描述
What is it about food on a table that brings out the best and worst of us? Is it that we each bring our baggage with us, our weekly woes, our resentments and attestations? Or is it because we so deeply want to let that baggage go by being with people who help us forget, yet sometimes also force us to remember?
When our family gets together at Mom’s place, our dinner becomes a reality tv show. From Lashaundra spitting out profanities with a mouth full of rice and peas, to Nanny trying to film anyone slipping up to use it as blackmail, there really never is a dull moment.
When I think of our family drama, Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper comes to mind. People have been fighting over dinner tables since the beginning of time. I always loved the expressions of the faces of the apostles standing around the table. How outraged they look, how utterly pissed off. In the center sits Jesus, his face looking so different from the others. Despondent, defeated, fatigued. I mean I get it, I would feel the same way if I knew that someone from my inner circle would betray me. What do you do when the people who you hold closest are the ones that cause you the most pain? Do you learn how to break bread over your differences, or do you find a way to bury them?
Alter ego: Makeba