A Long Ride Home

I came to college in Florida from a small town in New Jersey called Sea Isle City. This town has always been a part of me as not many people have had the experience of living here all year round since it is mostly a vacation town. I am taking a week and a half off my summer job to visit my home town and my family as I have done every year I’ve been in college.

The beginning of my journey home: a 2 ½ plane ride.

On the plane I was able to finish a novel I had been reading the previous week called “School of Essential Ingredients” by Erica Bauermeister. My mother is in a book club with her closest friends and she mailed it to me months ago with a letter stating that I must read it. This novel is about 8 students coming from very different lives to one cooking class searching for more than just a few new recipes to bring home. The chef that teaches the Monday night cooking classes is a single woman named Lillian and she seems to know exactly what every student needs through what she brings to the table for each of her classes. Each chapter highlights a person in the class’ memory that is evoked by the meal, or simple ingredient, Lillian brings to the class. If a chapter were written about me it would start with a tuna fish and cheese hoagie with a bottle of chocolate milk. During the summers of early elementary school I took sailing lessons at the yacht club down the street from my house. I was given my first glimpse of independence when I could walk myself to these classes and afterward, walk myself all the way down to the other end of the block to a small mom-and-pop convenience store to buy a homemade tuna hoagie and a bottle of chocolate milk. This became routine for me and now, when I pair chocolate milk and a tuna hoagie, memories of summers at the Jersey shore are elicited: running around the block in my bathing suit, going from one neighbor’s house to the next to see who wants to come out and play, jumping in the back bay with noodles and inner tubes, splashing and pouring soap in the hot tub, the hot sun, the salty air, the sound of seagulls, the sight of ducks, sticky buns from MaryAnne’s on Sundays, finding baby turtles and keeping them as pets for a few hours until we released them again to the sea...

One of the students at the School of Essential Ingredients, named Antonia, is from Italy. Upon being asked by another student, why she moved to the United States she stated,

 “…the place where I grew up—it was wonderful, like a warm bath. So beautiful, and everyone so loving. All the time, I knew what to do. If someone invited me to dinner, I knew what to bring. I knew the hours of the market. I could tell you, right now, when to catch the next train to Pisa. There was nothing wrong. I just wanted—How do you say? A cold shower?—to wake up my soul.” (234, Bauermeister)

I am continually searching for that cold shower to wake up my soul.

Two and a half hours is a long time to think and books are a great way to trigger memories and new thoughts and even philosophies on life. I sat between two older men, in their late 50s, early 60s, who both had Carl Hiaasen novels. I love his work, so I pointed out to the two men that they were reading the same author. This started a long conversation about fictional characters that these two gentlemen have a common acquaintanceship with. Books can bring people together and make this world a smaller place.

The next novel I began to read is “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” by Ishmael Beah. I moved into a new apartment just days before my flight to New Jersey. This apartment is rented by the same people for a few months every year, and I am only living there for my last semester at FGCU (during the months they are not there). This book was one I found in the closet near old tattered novels. It was the freshman reading book 2 years ago at FGCU and the setting for most of the book is Sierra Leone, Africa, so I figured I’d give it a try. The boy in the novel has lived the most brutal life imaginable (I do not say that lightly). Despite the terrible circumstances of the boy in the novel and the nightmares this novel has given me, he  gives me hope and makes me proud to be moving to South Africa where I can get a glimpse of history in the making. If this boy can turn his life around so dramatically, anyone can! I love learning about people and their unique cultural differences through memoirs because I am able to get a feel for life in another country better than I could by googling that country. I now feel as if I have a piece of Sierra Leone in my heart and I am painfully reminded of the social injustices that take place abroad, as well as in the U.S. every day. Working for an NGO is looking like a strong possibility in my future.

A passage I took to heart from this novel goes as follows:

“ ‘We must strive to be like the moon.’ An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often to people who walked past his house on their way to the river to fetch water, to hunt, to tap palm wine; and to their farms. I remember asking my grandmother what the old man meant. She explained that the adage served to remind people to be on their best behavior and to be good to others. She said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, or also when it rains too much or when it is too cold. But, she said, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy, and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some reasons we should want to be like the moon.” (17, Beah)