Oh yes, she was fast. Maybe you’ve met a girl like that. Not 74 miles an hour. Not 100 or 125. Try one hundred and forty-five miles per hour… sustained winds. Cat. 5! It was 1961. Her name, Carla and she was a bad brute of a girl and we were dead center in her path, 80 miles inland off the Gulf of Mexico. Here she came, bending steel, dry docking a whole shipping fleet, sucker punching buildings, and, pouring a swimming pool worth of water into my house; our home, Carla left us to wade through two feet of standing water. Oddly enough, we never lost power, submerged light bulbs glimmered & glowed beneath the eerie ripples. The wreckage of a Titanic on land. Dressed to kill, now a prowling Cat 4, she pushed on, having her way and abusing all, only to slow and dawn her tropical attire at the Oklahoma state line and she didn’t stop the rain dance till Canada. Dang girl! Dang!
Like all good stories, there’s the subplot. And I undoubtedly did not mention yet another story unfolding, at a slower speed, but unfortunately unfolding no less. A story book. An illustrated book. One handed down through not just a few generations, but great grandmother to grandmother— my mother’s mother, who read it to her, then my mom, to me. Follow? The Picture Story Book of Peter Pan. The illustrations, beautiful color plates. And the story, Peter, the lost boys, and Wendy and Neverland, and you know, the part about never growing up? Maybe more about that some other time.
So there ‘s our house, remember the water, two feet deep. Well, Peter Pan lay under that flood, yes, that book drowning, there in a nook, weathered and worn and submerged and as the water receded it dried, and buckled and warped, until eventually a dark black mold set in. I was 10 and thinking about girls and baseball and school grades, long since having glanced at or even thought about those lost boys. I had let it go I thought, but somehow it must have hurt just enough. Just enough to matter, for forty years later, that massively minute memory washed over me with the tidal pull of a full moon. A piece of my heart ached for Neverland and that boy, Peter
And I found him, yes I did, to my surprise there he was, on ebay! I placed my bid! My first ever attempt on that site. Bid. Lost. Lost! Oh weary mind! So sadly sorry for not bidding higher. Oh heavy of heart, yet assured by yon seller and buyer that I would most certainly find him once again. That he would be there, if only I kept looking. And yes! There he was! Peter, that lost boy, at last came home.
COMFORT FOOD: Of late, I find comfort in much, if not all, that’s raw. Salads of all kinds, all textures and flavors— lettuce with endive and fennel add avocado or beets, goat cheese, and olives? Tonight, arugula, avocado, a lemony shallot dressing and chunks of chicken. The night before, simply salmon along side leeks (slow sauté, then balsamic). I’m often drawn to pastas, every which way, maybe mushrooms, or tomatoes, you know the routine— carbs comfort & console the soul. A nice bread with the meal. Yes? And I must admit, a bowl of rustic dried beans, soaked and slow cooked, a dark green thrown in. Corn tortillas or corn bread. Always, yes always, fruit for dessert— melons couldn’t be better, with procuitto, some figs, stone fruit, perhaps with a cheese or two, or a mix of berries, with kefir, to refresh. Food will find us, guide us. We are on a journey. We are not lost ♥️