The week following my trip to Spain was spent at my new in-law’s house, tucked away high up in the Allegheny Mountains of Southwest Virginia. Lucas and I had stolen away from our apartment in Norfolk, VA, on the state’s Eastern edge, and were spending time in the mountains so he could study for an upcoming medical school exam. I was preparing to begin graduate school at Old Dominion University, and happily tagged along, always pleased with the opportunity to spend time in our small Virginia home town.
I spent the first few days of our extended stay at Lucas’ parent’s house just reveling in the freedom of the time; running mile after mile along the forested trails that surrounded the property. Careless. I probably ran thirty miles in those few days, more than I’d ever run before, pushing my muscles to their limits and wearing down the soles of my Nikes as my feet pounded the gravel and dirt roads. Going everywhere and nowhere at all.
It was a welcomed change from the salty, grime-slicked coastal air of Eastern Virginia. The sweet breezes that blow across the ridges and through the trees on those Appalachian mountain ranges are life-giving. You can be running on empty and not even realize until you’re back in it, restoration already under way. Flowers and pine, wild grasses, the wet asphalt and clays of secret back roads. Those Southern summertime breezes and the things they carry will catch you by surprise. They pour into your lungs, breathing for you.
One especially balmy afternoon, as Lucas studied anatomy and physiology back in town, I made a solo pilgrimage to one of my favorite hiking spots, a place I had loved as a teenager that I’d yet to tackle on my own.
Straddling Roanoke and Craig Counties, just west of Catawba, VA, the massive jutting of Tuscarora quartzite known as Dragon’s Tooth is a favorite mountain climb for the region’s residents as well as thousands of visitors to the Appalachian Trail each year. Jagged and sharp, the rock monolith looks like something born from a nightmare, like the fanged incisor of a larger-than-life monster. It cuts a commanding facade on the top of Cove Mountain that reads like a warning: trespass at your own risk.
Just before leaving the house I’d grabbed a pullover of Lucas’ to wear in case the winds picked up as I climbed my way to the top. “Eastern Virginia Medical School,” it read, in bold, proud-looking type. This school was the keeper of his dreams. His passion for medicine and deep desire to become a physician were carefully cultivated behind its walls, more with each passing year. As he was steered ever closer to his goals, and pointed in the exact right direction day after day, I’d watched his progress through medical school with a mixed emotional stew of both pride and jealousy.
To know where one is headed, or even just where one wants to go, is a kind of gift. We don’t all come programmed with that sense of knowing, that sense of conviction. We don’t all find it somewhere along the way, a shiny new penny on the ground. We’re expected to make these bold decisions at such early ages – declare your school! Your course of study! Your career! When I was doing my growing up, we were expected to declare the whole course of our lives, all of the twists and turns, before we’d even begun to live. Like it was just that simple.
One foot in front of the other; left-right-left. You can have all the drive in the world, but it is rendered almost meaningless, devoid of value, if left unharnessed. Ambition needs a grounding force; a tide carrying it along, a compass. This was something Lucas possesed now and I envied it greatly, though I rarely admitted it to myself. This school was his compass.
So, I tried to follow suit. Monkey see, monkey do. Though it lacked real purpose I’d made the decision to enroll in a master’s program not far from his medical school, where I would study Public Administration, assuming I could eventually find a good job in either one of the degree’s primary fields of concentration: non-profit work or government affairs.
It sounded really great; looked nice on paper. The acceptance letter had arrived within the hour of my having submitted the application materials, and if nothing else, I’d appreciated the expediency of it all and was grateful for the opportunity. Well, that was easy.
There was little wondering or waffling involved. More school was the answer, I’d concluded, just going through the motions. A new and different school and those three letters after my name – M.P.A – would certainly get me to my real life, to my grown-up career. I figured I would crank out papers and take tests and trudge my way through mandatory group projects until, eventually, the door to a bright future would just swing wide open for me. Simple as that; a solid step forward in the Game of Life.
***
The wind at the top lashed out, throwing itself around with a fierceness that burned my cheeks raw. It howled and cracked like whips do. It was so much colder than I could ever remember feeling on an early summer day in Virginia, and I was glad that I’d had the gumption to bring Lucas’ sweater. Winded from the short yet challenging run, I tugged it over my head and zipped it up to my chin as I walked the last few yards to the hike’s summit. The tooth of the dragon.
