"Soup's on"
Winter evenings we like to have a pot of soup waiting and heat a couple of bowls for supper. Depending on the soup, that is if its liquid is thin, I may like a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt in mine. Last night was cool not frigid, but here in 7H we pretended it was one of those blustery winter evenings we enjoyed, truth, not so much, our Navy years in Rhode Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania, WashingtonDC, and had a wide bowl of reddish clear vegetable soup, this one with bits of ground beef.
Not a deep bowl, it has to be the wide, shallow bowl, and these were. And the right color broth, transparent pale reddish from the tomatoes, with carrots, celery, we like okra in ours. Might have lima beans, yep. Maybe thin sliced onion. Yellow squash sliced in if there happens to be some left over from dinner yesterday, and there was. Perfect, it was perfect. And someone from long ago, the early 1940s, announced "Soup's on". Which signals stop what you're doing and come to the table.
The house on Lake Caroline in StAndrews, the house my grandfather himself built in the late 1930s or early 1940s. The table, I remember the table, round and heavy, six chairs around, four of us: Mom, Pop, my first cousin Ann, and me. I'd sat in the living room with Pop while Ann helped Mom in the kitchen, set the table, brought from the kitchen one at a time each bowl of soup for the "first course". And announced "Soup's on". Always slightly red from the tomatoes, clear vegetable soup. Memories are not infallible, but I recall it as the standard start of the dinner meal, middle of the day, in my mind meant to start the juices flowing for the meal itself.
I don't remember any of the actual meals over those years as a boy in a place with grandparents I adored, and whom I knew loved me, favorite Panama City cousin, both of us year model 1935. But grandparents die, and relationships fade and are gone. Psalm 90 rules: The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though we be so strong that we come to fourscore years, yet is our strength then but labor and sorrow, so soon passeth it away, and we are gone. Leaving memories for those who loved us.
Not at all, this isn't maudlin, it's just where I was, and where "soup's on" takes me instantly back to claim a part of life that no longer exists except behind my eyes.
And oh, I do remember. Once in a while, as the soup bowls were cleared leaving plates for the meal - - maybe a platter of fried chicken if Mom had chased down a fat hen in the yard out back, she always had chickens, and eggs, inevitably a few hens ran loose in the back yard, snapping up bugs. Only Pop dared enter the bigger pen with that fierce and cocky rooster and his hens, who would fly at you with spurs and his beak - - Ann might exclaim to me, "Mom made floating island!" It was our favorite dessert, maybe my lifelong all time favorite, at least in memories. Or maybe it was the love I felt there, and had for the people there, where I always knew I was one of, belonged. At my house, you could nearly always count on mealtime, our family of five gathered round the dining room table - - you had to be sitting when the blessing was said or you couldn't come, at least that was the canon, I don't recall ever missing a meal, maybe once - - and you'd not come to the breakfast table without your face washed and your hair combed - - you could always count on mealtime for someone to get scolded for something. I mean, three kids, what do you expect? But never at Mom and Pop's house, and table. I only knew love there. Love and acceptance and included.
My recollection is that my mother - - who never was there with us, it was just me "spending the day" - - that mama thought floating island was disgusting. Which simply means, I realize now, that they never had it in the Gentry home when she was a girl. I don't remember what floating island was, but I do remember the love.
W
This morning, just now In the pink storm-ready sky, our osprey circling above my head and out over the Bay, distinctive sharp piercing shriek, keeping sharp eyes out for a mullet breakfast.
Above, from 7H looking across StAndrewsBay 7:51 AM
Not a deep bowl, it has to be the wide, shallow bowl, and these were. And the right color broth, transparent pale reddish from the tomatoes, with carrots, celery, we like okra in ours. Might have lima beans, yep. Maybe thin sliced onion. Yellow squash sliced in if there happens to be some left over from dinner yesterday, and there was. Perfect, it was perfect. And someone from long ago, the early 1940s, announced "Soup's on". Which signals stop what you're doing and come to the table.
The house on Lake Caroline in StAndrews, the house my grandfather himself built in the late 1930s or early 1940s. The table, I remember the table, round and heavy, six chairs around, four of us: Mom, Pop, my first cousin Ann, and me. I'd sat in the living room with Pop while Ann helped Mom in the kitchen, set the table, brought from the kitchen one at a time each bowl of soup for the "first course". And announced "Soup's on". Always slightly red from the tomatoes, clear vegetable soup. Memories are not infallible, but I recall it as the standard start of the dinner meal, middle of the day, in my mind meant to start the juices flowing for the meal itself.
I don't remember any of the actual meals over those years as a boy in a place with grandparents I adored, and whom I knew loved me, favorite Panama City cousin, both of us year model 1935. But grandparents die, and relationships fade and are gone. Psalm 90 rules: The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though we be so strong that we come to fourscore years, yet is our strength then but labor and sorrow, so soon passeth it away, and we are gone. Leaving memories for those who loved us.
Not at all, this isn't maudlin, it's just where I was, and where "soup's on" takes me instantly back to claim a part of life that no longer exists except behind my eyes.
And oh, I do remember. Once in a while, as the soup bowls were cleared leaving plates for the meal - - maybe a platter of fried chicken if Mom had chased down a fat hen in the yard out back, she always had chickens, and eggs, inevitably a few hens ran loose in the back yard, snapping up bugs. Only Pop dared enter the bigger pen with that fierce and cocky rooster and his hens, who would fly at you with spurs and his beak - - Ann might exclaim to me, "Mom made floating island!" It was our favorite dessert, maybe my lifelong all time favorite, at least in memories. Or maybe it was the love I felt there, and had for the people there, where I always knew I was one of, belonged. At my house, you could nearly always count on mealtime, our family of five gathered round the dining room table - - you had to be sitting when the blessing was said or you couldn't come, at least that was the canon, I don't recall ever missing a meal, maybe once - - and you'd not come to the breakfast table without your face washed and your hair combed - - you could always count on mealtime for someone to get scolded for something. I mean, three kids, what do you expect? But never at Mom and Pop's house, and table. I only knew love there. Love and acceptance and included.
My recollection is that my mother - - who never was there with us, it was just me "spending the day" - - that mama thought floating island was disgusting. Which simply means, I realize now, that they never had it in the Gentry home when she was a girl. I don't remember what floating island was, but I do remember the love.
W
This morning, just now In the pink storm-ready sky, our osprey circling above my head and out over the Bay, distinctive sharp piercing shriek, keeping sharp eyes out for a mullet breakfast.
Above, from 7H looking across StAndrewsBay 7:51 AM