On the Feast of the Epiphany, 2017

I sat down under the food court canopy

at the Big Box store

and paused before eating

the Big Box hotdog

which everyone agrees is the best of all hotdogs.

I paused to ask that it would be blessed to my body,

blessed and not cursed.

I paused to recall the Day of Diagnosis,

to think through once again the fat portfolio

of foods and ingredients I must no longer ingest,

to recite to myself the litany of

common, ordinary, everyday, ingredients

in all their varied and marvelous, delicious, featured or hidden forms

that my body now reacts to as if they are poison.

I paused to guesstimate how many

of my allergens, my demons,

might be in this Big Box hotdog.

I paused to calculate the risk.

I paused to think if there had been other recent

times when I had crossed the line

for I am allowed some small indulgences

once in awhile,

if I do not eat or drink too much,

if I first take the medicine that dulls the reaction,

if I use it sparingly,

only once in awhile

on a special occasion,

such as a Feast Day.

I was prepared.

I had not indulged in other forbidden fruit…

that I could recall, not to my awareness.

I had taken the medicine.

I was prepared.

And so was the hotdog:

one stripe of deli mustard, one stripe of ketchup,

a generous spill of perfectly cubed sweet onion,

warm and waiting in my hands,

an elegantly beautiful and aromatic still life.

The sausage stretched

beyond the snug embrace of its bun

and as the skin snapped

in the pressure of that first small bite

and flavors washed across my tongue

my eyes were opened

and I could taste and see the goodness

and in the goodness was remembrance.

I remembered my grandfather’s wheat fields in Kansas.

I remembered driving all night through the desert,

to get there in time to help with harvest.

I remembered wondering if the bread

in the sandwiches my mom packed in my lunch for school

maybe, just maybe, had some small taste of wheat from our farm.

I remembered when the corral by the barn was turned into a turkey pen.

I remembered the multitude of those fearsome beasts

—have you seen them up close when you’re only 4?—

milling about in angry close quarters

and me being sternly but unnecessarily warned

not to get too close.

I remember thinking my grandfather,

who I knew as a quiet and gentle man,

must also have a fearsome side

because those turkeys would give him

a wide circle of respect when he waded into their midst.

And I remembered thinking at the next Thanksgiving

as Mom put our turkey in the oven,

“I hope this is that big nasty gray one that followed me along the fence.”

And I remembered all the early morning milking

on my other grandfather’s dairy farm in Arkansas,

in the years before he and my uncle switched to beef cattle.

I remembered them hooking up the machines in the pre-dawn cold

to the cows that would take them

and milking the others by hand.

I remembered churning butter on the porch

from the cream we had skimmed that morning,

then later picking fresh sweet corn, tomatoes, okra and string beans.

I remembered feeling rooted to the land because everything on the table

came from the fields and garden around us.

And mindful of the flavors in my mouth I remembered other sacred meals.

I remembered eating an almost inedible chicken in the jungle in Colombia,

barely sheltered from the rain in a poor couple’s lean-to.

I remembered finding the will to be honestly grateful

for this god-awful chicken because to them it was the richest

gift of gratitude they could bestow. And I remembered

feeling so unworthy of that gratitude

because we had given them so little.

Some vitamins. Some antibiotics. A few sutures. Some sulfa powder.

A prayer. A little hope.

But the wound in the man’s leg had healed and he could work again.

So we were invited to share in a meal of their one and only chicken.

I remembered eating delicious, mysterious, robust greens in Tanzania,

greens cooked in oil, with a side of ubiquitous peanut butter and some bits of meat.

I remembered how the women of the clinic and the village

had worked for hours to prepare the meal,

how it was delicious and filling,

how a little went a long way.

I remembered how it seemed

both mysteriously wonderful and not mysterious in the least

that the boisterous crowd of us all fit around one small picnic table

and the whole night was lit by lanterns, starlight and laughter.

And I remembered sharing tortillas and rice and beans

with migrants in Tijuana

as they told me about the hazards of a life lived on two sides of the border,

of how hard it is to hold family together when your lives

are laid across borders, of how hard it is

to work and pay the bills when the work is on one side

and the family is on the other,

of how easy it is to end up on the wrong side because of a lapse in paperwork.

I remembered my soul being fed by their sadness and their tenacity

as we shared tortillas and beans and rice.

And I remembered, also in Tijuana,

my friend the surfer-priest pushing a bowl of mariscos soup away from him

because he saw a baby shark’s fin in it, saying “I made a deal with sharks.

I don’t eat them and they don’t eat me.”

And I remembered barbecued ribs shared with a brother

as our motorcycles cooled in the shade of giant redwoods.

I remembered the brewpub owner/entrepreneur

who gave us those ribs the night before and told us

to save themfor the redwoods, the same generous man

who took us into his home for the night

and treated us at his brewpub to the best jambalaya we had ever had,

who, next morning, set us on the road

with a breakfast of smoked salmon and kale smoothies,

who did all this so easily and casually

even though he didn’t know a thing about us

except that we were friends of his friend.

And I remembered

the overpriced New York airport hamburger split three ways in 1974,

and Cervelle au Beurre Noir in Paris,

and a hundred nights of gourmet meals in Boston,

and freeze-dried meals beside high Sierra lakes,

and Mexican food on the way to Death Valley,

and my Aunt Roberta’s fried chicken and fried okra,

and my Mom’s lutefisk and potatis korv at Christmas,

and my Dad’s prime rib and steak and lobster.

On the Feast of the Epiphany

Under the food court canopy of the Big Box store

I tasted and I saw

and there was remembrance

of flavors, and places, and persons.

I tasted and I saw the goodness.

I saw that the plastic table under the food court canopy

where I was mindful of each slow bite of my Big Box Hotdog,

this table anchored to its polished concrete floor

was sitting on the same earth as every table

or carpet or blanket or tent floor or towel or spot of ground,

where I have ever been fed.

I saw that my life has been

one continuous communion

at one great and continuous table

where the foods have been a memorable delight

whose flavors are still fresh on my tongue,

but the true sustenance was in the companions.

O taste and see. And remember.