I stared down at the vast green expanse of the Catawba Valley far below. These were the borderlands of my adolescence; the framework to all of my wild dreaming and future planning. When I’d first stood there, in that same spot, I’d done so as a person who knew exactly who she was, who she wanted to be. With the sure-footedness of an innocent and a sheltered childhood tucked snugly under my belt, I’d walked the earth for my entire life in a safe harbor built on the promise of a beautiful forever, the things we tell ourselves. Everything will work out just fine.
But I’d grown up some. I was married now, living on my own with a husband who had a day-in-day-out sense of purpose. We’d laugh sometimes, about how Lucas hadn’t the faintest idea of what he wanted to “be when he grows up” as a college student, and that he had barely made it through, applying himself only as was required to graduate. Upon receiving his diploma, he booked it straight for DC where he worked odd jobs and played in a rock band with the hopes of making it big.
Until the day he changed his mind, that is. In an abrupt and almost whiplash inducing pivot, he decided to hang up the guitar and instead, try his hand at textbooks again. He moved home and studied like mad. He studied himself straight into medical school, his urgent sense of lightning-bolt determination guiding him along all the while, like a sort of magic.
The other hikers had started to leave, descending the trail in a hurried exodus; a storm seemed to be rolling in. Bits of hail danced off the ragged rock surfaces all around, stinging in their freefall.
One more breath, one more minute. I wanted to feel something as I stood up there all by myself. Proud at best, something – anything – at the very least. I should have felt a sense of accomplishment for what I had just done, climbing to the top of that mountain. But as I looked around at the handful of other hikers who were snapping photos and giving high fives as they headed back down the trail, I felt empty – rattled with an overwhelming sense of nothing at all. Ironic. Nothingness, it turns out, can fill you up, you can spill over with it. It can knock the wind right out of you.
I wasn’t sure of who I was anymore, not exactly, not all the way through, and the realization of that shook me to my core. This is how life is supposed to work, of course, the dreaded “quarter life crisis” that isn’t really a crisis at all, though it feels that way as it unfurls. This, I know now, is a sort of awakening; a scream that comes from deep within, demanding attention. If you let it – if you listen to it – this can be a revival.
For some this sort of thing happens quietly, subtly; taking years to coalesce. For others, as I experienced there in all its drama atop Dragon’s Tooth, it can be relentless in its happening, making itself known and felt in such a way as to not be ignored. Listen to yourself. I felt it then; it gets so heavy when it does its work on you. This is simply part of our becoming. I just didn’t know it yet.
One more minute. Feeling lost and aimless as the wild mountain winds, I stood there watching the summer storm clouds roll in, waiting for lightning to strike.
***
About five days after I’d returned home from my trip to Spain, I began to feel so sick with stomach pains and fever that a visit to the doctor’s office became inevitable. Not wanting to disturb Lucas and his studying, I got in the car and drove myself and my discomfiting malady to the same doctor’s office that I’d gone to as a kid. I don’t think he remembered me, Dr. Schnecker, but he acted like he did; transitioning from standard-op pleasantries right into the exam portion of things with relatively little awkwardness. The last time he’d seen me, I was twelve. I’d gone over to his house to hang out with his daughter, my classmate, and had been attacked by his Jack Russell Terrier. I wondered if he remembered that.
I thought he’d aged pretty well.
Cool as a cucumber with hands folded as if in prayer, he propped his face up with his fingertips and sighed really deeply, just one long bellowing breath that held some ominous undertones. Oh no. This seems bad.
“We’re going to need you to go home and take some samples, Lauren,” he gestured with his head to the big, see-through bags of plastic vials that sat on the desk beside him labeled, MCDUFFIE.
“We’ll need you to bring them back in a couple of days. We will run them through the lab and get a better idea of what, exactly, is plaguing you at the moment. I suspect it’s parasitic, something you picked up while dining abroad. Not the kind of souvenir one typically wants to bring back from a European vacation, eh?”
I flashed a nervous smile and thanked him as I got up to leave, stealing a stick of silver-wrapped cinnamon gum from one of the drawers, just where I’d suspected it would be.
