I really hope God still lets us get hungry Up There, not starving, but that good kind of hungry, like when I was a kid, working or playing, just burning calories like a tornado in blue jeans, and you can smell cooking in the air, and it\u2019ll be ready in 15 minutes, and no, you can\u2019t have a snack because it will ruin your appetite.<\/p>\n
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For a kid who once lived on Vienna Sausage, butter-on-bread, and Cheerios, I\u2019ve had some good meals.\u00a0 I\u2019m no gourmand or anything, but I have tasted a steak grilled out in the piney woods of Texas that made all the restaurant steaks I\u2019ve ever eaten bow before it. I\u2019ve had a soup so good that instead of ordering an entree I just ordered a second round of soup. The best gumbo I ever tasted was in Florida, I kid you not. I\u2019ve had a seven dollar hamburger that tasted like a 100 dollar hamburger. I\u2019ve eaten fancy foods that I couldn\u2019t pronounce that were so good I can\u2019t forget them.<\/p>\n
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You know where I\u2019m going, so let\u2019s get it said, the first meal I want in heaven is rice \u2018n gravy.<\/p>\n
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Let me go further: I\u2019m not talking Uncle Ben\u2019s and some shake-it-out packet of mystery powder; I\u2019m not talking my Mom\u2019s rice \u2018n gravy; nor my Aunt\u2019s; and I\u2019m sure not talking about the rice \u2018n gravy the lunchroom ladies whipped up at school (sorry to bring that up, really am).<\/p>\n
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I want my grandmother\u2019s rice \u2018n gravy.<\/p>\n
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Is there some organized reunion in heaven? Are they there waiting for you \u2014 your parents, grandparents, siblings, friends \u2014 like in heaven\u2019s arrival terminal? If so, when I reach down to hug my grandmother and she pecks me on the cheek, it\u2019d be just-ate-up-with-eternal-perfection if she whispered to me, \u201cI knew you were coming; let me fix you a plate.\u201d<\/p>\n
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My grandmother bought sugar and flour and salt, but she didn\u2019t buy rice.\u00a0 It\u2019s homegrown rice, like in that-field-across-from-her-house homegrown.\u00a0 Rice grown in our dirt, irrigated with our water from way down under our dirt, pumped up thick and clean and cold and coming out of that big pipe as shiny as an engagement ring. Seed planted with our tractors, our drills, levees walked by our feet and maintained with our shovels.<\/p>\n
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She kept her rice in a big sealed lard can. She\u2019d pop the lid and scoop out her measure and put it into her rice pot. Then she\u2019d run an inch of tap water over the pot and swish the water around to clean it. She\u2019d jiggle the pot to expose any black rice grains and she\u2019d pluck them out. Then she\u2019d tilt the pot over and use one palm to keep the grains in and let the white water fall into the sink.<\/p>\n
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She\u2019d add more water by some unknown formula, never measured.<\/p>\n
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The pinch followed. Salt, some mysterious quantity caught between thumb and forefinger and another swishing circle to get the salt acquainted with the rice.<\/p>\n
Her rice was never hard, never gummy, my (and I want to yell it like a kid, \u201cMY\u201d) grandmother\u2019s rice was always fluffy, loose perfection.<\/p>\n
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She had a particular spoon that was the \u201cgravy spoon\u201a\u201d a big Army surplus spoon with a long handle and a big mouth. She would dip this in the meat gravy, a little of the fat grease, but not too much, and set it upon the rice mound on your plate and let it press down, to make a little crater indention, like you\u2019d do on mashed potatoes, and then she would lean the spoon to the left a little bit and then to the right a little bit.<\/p>\n
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This meat gravy, most of the time is coming from our homegrown cows, cows that ate our grass, our hay, maybe got a little treat of Purina Horse \u2018n Mule from time to time.<\/p>\n
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This is the thing about all our blessings; that we never knew they are rare, until they\u2019re gone, even to us.\u00a0 My grandmother cooked at least one meal a day 355 out of 365 days for every year of her marriage\u201a and at every meal, there was rice \u2018n gravy. My grandmother lived just-down-the-road-from-us and I ate countless meals at my spot with my back to the refrigerator.<\/p>\n
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And then I grew up, and went away, and found that other people from other cultures don\u2019t eat rice like we Cajuns do. I remember a girlfriend from my 20s, she wanted to audition her cooking skills to me, so I asked her to make some rice \u2018n gravy.<\/p>\n
Not like my grandmothers, I said, when asked how I liked it.<\/p>\n
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That was a long evening.<\/p>\n
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If you can\u2019t get things just right in heaven, then where can you?<\/p>\n
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Dear God,<\/p>\n
If only just once, let me be little again, and let my grandparents be big and in their prime like when I was six.\u00a0 Let them put me on the red kitchen stool at the corner of the table, right between them, and after my grandmother has fixed everybody\u2019s plate and she\u2019s seated, I\u2019d like to hear that short \u201cO God\u201d prayer from my grandfather, and then after I take that first bite of rice \u2018n gravy, please fill out what\u2019s missing, let me know just how good I had it, so that I can properly say Thank You for the gift of my childhood.<\/p>\n
Amen.<\/p>\n
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This \u201cfirst\u201d edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories in Lagniappe is brought to you by Eighty-one, where Louisiana creativity dwells.<\/p>\n
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To those who\u2019ve followed Lagniappe through the years\u201a my mother loved the old Joe Fenton columns from decades ago, right here on the inside back cover. Nobody would be more thrilled that I\u2019ve stepped into those shoes than her\u201a and so I hope the Lord allows the gone-on-er\u2019s to stay up with current events down here.<\/p>\n
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