The Big Question

You will ask why I wrote Fish and Grits, of course.  It is a standard question for the author.  I can answer now by saying we do always return to what we know best.  I know the "projects childhood". 
Sometimes if I listen very close, I can hear the sidewalk spiritual calling out to me in the evening dusk.  "Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dress in the Black, Black, Black.  I can feel the hot winds of thick ponytails bouncing freely up and down as young legs "jumped" and immature breasts bounced.  I still smell the stench of thick urine, strong like turpentine cutting my nose as I dashed up and down the steps of the high rise buildings. 

Yesterday is only a paragraph away.

I see the tail of the disappearing mouse, the smell of raid from the neighbors fighting the battle of the roaches, hear the voice of mother telling one of her nine children to "run and get a can" before those devils move in over here.  A battle, always.

I look at my hands and see blood, my knees are scarred from cement, my head wears the memory of the telephone that "busted it wide open".  In the distance a drunk lady calls out "I need a man, tired of making love to myself", her voice mixing with the song of dice hitting the side of a dilapidated building. 

Oh yes boys and girls, you can go home again.

Steven Wonder's voice floated out of open windows - "living just enough, just enough for the city" - and once a month people lined up for government cheese and peanut butter. Mothers traded books of green stamps and kids borrowed "a cup of sugar" until Friday. Tube tops fell and under arms smelled and wasn't no secrets for nobody tell - 'cause it ain't no privacy in the concrete jungle baby!
Writing Fish and Grits for me was like a taking a deep breath, an accepting of self, and childhood and parents doing the best they could do.  Days and nights on our knees and bullets whizzing overhead in man made bomb shelters built to house thousands.  It was a life.  It remains the life of many.  I love this story, like a woman loves a man, completely, totally, without shame or regard.  It is a love affair with life's good and bad, and all those little things in between. 

Why did I write Fish and Grits?  How could I not.

Tina