So many pots of collards and black-eye peas were bubbling on the stovetop that the oven below overheated and switched off.
The oven held enough heat to continue baking the second of three enormous pans of cornbread for our New Year’s open house. But what about the third, which I had not yet begun mixing?
I called my mother-in-law across town. She started warming her oven. I grabbed everything I needed, included a large mixing bowl, jumped into the car and headed her way.
I mixed the cornbread in her kitchen and slid the pan into her oven. Then she pulled a mixing bowl from her cupboard that was as generously sized as the one I’d brought with me, and said: “Trade you.” She was going to wash and keep my bowl so I wouldn’t have to take a dirty dish back to our kitchen.
I headed home to change for our party. My MIL followed soon after with a pan of hot, golden cornbread well before any guests arrived.
Among the first to ring our doorbell was a couple who had received a call from one partner’s mother just as they parked. She needed them to come immediately help with a health issue. They wanted to at least say, “Happy New Year” to me and my husband. I filled a take-away container with greens and beans and a Ziploc with several squares of cornbread and saw them off.
My late parents, African Americans from the South, had taught me to eat black-eyed peas that symbolize small change, and collards that symbolize folding money every January 1 to ensure good fortune in the coming year. In some families, the cornbread represents gold. In mine, it’s just what you eat with greens and beans.
To imagine a better future was a radical act, accomplished in community and fellowship, by the enslaved ancestors who started the tradition.
Luck is a story we tell ourselves. We need the inspiring stories and the resiliency they celebrate. We need the community and fellowship even more.
I certainly felt that during the four hours that family, friends and friends who are like family streamed in and out of our home for the open house. They showered us with boxes of chocolate, jars of preserves, bottles of wine, bowls and tins of homemade treats, even home-knitted caps and original music. And a pot of forced bulbs to remind us all winter that spring will come again.
Most importantly they gave the simple, precious present of their presence. Some showed up even though they were going through personal crises. Some showed up by taking time from crises to send notes of regrets.
Among our guests was the pastor of a nearby church. As I ran past his church the next morning, I read a simple message on the board outside: “Love one another.”
I would only add: “And always be ready to light your oven and lend a mixing bowl.”