Lick the spoon
When the pandemic first started there was a beautiful piece going around my usual internet haunts. I thought it was by Adrienne Maree Brown, but the last 23 minutes of searching couldn’t bring it up.
And then I found it. “Wash Your Hands” by Dori Midnight.
One part of one line sticks in my brain. Wash your hands…
“Like this water is poured from a jug your best friend just carried for three miles from the spring they had to climb a mountain to reach.“
Last week I reached for my best friend after two pandemic-stricken years apart and she was here, in the flesh. Gah, that embrace; the grief, the joy, the fear and the peace.
And she brought jam, jam my best friend and her family made from fruit they picked, prepared, preserved, and packed.
Two jars all the way from Seattle, one strawberry and the other blackberry. Each hand labeled. Each the product of a determined woman reskilled and a growing family digging in. Both a gift from my best friend.
Now just days after they’ve gone, we’ve finished the bounty. Music rang from the jars as we reached for every bit, silverware on glass sounding our percussive gratitude and delight.
We licked the spoons!
What if all food was like this? What if we counted every bite as if it came from hands we love? As if it took a beloved’s precious time and careful attention? As if it bore the specific marks of her place and the particular flavor of her culture? As if at the touch you could sense joy in the making and triumph in the sharing?
What if all food was like this? Recognized, received, revered as the grace that it is.
All food comes from friends. Every nourishment of body and mind is created by neighbor, human and otherwise. Daily bread grows from soil dreamed by God’s own soul.
Food is grace, freely given at great cost.
(Grace — miracle! — at its beginning. What travesty when it doesn’t end that way.)
Wash your hands like Dori Midnight and eat supper like your best friend carried every dish to the table.
Lick the spoon!