Salmon

This is the lion that guards the entrance to my parents' home. Eleanor is obsessed with this lion, along with: dog food, our dog Stella, anything able to fit in her mouth, my car keys, her toy piano, and...biting! Yup. She's a biter. Proceed with caution.

Last night, my hands were all torn up from tangling and trailblazing through briars and thorns and privet hedge. When I came back down to the house, Janelle had two big salmon steaks marinating in the refrigerator. "Ready to eat?" We put them on the grill and talked into the evening. Stella slept in the grass and Eleanor crawled everywhere while my Ma sat with us on the porch swing. Momentarily, my Ma disappeared and returned with a leather journal & an engraved pen and said, "Here. It's a gift. Use this to journal while you're here this summer." Her eyes were soft.

There are some meals that bring a sense of familiarity and grounding during times of identity-scrambling. Salmon with rice, broccoli, and tahini is one such meal. It's a staple meal for the family atomic. I don't know how many times we've eaten that exact meal. Probably a hundred. Possibly this is because, as new parents,every day is an identity scramble. It takes time to get used to something so huge. What helps is salmon and a homebrew.

Last night's meal took me to the center of my being, a place of undulating peace and power. In Flavor Country I slapped fives with bodhisattvas and griots, then rode a culinary unicorn to the Magick Waterfall, where all things fall but are never broken and they never let the children cry. Afterwards, we watched a movie about midwifery and afterwards a guy from Athens called to ask if I wanted to write an article on midwifery. "I don't know...I'm here now. I'm not there. I gotta be where I'm at," I told Janelle, who said "Yeah, but wouldn't it be cool to have an article on midwifery written by a man?" And I said,"Yeah, but wouldn't it be cooler to have one written by a woman?" And this kind of talk went on for a few more minutes until it was time to go to bed.