***
Two days after my first visit to Dr. Schnecker’s office, I headed back, this time toting my carefully gathered, labeled, and packaged “specimens” along with me. I parked in the newly paved lot and made my way to the small building, sweating as the hot summer sun bounced its rays off the jet black asphalt, magnifying my already raging fever I was sure.
I got in line at the check-in window; jammed my hands in the pockets of the overalls I wore most days and commenced wishing the time away. Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry up.
As I stood waiting to sign in, the man in front of me turned around and gave me an easy smile. Oh sweet Jesus. I know this man, I thought. It was my old neighbor, Mr. Barkley, whose kids I’d babysat when I was in high school. I’d harbored an innocent crush on him, thinking that he had a very Tom Cruise in Top Gun sort of handsomeness to him, though he’d always underpaid and came home much later than promised, often visibly drunk.
So there we stood, we three. Top Gun, me, and the exceptionally conspicuous bags of my own shit that I was holding – just clutching them to my chest as if, somehow, that would make it all less visible. Why the hell are these bags clear? For the love of God. I have no idea what ramblings I splattered out in that moment in what, I’m sure, was a pitiful attempt to seem normal and un-awkward. I’ve fully blocked it out.
I scooted over to the waiting area, bags of shit in tow, and sat down in a chair as far away from anyone else as I could. Thumbing through magazines always serves as an effective means of seeming occupied, thoughtfully contemplative of the contents within. So, I grabbed the closest one and started my act of desperate perusing.
Of all things, I came across a story about Catalan cuisine and spotted a recipe for classic paella that, even in my embarrassed sickness, looked absolutely wonderful. I was immediately transported back to the streets of Spain, reliving the dining experiences I’d savored so much, just a couple of weeks before.
Taking care not to disturb the rest of the magazine, I discreetly tore out the recipe, shoving it down into the pocket of my overalls for safe keeping.
“Lauren? Dr. Schnecker will see you now.”
***
So now you know; I’ve let you in on it. Now you know precisely why I shared a recipe for paella with you here, all those years ago. One of my first recipes as a blogger. It was my matchmaker, you see? Paella; written in the stars. It drew the plans for my future as one who must tell about food, blathering my affection all over the page. I can’t not. For all of my subsequent adoration, it charted the whole course.
It’s little more than rice, some humble vegetables and a scattering of sea-born treasures. Together, they form a dish that impacted me so much, it kick-started a love of sharing food. Therein was the inkling, the clue previously unknown to me, that sharing food was a passion of mine, a deep-set craving. Not the cooking of food, I already knew I loved that. I have since I was yay high (if you could see me, you’d see that I’m holding my hand about three and a half feet above the ground). I’m talking about the sharing of it, the showing and telling. My trip to Spain, and my attempts to bottle up my delicious moments and share them, was the very beginning of this. First light.
That day, there in a light-splashed room inside a hotel in Toledo, a great love of my life walked right up to me and said, “oh, hello.” And that was it. A seed, planted. To then have encountered it again, in the unexpected and albeit uncomfortable surroundings of my childhood doctor’s office, made it seem meant to be. Do you believe in signs, too?
Tucked inside the hours and months and years that have elapsed in between that day in Spain and today, Day 1 of my second decade as a food blogger, are so many things I want to tell you, to retrieve and lay bare. Explanations. So much has happened, so many good and bad and in-between things have led us here, you and me. I’ll trip over my words if I stop and think about it all that way.
So, I’ll keep on with my telling; there really is so much to share. Lying. Cheating and stealing. Sex and drugs and rock and roll. Horror, happiness. All of it. Okay fine, there won’t be any sex – my parents read this.
You see, it took traveling away from myself for a while, and then circling all the way around and back again – trying things and hating them, trying things and loving them – and everything in between, to even begin to feel like I have something to share, something to offer you here in this space. But I think maybe I do.
You see, it was through cooking and food that I found my way back to myself. Love did that. You walk through life and it’s hard and you get lost and you think you’re going to break and then, you don’t. You find your footing somewhere along the way, and you do your growing; up and out and into your own skin. I think that’s what I want to do here; I want to show you that our great life loves, our passions, can grow in the wildest, most barren of circumstances. They can show you parts of yourself that you didn’t know were there, hidden deep down, just where you can’t see or feel them. But they’re there, waiting for their surfacing.
I think maybe I started writing this blog for both of us, Reader, so we can be in love, together.
But like I said, there’s more to it than that.
