Food and Soft Cloths (c) Nita Walker Boles

Why do I remember so well the summer light angling from the west and our south-facing dining room window, and the presence of other people who I knew were at the table, but the feeling of being in that moment as though it was gladly never going to end? With me was my sister, Mary, who reports she remembers it about the same way—a verifier of facts, of a truth that I did not imagine any of it, and the sights and sounds and smells and tastes were all true, very, very true.

We were seated at the table with Azar. Like the Little Princess Shirley Temple movie, we had our own Indian Prince living just upstairs. With him he brought a love of spices and tastes my family so enjoyed that we regularly made something called 'Azar Stew'. He and our father often met in the kitchen brandishing the tools of chefs and cooks, stirring up smells to make our bellies churn with hunger.

Tonight there was other food to eat as well, but Daddy entered the room from the kitchen carrying the Piece de Resistance, a great big smile, not a grin, but a smile of pride and joy on his face. “Oh, you are going to like this!” he prophecied. Whether it was Azar who was getting his first taste, or we, his children, Daddy was the true Prophet that day.

The bowl of greens was beautifully presented, a boiled egg chopped and scattered over its leafy tufts. The smell of cured bacon wafted up mixed with a faint vinegar strain. I knew and believed everything my father ever said was true, and that this was going to be true as well.

He sat down at the head of the table and dished out our servings. I eagerly took a forkful and stuffed it in my 4 year old mouth. Any other 4 year old would have spat and sputtered, but for me the mix of flavors was heavenly. Raw mustard greens, finely chopped, mixed with a slurry of red-eye gravy and vinegar, topped with chopped egg and bacon was absolutely heaven! It was true. I loved it just as he said I would. It was not a show of willful compliance because you had to do what you were told, or because of adoration of a beloved parent. It was a simple truth. It tasted REALLY good.

I never forgot it, and wondered later why we didn't have it more often. He had gone, he explained as we ate, to the “Jap farm” on the edge of town to get the greens. “The Japs”, we later learned, were part of the Nakamura family, whom my father had befriended. In post WWII, they were probably just emerging from the camps where they had become destitute of their belongings and means of making a living. Our father sought them out to buy first from them, yet he found no inconsistency with using the denigrating term common to the time to describe their race.

Thanks to them, for the rest of my life I would love the taste of raw greens and think of them as an exotic food, grown first for me by the good people of Japanese descent.

In about 15 years we were living in Lubbock,Texas when Daddy called me up one afternoon and said, “Nonnie, how would you like to go and pick some greens with me?” I was a young married woman, living in my own home. He came by to pick me up, and we drove south of town to a sandy Field of Greens.

For a dollar a sack we could pick all we wanted. I had a freezer, and I loaded my sack eagerly as Daddy exclaimed over the quality of the bounty. We squatted on the ground together, our backs bent over, our fingers running through the sand in the dry heat. I understood his love for the soil, for growing and farming. The giant leafy fans plucked easily and became the promise of a salad revisited.

In just a few more years I was a young mother and I saw the evidence that my father was not going to be with us much longer. I took every opportunity to quiz him about his life, his past. He sat one day in my kitchen as my son came through with a dirty face. As we talked and I cooked fresh beans from our garden, I reached for my son and delayed his travels long enough to grab a wash cloth, wet it, and clean him up in a matter of seconds.

My father paused, eying me, “I used to hate it when my Ma would get a cold rag and screw my face off like that. My grandmother kept a bucket of warm water on her wood stove, and she would say,'Come here and let Grandma wash your face.' Then she would take a soft cloth and dip it in that warm water and gently rub my face clean.”

Of course after that I could never just quickly clean a kid of any kind. I always had to run the water through the pipes and wait for it to get comfortably warm before coaxing them to cleanliness.

He went on, “She kept sweet potatoes in her coals, and she would fetch one out dripping that brown syrup and ask, 'Do you want one of Grandma's sweet potatoes?' Lord! They were the best sweet potatoes anybody ever grew!”

At my own table I had enjoyed the brown sugary oozing volcano of flavor when just the right sweet potatoes were found. My mother's father seemed to grow them effortlessly, but I was not to learn the art of growing them, only eating them.

It was a matter of a year or two it seemed before my father was gone. I knew where he was—we had a long goodbye. At his graveside I pictured the morning of the Resurrection and his healthy body coming forth, a smile of amazement and joy on his face. The things of the flesh were gone for now, so far as he was concerned.

For a long time I could not eat sweet potatoes without thinking of him, and they simply did not taste good for years, and for that matter, neither did fresh mustard greens in a salad.

Then came the comfort of laughter as life's moments brought memories of what Daddy said about this and that situation. We could sit back at a table in satisfaction together and remember good stuff, really good stuff. I could enjoy the greens and the oozing sweet potatoes once again.

I am reminded of a call I once took at my Pediatric office from a mother concerned that chocolate milk might cause a problem for her 1-year-old. The nurse in my head was wondering what would cause a mother in her right mind to start offering chocolate milk to a baby so young. But it wasn't the mother, she explained. It was the father!

Then a picture of hilarity unfolded. She had gone to the store leaving the baby with Daddy. Dad had decided to let Baby try a little chocolate milk. The baby had a taste, then chugged it down, draining every last drop and leaving an imprint from the glass on his forehead and nose.

Mom wasn't planning on coaxing her baby to drink milk by flavoring it—Dad was just enjoying Baby savoring the fabulous taste he could never have imagined. “No,” I laughed. “No harm done.” I didn't bother to instruct her to avoid letting this scene repeat itself since the edge in her voice assured a severe consequence awaited the indulgent father.

It is the really good stuff of life we crave and need. It is the companionship of dirt touched together, or food passed around the table, of a good drink of cold mountain water, or thick chocolate milk when we are thirsty.

It is the stories of our never-known relatives and their soft cloths on little faces, and gooey sweet potatoes drawn from warm hearths that make us want and pray fervently, oh please let me be like that!