Grandmothers and Fried Plantains

My grandmother assumes her regular position at the head of the table, a spot she reserved for herself after my grandfather passed away.

As the youngest of the family, I sit in the spot right next to her. It’s a privilege that I’ve proudly carried into adulthood. The ceiling fan is running, creating a whirlwind of mucky, humid air. It’s always humid in India, but it was summertime when I visited that year, so the humidity was more like a sweat-fest. The fifth floor of the apartment building invited some cool, coastal breeze every now and then, but it was never strong enough to drive away the mugginess.

My grandmother, or mummy as I call her, opens the container of fried plantains, a treat she got while I was out earlier that day. I smile – she remembered that I loved these when I was little.

I take a bite, sip the chai, then smile. Even though I was only visiting for a couple of weeks, it didn’t take much for that muggy apartment to feel like home. Mummy knew how to make it home for me.

493422234_7cca94f8bf_oI slowly start to peel off the battered outer shell. It was sweet, crunchy and drenched in oil, and oh my gosh, did it taste like heaven. I look over to find mummy doing the same. We catch each other’s gaze and chuckle.

“I forgot that you like the outer shell as well!” I exclaim, quite amused.

Mummy doesn’t reply and continues eating. But she doesn’t bother hiding her smile.

Other than our love for fried plantains, we don’t have a lot in common.

Mummy thinks girls should know how to cook, garden, sew, brush their hair, make their beds, and walk properly. I think that women should do whatever the heck makes them happy (for me, this does not include cooking, gardening, sewing, brushing my hair, making my bed or walking like a proper lady, whatever that means). Naturally, we argued a lot over the years. Every time she would begin her lecture with “As a girl you MUST…” I would roll my eyes and suppress the urge to return my “GIRLS CAN DO WHATEVER THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE” speech.

But lately, she doesn’t lecture me. We don’t argue or bicker. We sit in silence, mostly. There are some awkward attempts at small talk, but mostly just silence.

I want to ask her to repeat the stories she used to tell me, but I cower. I’m afraid that if she tells me these stories again, that it will be the last time I will hear them. But oh, how I yearn to hear her say the words once more. I want her to tell me what she’s feeling, what she’s thinking, her hopes, her dreams, her heartaches, her delights. I wonder if she wants to hear my stories and my thoughts. Compared to what she has given me — the tales, adventures and wisdom of a life that was so fully-lived — what do I have to offer? I don’t really have much to tell or offer. And yet, I want to give her so much. Time is slipping, and I am afraid that I will never get a chance to give her something, anything.

“Do you want another one?” Mummy asks.

I shake my head and put the last piece of the outer shell in my mouth.

Mummy tears off a chunk of her outer shell and puts it on my plate.

I want to refuse and put it back onto her plate, but I don’t. Instead I offer her a smile and some unspoken sentiments.

She doesn’t acknowledge it, but I can tell that she’s received it. She has heard me.

*   *   *   *   *

281098_10151282727211057_1010424170_o“Grandmothers and Fried Plantains” is by Leah Abraham. Leah is a storyteller + writer + journalist + creative + empathizing romantic + pessimistic realist + ISFP + Enneagram type 2 + much more. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, loves the great indoors and hates to floss. Also, she is obsessed with Korean food, sticky notes and her dorky, immigrant family. Leah occasionally blogs at www.leahabraham9.wordpress.com.

The photograph of fried plantains used in this post was taken by Rahul Sadagopan.

True love travels

My take on “true love” is this: You can’t be sure it’s true until you’ve traveled together.

When Jason and I were planning our honeymoon, months before we even got on the plane, I knew the two of us made a great match.

For instance, there was no argument about what should be our top priority in deciding which country to go to. Of course it would be cuisine.

After running a variety of potential honeymoon locations through the cuisine filter, we began discussing what we might want to do with our time besides cook and eat (and, um, sleep). Our second priority, we agreed, was being in a place where we could simultaneously relax and absorb culture. We wouldn’t have to leave a resort or cruise ship to go off in search of whatever it was that might make the place “ethnic” and unique. There wouldn’t be a checklist of “must-sees” to work through—no posing for pictures by each iconic sight to prove we had indeed been there. We wanted to simply be—to do everyday things we love to do at home, like read, sit outside at cafes and talk, cook together, take walks at sunset—but in a completely different place.

With healthy doses of self-control, that type of travel experience can be had just about anywhere, but we wanted to go someplace where we wouldn’t even feel lured into a trap of tourist rushing and doing, checking train schedules, packing our bags and moving from one hotel to another in an attempt to “see it all.” Our choice would completely eliminate the possibility of people later saying, “You went to [fill in the country] and you didn’t go see [fill in the artwork, cathedral, city, castle, etc.]???”

OiaviewClearly, that narrowed our list down to a very easy choice: to honeymoon on a small Greek island.

And on that small island, we chose a town high up on the cliffs—one without a port large enough to handle passing cruise ships, or roads wide enough for tourist buses.

And in that small town, we chose to stay in a small, kitchen-equipped apartment carved right into those cliffs (locally known as “cave houses”).

And there, in and around our small cave, overlooking the Caldera and the sea, we went about our everyday lives in a completely new way.

donkeysOia (pronounced ee-ah) on the island Santorini has the perfect mix of everything and nothing: winding, narrow lanes and walks with room only for pedestrians and the donkeys that transport loads too heavy for people; local craftspeople and shops, complete with the town’s collection of sweet stray dogs napping in the sun; markets selling local yogurt, figs, wine, honey, eggs, cheese, and olives; and views of the sea and sunsets that take your breath away.

