Performing Homeplace Epiphanies

I've just returned from San Diego where I was attending a conference. Below are three journal entries I've excerpted from the homeplace performance I did at the conference. The first one is about the February ice storm, the next one is Birthday Tomatoes, and the final entry links the ice storm and the birthday tomatoes.

Februrary 4, 2008

Ice storms are not norms in southern Illinois, and
this one came in a flurry of walnut-sized snowpuffs
blanketing together catching the heavy freezing glaze that followed,
knocking down power lines, closing schools, discouraging traffic.

The world turned slate sheen and wet silver.
The fierce weight of the ice felled majestic tree limbs,
yet its intricate delicacy held each single blade of grass in frozen precision,
a snapshot of popsicled repose.
This quality of the ice reminded me of spider silk
in its simultaneous capacity for murderous strength and fragile beauty.

Peering into clarity, into this sublime stillness amidst nature’s wreckage,
amidst complexity of tragedy and beauty silencing power by collapsing lines,
I was gifted with the epiphany that I was not ready to leave Southern Illinois.

I spent a week gazing through my backyard window at silver ice
sparkling heavier than dew on morning webs in sunlight,
flashing upon the occasional red of a sheltering cardinal
nestled deep into the enchanted frosty green of a cedar
silhouetted against the backdrop sky of slate blue.

Serenity enveloped me, warmth melted tears from my heart
quenching my thirst like immersion into oceans after months of dust.
The scene outside my window nourished my core
like comfort food filling my belly.
I was home. I felt home. This was home.
This was where my life made sense and my center was smooth.
The epiphany was profound and mundane, affirming and significant.
That week, Greg planted spinach and lettuce seeds in the greenhouse,
and seeds of tomatoes in flats in the basement,
and I said if we ever want to act on our vision of tending goats,
then now is the time.

July 27, 2008

The red-ripe tomatoes from my garden
are cooking down to a juicy broth
in the cast iron skillet with the garlic.
Today is my birthday,
and I’m hungry for Lebanese food, my heart and soul food,
so I’m cooking myself a birthday treat.
I crush up the fresh spearmint I just harvested,
toss it into the skillet with black pepper and cinnamon, spin the spatula,
and the aroma of my history surrounds me.
Every significant kitchen of my childhood—
Mom's, DeeDee's, Tita's, Sitdy's—
swirl into my presence,
a signature of scented memory imprinted with the bustle of chaos and warmth.
I’m three decades and three hundred miles from those kitchens of my past,
both near and far to a source of the familiar, the familial.
Through my tongue, I’m trying to make tangibly present
the ephemeral past of food and family.

I spoon piping dishes for Greg and Raynah,
heap steaming buttery rice topped with
a simmering ladle of the tomato brew.
I’m excited to share this meal with them.
What I really want to know is if they feel it,
these flavors of my soul, these spices of my childhood,
the part of me that cannot be fully known through photos or stories,
that cannot be conveyed except through the direct sharing of this food,
through this embodied moment
when these flavors pass from my skillet to their palate.
With these flavors I am conjuring
both the ancestral and childhood homeplaces of my past,
both honoring and evoking a history through my
very specifically personalized present—
a present that is radically different from, yet significantly infused with,
the Lebanese influences of my childhood.
With these tomatoes, grown from seed and harvested by my hands;
with this meal, alchemized in my kitchen
as ghosts of my ancestors hover in the aroma,
I can begin to convey to Greg and Raynah a part of who I am.
It is like sharing a poem, but even more intense.
And so I watch their expressions from the corner of my eye,
and I see their faces open
in the way a face opens when it has tasted more than the savory:
when it has sampled the alchemy of my fully embodied history.
This is the story not historically recorded,
the story that can only be told through taste.
This is preservation of the motherline.
The sister of the mother tongue of language is the mother tongue of flavor,
the food element of sustenance,
passed palate to palate, generation to generation;
my story of cultural survival recognized in the gestalt of the senses,
shared at the homeplace of the table
planted on the soil of tongues.

Here, on my birthday, I am happy to bring these flavors
of my embodied ancestry to my kitchen table,
to the palates of Greg and Raynah.
I am comforted by the knowledge that no matter what is bad in this world,
I will always have these seasonings of my life to share.

August 27, 2008

One month past my birthday, and I realize
the tomato seeds Greg planted
during my ice-storm epiphany of homeplace
grew to bear fruit on my birthday, and those were the same tomatoes
I harvested and cooked into the Lebanese meal I shared with my family.

Past birthdays I’ve chosen to go to the ocean, its own kind of homeplace for me.
But this year for my birthday
my journey took root/route in desire
to be home with my goats and gardens and Greg and Raynah,
took root in recognition
of home as southern Illinois heat and scent of moonflower,
song of cicadas and seasoned tomatoes
harvested and held in the homeplace of my hands.