“Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected.”
The morning is dark, damp. It rained most of yesterday into the late night. We had thunder and lightning. It is 45°, but with the wind, it feels colder. More rain is expected this afternoon. I have no reason to leave the house. I have no reason to get dressed. It is that sort of day.
This morning I had coffee and toast. I wondered why toast is eaten mostly in the morning. Who decided that? BLT sandwiches are always toasted but not bologna sandwiches, at least not generally. Again, why? In Ghana making toast wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t imagine my morning eggs without toast. A small round wood charcoal burning sort of hibachi was where all my meals were cooked. While the eggs were frying, the bread was leaned against the side of the burner and was turned half-way so both sides would toast. You had to keep watch, but toast with eggs was worth the effort.
When I was a kid, all the holidays had rituals repeated year after year. My mother was the ritual keeper. Some probably came from her family. The rest were hers. Halloween you know about. My mother was the costume designer. She was the decorator who bought cardboard Halloween decorations for the windows. She oversaw their hanging. As Thanksgiving neared, my mother started preparing. She’d make her grocery list. It was always a long one. She’d make an apple pie, a pumpkin pie and sometimes a custard pie. She always made her own crust. Sometimes she’d make sugar cookies, turkeys. What I remember most is Thanksgiving morning. We watched the parade. We had tangerines. I think that was the only time of year we had tangerines. I liked that they were easy to peel. We had mixed nuts in their shells. Walnuts were difficult to open and sometimes the meat flew. I bought a wooden bowl with nut crackers exactly the same as the one my mother had. I fill it with mixed nuts and put it on my table every Thanksgiving. As for dinner, I’m saving that story for later in the month.
I have continued many of the rituals. They are a part of who I am. Even in Ghana I honored my mother and what she had given me. My friends and I celebrated Thanksgiving. For the Ghanaians it was just a regular Thursday. For us, it was a family day, a celebration. I made two pawpaw pies, papaya in the US. They baked in a clay beehive oven heated with wood. It was where the school bread was baked. They baked by the inside wall of the oven and took only minutes. They were my first pies ever. I made my own crust and rolled it with a beer bottle. They tasted just like apple pies. We found a turkey. They were uncommon back then in Ghana. We bought a couple of chickens to supplement the turkey. I’ll never forget after the fowls were dispatched guillotine style and put into a bin, they jumped out, sort of anyway. Chickens do run around without their heads.
I could go on and on, but I’ll leave you with the vision of the chickens. More to come!
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