What Oia doesn’t have was just as important to our experience there. It doesn’t have room for motor vehicles of any kind beyond the town perimeter—certainly not for any loud construction vehicles (which means there are no large hotels or multi-storied buildings). It didn’t (in 2007, at least) have wireless Internet (and the cell phones we had at the time were useless there). And it doesn’t have a list of must-see sights (unless you count the sun setting over the Caldera).

It was quiet. It was gorgeous. We could be at home there, yet it was very different from home.

kitchenetteIn the mornings we drank coffee and ate farm eggs, or yogurt and figs on our porch, still in our pajamas, idly talking about what we might want to do that day, if anything.

Later, we strolled through town, trying a local restaurant for lunch when our stomachs began to grumble, followed by, perhaps, a longer walk into the countryside, or time with books, coffee and sweets on the terrace. Often we napped in the cool, dimness of our honeymoon cave.

cookingdinnerThe only rule that seemed to guide us was more like an anti-rule: an unspoken agreement that we would make things up as we went along. Sometimes a trip to the market would inspire a dinner made in our kitchenette. Other times a restaurant we had discovered on a walk earlier that day would be tempting us by evening. Dinners were long and leisurely, and each day ended the same way: with the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.

We have since taken other trips together—including some less leisurely and more scripted than our trip to Santorini. But the ease by which we plan and embark on travels together has continued to be a hallmark of the compatibility in our marriage—one that not only allows us to bond and feel refreshed by our travel experiences, but also spills over into how we travel together through life.

 

kiss

Wherever I’m With You

My parents left Pittsburgh when I was a toddler, but family lore still recalls me pointing delightedly at its blue and white bus stop signs, imploring, “Stop, bus!” Several times a year we returned, crossing the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Tubes to visit my Grandma, whose porch housed a galvanized dairy box, although the milkman had long since ceased service by then. On rainy Sundays, my brother and I chased pigeons outside Downtown’s gothic Presbyterian church. Inside we slid down inexplicably existent bowling lanes and sat for children’s sermons at the same poinsettia-laden altar where our parents married years before.

The Steel City coaxed me back for a longer stay the summer before my senior year of college. At the North Side’s Pittsburgh Project, I learned more about justice over three months in community than I had in all my years in the classroom or church. Daily navigating a mysterious tangle of neighborhoods, armed with plucky determination and a stack of MapQuest print outs, my teammates and I discovered how many Pittsburgh “roads” are merely stairwells and how true is the saying, “You can’t get there from here.” I savored my first cherry ice ball from Gus and Yia Yia’s historic cart and discovered the public radio gem that is WYEP.

pghMy official Pittsburgh homecoming occurred the following summer. One week before our wedding and freshly hired at a church mere blocks from the hospital where I was born, Jim and I arrived to scout any apartment within reach of our meager summer camp paychecks: decrepit student housing in Oakland, dingy curiosities in Polish Hill, and an alleged one-bedroom in Friendship consisting of a dark kitchenette and one tiny bathroom atop a stairwell. (The split landing was apparently where a mattress was to go.)

When we discovered a third floor walk-up in a brick Bloomfield row house, we knew our little family of two had come home to the East End at last. Boasting a sunny kitchen outfitted in fifties-era fixtures and compact appliances, Hobbit ceilings, and actual sleeping quarters, the apartment felt palatial at $325 a month. So what if it was accessible only by fire escape and lacked a bedroom door? The Shire was ours, and God bless the youth group parents who dropped off teenagers in the back alley for dinners and movie nights. Great is your reward and greater our memories: climbing out of Allegheny Cemetery that time we got locked in, ice skating and frisbee at Schenley, and cheering graduation at the Mellon Arena.

We owned one car, two bikes, and most everything we needed (excepting perhaps a washer-dryer or savings account). Jim still remembers bike messaging as his favorite job; I remember the way my breath caught when he said he’d been hit by a car and how nearly every dollar he earned seemed to end up at Kraynick’s Bike Shop. We slid down the icy fire escape taking out the trash, walked to Tram’s for pho, and biked downtown to see Wilco at the Point. I celebrated a series of birthdays along Forbes, marching against the Iraq war alongside aging hippies, anarchists, and once, a donkey.

In the Cultural District, we scored rush tickets to RENT, not far from Planned Parenthood where I got my annual exam. Neither Jim nor I dressed up for work, but when we scored free symphony tickets, you know we turned up in our finest at Heinz Hall. We once sat behind playwright August Wilson at a tiny Lawrenceville performance of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and the only other man I ever saw naked was an actor in a cordoned-off warehouse at the edge of the Strip. The audience shivered on metal bleachers in wool coats and gloves, our breath visible beneath the heat lamps, and he took a shower right there in front of us.

Cockroaches and an absentee slumlord eventually drove us further up Liberty Avenue to an apartment atop Mariani’s Pleasure Bar, where the crashing trash pick-up woke us each morning at three, and the bells at St. Joseph’s called the faithful to prayer. I couldn’t begin to add up how much money we spent on parking tickets or tiramisu from Groceria Italiano next door. From our sticky tar roof, we hosted confirmation classes and friends for hibachi-grilled chicken, and we watched fireworks, movie crews, and bocce tournaments: broke, happy, and in love with each other and our skyline.

It’s been ten years since our exodus for pastures only literally greener, but my heart still races at the sight of yellow bridges and Rick Sebak documentaries, and the memory of rush hour bike commutes along Craig Street. There’s no place like home and no home like between the Three Rivers.

*    *    *    *    *

avi feb 2015“Wherever I’m With You” was written by Suzannah Paul. Suzannah is a Pennsylvania-based religion writer on the topics of liberation theology and embodied faith. When not squeezed into a summer camp dining hall, Suzannah and her family set extra places at their farmhouse table, and she writes love letters to the broken, beautiful Church at The Smitten Word.