The Days Before

The Days Before my last post take us out of chronological order.

I go back to the beginning, it's a very good place to start.

After purchasing my car, my amazing Honda Fit (which I am trying to stop loving so that I do not create an attachment to a hunk of metal and plastic), I headed north to visit my grandmother in Charlottesville, NC.

I had been, previous to Virginia, more careful about what I consumed. Nothing after dinner, small meals, few processed foods and exercise one or two times a day. Virginia, however, while for lovers, is also for cooks.

My grandmother greeted me with an amazing late lunch after the three hour drive, the practice test for the grand cross country trip. She made a surprising cold peach soup, black bean and rice burgers on bread with a chipotle sauce and huge slices of bright red heirloom tomatos, a slightly creamy corn salad and corn on the cob. All, minus the corn, fruit and burgers were from her garden. Grown, in the heat of an unusually dusty Virginia summer.

It felt like she had wanted me to be there for breakfast and so had cooked for two meals. Eating too much is a strange sort of punishment. Even if you only tasted everything she served, your stomach would have ached. Luckily I knew this was coming and had eaten only a peach earlier. However, dinner was still in the future.

We chatted up a storm, like two hens at tea. Sharing stories of the summer, gardening tips, recipes, travel stories and general life dramas or pleasures. I could have sat at that table for hours chatting and watching the humming birds. Is it terrible that this is one of my favorite things to do? Not eat, although that is obviously up there on the list, but rather, to share food with good people at a table? You could even take away the table and I'd still be happy, although I think my grandmother in particular would not like being denied the joy of setting the table.

After dishes we looked through photos, chatted more and then as our bottoms fell asleep we rose to prepare another meal, this time together. We had corn on the cob, or maybe that was lunch, or maybe dinner, corn was there in some form (definently as a sugar in something). Vegetable lasagna and that day's garden pickings of cold cucumber dill salad paired with a chilled white wine and followed by a Hawaiian pie made for a summer dream.

As we ate the fresh strawberries, pineapple and pecans buried in the whipped cream my Grandmother told me stories of the past. Stories of the old days, of early 20th century, were something I craved when I got near my grandma. Perfect stories, told with her friendly yet deep southern accent and dotted with opinions and the laughter that recollection always brings were better than the pie.

Basement grape wine, thunderstorms, her sleepy head tendencies as a child, poverty, great grandmother, brothers, sisters, cousins and a great deal to do with living off the land because that's how you lived.

After an equally impressive breakfast (french toast, omelettes, fruit and spinach quiches) and the collecting together of my grandma gifts (hand picked and made blackberry and strawberry jams and oregano) I set off back to Raleigh. This trip, to this today, was the worst in my Fit.

I was feeling less than fit. Dizzy, hot and well, dizzy. I stopped and purchased (yes PURCHASED in this country) bottled water thinking maybe my bottle was causing the problem, I bought an air freshner and some crackers. Doesn't fail that we always consider combinations when ill. Could it be the car smell and the sun, or maybe the smell and the bumpy road? Maybe my body was rebelling from the decade's worth of food that I had presented it? Either way, I made it back, with a little help from David Sedaris and bottled water.

Next day passed, and then I set off, leaving my mom in tears, and the dog slobbering all over everything in the car down South now, to leave my brief mark in Georgia.