means, I am truly thankful.

It shouldn’t have taken moving to the UK to make me thankful for vegetables, but it did.

Growing up in California’s mild temps meant taking for granted having tomatoes in February. Oh, well, no, they weren’t maybe very good tomatoes in February, but somewhere, someone was growing them, and they were there. I could have jicama twelve months of the year. (I didn’t.) Fresh green beans in December? Expensive, sure, but available from someone’s greenhouse. The winter never got too cold for something to grow, somewhere. I could pick and choose my veg and ignore what I didn’t think I’d like… which was anything that was a.) weird looking b.) weird smelling, or c.) both. That was, actually, most things. Like every other Californian, guacamole was its own food group. I ate a lot of tame salads of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and occasionally corn, peas, and carrots. An artichoke was a splurge, jicama was a hot-weather treat, and I could eat butternut squash in a soup, but that’s about as far as I went. Bell peppers and kale were a garnish. Asparagus? Puh-lease. Brussels sprouts? Not a chance. Zucchini or summer squash? Meh (although zucchini, combined with sugar and flour, was great). Eggplant?? Oh, no. Don’t bring that stuff near me.

Fast forward to a dinner two years ago, where my Uncle P., dying of cancer at the time, said to me that he regretted all the vegetables he hadn’t even tried. Uncle P. was a capital T traditionalist in the food department. He ate peas and carrots. Broccoli and cauliflower was living on the wild side. He groused if his wife put anything else in front of him — and so she grilled zucchini and roasted Brussels sprouts for the rest of the family, aaaand…. Uncle P. ate peas and carrots.

Talk about a ridiculously easy to fix regret. For my Uncle P., I determined that I would try…

Now the film goes backwards to going on five years in the UK… where the sun isn’t all that interested in ripening food, so most of it grows underground. You’d better believe that I’m grateful for every veg and leaf ‘o’ green that passes my plate. Do I like them all? Heck, no. But it’s about TRY, not LIKE. (I imagine Yoda’s voice just now: “There is no try, only do.” Yeah, well, these are veggies, bub. There’s “try it” and that’s what we’re dealing with here. I promised to try, not to like.) In a country where French fries are served with everything from pizza to curry, where cold weather and indifferent light make it all too easy to get stodgy and pudgy and never get the blood flowing, I rejoice in the three kinds of cabbage in my fridge. Once upon a time I used to think that I could only take so much cabbage. Um, no. I can take much more. And then a little on top of that. BRING IT. I have learned to tango with the stuff. I don’t like every veg experiment, but I’m more often than not pleasantly… surprised.

Cauliflower? oh, yeah, I can do that, and not just with a cheese sauce. Broccoli? Sure. Turnips, swedes, rutabagas… I’m getting there. Parsnips? They taste like licorice carrots, which is so weird that I’ve actually made them into muffins. I can now tell my Savoy from my Napa, my chard from my kale; I am a brassica professional, and the queen of the root vegetable. I eat zucchini. Regularly. As long as it’s not overcooked. Squash herbed and grilled is a gift. I can put vegetables into anything – a baked macaroni? Better with cauliflower. Pasta? Is just waiting for chunks of roasted squash, peas, carrots, and soy beans – which are tasty even outside of a Japanese restaurant. Baked potatoes? Add a few roasted beets alongside. I eat my veg like a big girl… which just gives me this ridiculous amount of pride. Eventually, I’ll get out of Remedial Adulthood 101, and on to the real thing! Maybe. Oh, who cares: the point is, once I couldn’t eat this stuff, for love nor money, and now I can. Necessity is the mother of spaghetti squash.

Traditionally we’re “thankful for our food” at Thanksgiving, but I’m thinking it’s time to be a bit more specific. Today, I am grateful for the veg I’ve come to know. The kohlrabi, which tastes like broccoli apples, and actually works out okay in a salad – in the summer, thinly sliced plums and a spicy dressing make it really tasty. The Brussels sprouts (here known only as “sprouts”), which, when roasted with herbs, are almost creamy. And don’t get me started on kale – yum – or the varieties of ways you can cook cabbage – or carrot and butternut squash, with coconut milk, in a soup…

Beets are great,
sprouts are good
thanks for the veg,
thanks for the food.

Bon Appétit.