Maman’s Cooking
When Maman – that’s French for Mom – cooks,
you best stay out her way.
By the time I wake on Saturday mornings,
the smells slipping through the
space under the door
are a delightfully confusing mix of
roasting garlic and
Vermont maple syrup.
She’s up at the crack of 9am to begin that evening’s meal
just as dad finishes breakfast.
By the time I reveal myself,
she is two countertops-deep in
the dish of the day.
Clanging pots and pans,
she doesn’t care –
if she’s up,
so, too,
should the world
be.
From the sunporch
comes the banging of drums and African dialects.
Music from
Senegal,
Ghana,
la Cote D’Ivoire –
in this, Maman does not discriminate.
And so we have Saturday morning:
sound waves and scents
wafting and weaving
together in
sweetly-savored harmony.
But now
when memories like these pull me back home,
I can do nothing but sit and stare –
knowing that full meals of this
will end in misery.
Like dessert on a too-full stomach,
Maman’s cooking is too rich,
too heavy.
Bogging down my foggy mind.
No,
rabbit food will have to do.
Sometimes I fail, and I indulge.
Feeling, in those 20 minutes
before my new plateau derails,
that everything is back to normal.
And I am just home
on a Saturday morning…
My friends, my family, my community – they all know me as the confident, put-together girl who bounces from one extracurricular to the next with apparent ease. This show is my way of taking the mask off, even if just for an hour. This show is me admitting that sometimes I’m scared out of my mind, that sometimes I’m weak, that sometimes I cancel plans to go home and cry on my dorm room floor. The state of my head is my first thought in the morning, and most often the determinant of my bed time. I feel trapped by the things I have to do, or the food I have to eat, or the events I have to miss just to keep the muscle tension from getting worse than it is to start. In the show, I reference the exact number of days I’ve been dealing with the symptoms of my third concussion. When I was writing, that number was in the 300s. A week ago, that number doubled.
But I am a happier person than I was at 300, and miles above where I was at 0. I found my way back to theater, and know wholeheartedly that it is what I want to pursue for the rest of my life. There is no better feeling than telling stories night after night that matter, that change lives. If my show makes just one more person think twice before making assumptions, I’ll be happy. I know this is what I am called to do – finding the silver linings, inspiring compassion, and making the invisible visible.