Dirt Under My Fingernails

November - June = 7 months since I've written. That's a sign that I've been busy and certainly not bored!

This year has been a very different year from last year. Last year I chomped at the bit, hating having been uprooted from the cool, comfortable black dirt soil of my lifelong home and transplanted into the foreign, hot, humid, red clay soil of the south. My roots couldn't move, couldn't find water, couldn't breathe. The harder I struggled, the harder it became. When I finally stopped fighting and relaxed, I started to understand how to operate in this new environment.

Now I've come up for my second season in this garden and I'm seeing all kinds of beauty that was lost on me the first time around. It's been good for me, I just didn't know it at the time.

I've made friends. I've grown. I've laughed. I've loved. My roots have found water.

The Draw

Do we ever question what holds the eye
of the pigeon homeward bound
when he could so easily nest in any
convenient tree?
Yet, by some inward law his heart is fixed and sound,
and never will his wings find rest
until he's chosen the best,
until he reaches his goal, his destiny.

Or do we still stop and wonder why a compass
is always faithfully drawn
to true north? It always moves
with unquestioned consistency.
It matters not the time or season, neither night nor dawn;
but by some unwritten law it "knows",
no matter how the winds may blow,
to its only rest it turns, reliably.

But still I have to ponder why
there exists in me such law
that continues to gravitate northward,
ever homeward, with such certainty.
Yes, I've rested in others, but even then so strong the draw;
and nothing seems to still
the magnet-like pull I feel
to my one sole rest, my home in you.

-Unknown


(I came across this poem in B.'s grandmother's old recipe file, of all places, in her kitchen. It was originally written to a girl, but I left her name off here since it made me think of home!)

Cooking Up an Epiphany

The other day I found an Asian grocery here in Huntsville that's a lot like Minneapolis' United Noodle was before it expanded. I can't even describe the feeling it gave me, but after 6 months in a town with nothing but Walmart's "ethnic foods aisle," I was as giddy as a little kid at Christmas. B. was laughing at me as I ran around giggling and filling the basket with treasures like curry pastes and chili-garlic sauce and nori and some big soup bowls and matching ceramic spoons like you get at restaurants. (Hey, all our stuff is still in storage in Minneapolis, and there are no large bowls here!) On the way home I figured that the real reason for my excitement had more to do with the fact that finding more similarities to Minneapolis made Huntsville feel more like "home." After being more homesick than ever in my life, it was a good feeling.

Now that I'm all set up to crank out fine Asian food, however, I had a hankering for something different tonight, something kinda Greek. I had a cute little eggplant that I picked up at the farmers' market that fit into the palm of my hand. I sliced it into thick rounds and drizzled it with olive oil, pepper and sea salt, and roasted it in the little toaster oven, then flipped them over, sprinkled some fresh parmesan and browned that for a bit. I had a couple of avocadoes that I'd been saving for guac, but as I pulled out the yogurt and cumin I started thinking a tzatziki might go better with the eggplant. I hopped online and found this recipe for Avocado Tzatziki - the best of both worlds! Except I used more yogurt and mint and added some cumin. Yum. B. (who made himself some ramen noodles in one of the new bowls instead) is going to kill me for eating garlic again.

But I had a sort of epiphany as I chopped fresh mint for the dip. I had mixed it up per the recipe and decided I wanted more mint in the mix. So I was pinching these cute little baby leaves off the stalk and wondering if they felt sad to leave their little perch and go off into the unknown (yeah, I tend to personify things quite a bit!). Then I thought, "but it's for such a good cause! They're going into this fabulous mix of flavors and they're what makes tzatziki so wonderful!" I thought of the verse about how the clay doesn't tell the potter what it wants to be made into, but the potter calls that shot. The mint is at my mercy to do something worthwhile with it. And that's why I am here in Huntsville, Alabama in the mix of people and places and things that I'm in. God sees the bigger picture. I'm just going with the flow, letting the flavors meld and we'll see how it all turns out!

Dinner was even tastier than I thought it would be. I'll make it again with some cous cous and maybe a dessert. I was trying to think what would go well with the strong flavors and thought something mild, but wasn't sure what. Then I had the last swig of my honey tea - mildly sweet and - ding! - that was it. Baklava. But of course.

Roots

I've had a few conversations with an Australian friend who lives in Minnesota about coming from one country and living in another, how you often feel like you're not completely one or the other, but some kind of 'hybrid model' in a perpetual state of compromise and of longing for home. (Come to think of it, I have several girlfriends from other countries who married Minnesota boys and migrated there. Hmm, what is it about Minnesota boys? I guess I just considered myself one of them (the girlfriends, that is!) until B.'s Alabama roots came calling. I mean we'd always talked about someday retiring and rocking on the front porch of an old farmhouse down in south Alabam...but I kind of thought of it more as a package deal, something filed away under Future Chapters of Life.)

I've been talking to a lot of people on the phone lately, since I've been filling in at my in-laws' church office while their usual receptionist had surgery. It's been a lot of fun, but every now and then, someone will stop talking and then ask, "Well, now honey, where are you from?" And I'll tell them. And they'll say, "Well, I could tell you weren't from HERE!"

Then just the other night I called a business in Canada about a tax form I was missing (it's in storage in Minneapolis, whoops) and after we'd talked a while, I gave the girl the address in Alabama to mail the new copy to. She said the same thing the southerners said: "Aha, now it makes sense. I could tell you weren't from around HERE!"

My Aussie friend and I used to talk about how much more keenly aware all this made us of the fact that our home, our citizenship, is in heaven and not on earth. It's always a good reminder. I think some people never have the opportunity to fully appreciate that concept.