A New Tuesday Tradition

Each Tuesday, this blog features the work of guest writers. During the month of April, the contributors invite us to consider a collective point of view. Though the landscapes differ, the feelings conveyed address a universal longing—hunger.
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We are mathematicians, monitoring the daily data and tracing the upward slope of the line graph. Tracking the steady rise, we look for the sharp uptick and predict the surge. Flatten the curve, we say from inside our homes, using our country’s new vernacular.

We miss the curve of bodies, hungry for moments where we mumble “excuse me.” Perhaps after brushing up against a woman’s dark wool coat while waiting in line, anticipating the first satisfying crunch of a toasted bagel. Cradled by our plush movie theater seats, sharing the narrow armrest with dads balancing popcorn and soda for their kids. Maneuvering the doorway, shoulder-to-shoulder with slouching teenagers, scanning our favorite diner for friends already seated at tables with steaming coffee in white mugs.

The longer we wait, the stronger our cravings. Like dieters with rumbling round bellies on a thirty day cleanse, dreaming of carbs—thick slices of hearty bread slathered in real butter, waffles heavy with syrup, and cakes covered with shiny ganache.

We plan our human contact binge: abandoning our online dinners, permanently closing our remote waiting rooms, and instead, listening for our doorbells. Our hearts quicken as our feet carry us through the hall and down the wooden steps. We click the brass lock to the right, turn the jiggling knob, and pull the heavy door open.

Without hesitating, we accept the bottles of red wine, warm desserts smelling of chocolate and cinnamon, and sink deeply into an embrace.

_____

Judy McClure is a writer and an educator living in Boston MA.

We are white adults cooking for brown children—our own kids, other people’s kids, most of them born in Latin America, adopted by American families.

We are gay, straight, old, young, thin, plump, male, female, Christian, Jew, professional, retired. We are less than a dozen—the volunteer kitchen crew.

We prepare corn and bean salad, Cuban sandwiches, Guatemalan rice, Brazilian black bean stew, Peruvian chicken with green beans and potatoes, caramel flan, tres leches cake, Honduran banana bread, Oaxacan chocolate cookies.

For one week, we give them a taste of their birthright. Everyone is expected to try the food. We don’t have any chicken nuggets and French fries, grilled cheese or buttered noodles, but Americanized taco Tuesday is their favorite.

We put on aprons, line up along the stainless-steel counter tops, pull out butcher knives and over sized white plastic cutting boards. “How many onions today? Sliced or chopped? How about peppers? Are we making rice?” Of course we are making rice. Every day we make rice—fried first in some oil and sautéed onion, then boiled. Sometimes we add other vegetables—corn, peas, sweet potatoes.

We dice bags of onions and bunches of cilantro. We plate dozens of homemade cookies. We stack tortillas and fill serving bowls with salsa. We sweat in the sweltering kitchen as we stir extra-large stock pots of chicken stew on the commercial range and later as we wash those same pots in deep stainless sinks. While we cook, kids run down the hallway. They peek their heads into the cafeteria-style walk-up window counter and yell: What’s for lunch today? Hi Grandma! Can I get some water? Is my mom in there?

This would have been our ninth year at Mi Pueblo Culture Camp—nine years making the trip from southwestern Pennsylvania to Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where kids with ebony hair and coffee-colored skin take over the Embassy Suites Hotel and Forest Hills Presbyterian Church, nine years since the youngest of my four kids decided that this camp would be her tether between her birthplace, Guatemala, and her adoptive home in the United States.

This one-week camp—six nights, approximately 132 hours that we spend with 200 other people who look like us (white parents, Latino kids)—is like an annual vaccination against cultural identity loss.

This year, we will be left hungry.

_____

Beth Casteel is a writer, organist, community volunteer, mom and grandma who lives in southwestern Pennsylvania with her husband.

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