Report:Foraging & FedEx
My friend Matt launched a conversation among his 636 Facebook friends by posting the question "what's worth living for?" Now don't worry for Matt's safety: I don't think he's contemplating rash acts. He's just a serious young man who earnestly weighs the big questions. Matt was a philosophy major, you know.
I've been thinking about Matt's query since I read it.
I won't bore you time with my full response, but let me just make a kind of introductory statement. I don't believe that one can convincingly state to someone else that a thing or an act or even another person is worth living for, because the weight of such a statement would depend entirely on whether that someone else's proclivities align with your own. I might passionately believe, for instance, that applesauce (a thing), downhill skiing (an act) or Aunt Mathilda (a person) is worth living for. But what if you hate applesauce, skiing and Aunt Mathilda? You see where I'm going with this. To build an argument about the reason to live—the use of living—you have to choose another starting point.
This is hadly original, I know. As a liberal arts major, I am passingly familiar with the sage texts and teachings that inform us that life is suffering; that the world is a veil of tears; objects, illusions; sensual pleasures, passing fancies, et cetera. I have heard that this dull sublunary world—to borrow the words of my college Shakespeare professor—cannot deliver us happiness. And I more or less agree.
However...
Today this dull sublunary world delivered me two things that are, if not happiness, then close enough.
First, I was driving through a neighborhood on the outskirts of town when I saw a lemon tree hanging full of fruit as bright as noon. It grew on the roadside, just outside a neat stone wall that corralled a tidy lemon orchard. This tree, however, was a maverick, a free-range cimarron, and its fruit was free for the taking under the ancient legal principal of usufruct. I screeched my car to a halt and picked enough for a batch of lemon marmalade, all the while I contemplating the stupidity of that phrase "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade," as if the lemon in its sour glory were an unwelcome and unworthy thing. Today life gave me lemons, and I shall smell them, taste them, cherish them—and then make marmalade. Check back for a recipe soon.
But then there was more.
I drove home, my car a fragrant raft of yellow sublimity, and found on the doorstep a box from Benton's Country Hams in Blount County, Tennessee. I slit the sealing tape and opened it up. The gift card written out by Benton's read "Fredrick West," which is almost my dad's name.
The smell that arose from that box! It was of pig fat and brown sugar and the most delicate wood smoke, the scent that clings to a smokehouse's logs even 50 years after its last fire burnt out. That smell is for me the very perfume of Blount County, where—in case you joined this blog lately—my West grandparents were born and died.
I stood there holding my ham, overwhelmed by a cinematic vision of memories. I felt such happiness that, for once, I don't have the words to describe it, except to say that one thing worth living for is a Tennessee ham.
Reader Comments (4)
Lord, have mercy. Are you going to soak it in tea, braise it in beer, and glaze it with marmalade?
You and your beautiful, yellow lemons and your Tennessee country ham - that I swear I can smell all the way up here in Seattle - have just made my day! Wish I was with you to share in marmalade, ham and some good ol fashion catching up.
Our neighbor's lemon tree hangs over our back yard wall and they've said we can take what we want. I can't wait for your lemon marmalade recipe. I'll share the results with our kind neighbor.
Lemon marmalade sounds fabulous, I am going to try some this weekend with meyer lemons from a friend's tree. And won't that taste terrific on ham! Is there a bone in that ham? It makes a wonderful soup with white beans and rosemary...after it's been picked clean of course!