Sister Satsuma

Pepper-wise

When you have a 12-month-old, getting out of the house might as well be a SpaceX rocket launch for all the logistics and forethought involved. If you’re up for the packing and planning while simultaneously entertaining an emotionally unregulated toddler, frantically scrambling out of the door in a disheveled heap and, well, the Trouble of It All, you’ve really got to make your outing count. For my husband, Josh, and me, the Saturday morning pre-nap field trip is usually a toss-up between our favorite park at the top of a mid-city mountain and the farmers’ market. Both have dogs and fresh air. The park has excellent evergreen trees with a playground, and the market has live music and the allure of good coffee and breakfast tamales.

Eulogy Tongue

The autumn sun threw ironhanded rays down into the pine woods where we spread her ashes. It was too hot to mourn like you’d want. The humidity kept the men from putting on Their freshly tailored jackets, Kept the “goodbyes” and “bless you’s” to a minimum, Throats filling up with unspoken eulogy like theContinue reading “Eulogy Tongue”

Some Other Spring

The truth was Katherine had pushed all the feeling out of that burnt-up heart of hers and into the kitchen. Heartaches lay next to the ramekins and muffin tins in the cabinets. Longings and affections, some faint as a whisper, some thundering howls, were nestled neatly into the blue and white porcelain pot of wooden spoons and whisks. Melancholy, in threads of smoky rose and a slate blue-black, wrapped itself dramatically along the rolling pin. Hope sunned in the quiet warmth of the oven, grief rattled next to the star anise and cinnamon in the spice cabinet. Sorrow, strength, frustration, peace. All the aches and pleasures a woman could hope to feel: they were all there quietly inhabiting the cupboards. Feelings are strange creatures like that. They often go on living their lives even when exiled. In the end though, try as we may to throw them out, they find a way to have their say.

gumbo wings

I taste and am suddenly brought into the company of women with strength in their legs who stand at the gumbo pot. I am with the gumbo-women. By now, I’ve forgotten the flight of stairs and let my hands perform the ancient work of stirring. My hands, which look like my mother’s hands.