Today it was from shelling macadamia nuts,
given to us by a friend with a tree—
boxfulls of them.
No store-bought nutcracker will do;
you must buy a cottage-industry device
costing over a hundred dollars,
and crack them one at a time.
First remove the husk
(commercial machines make it easy).
Then crack the nut itself.
One. Nut. At. A. Time.
Hundreds waiting.
I turned on an audiobook,
the only way to sit that long
through the dull, repetitive task.
Those gifted with mac nuts
may not imagine what it takes
to bring tree to mouth,
the true cost of delight.
Like the food at farmers’ markets,
every bite is labor.
Why is food so expensive?
they ask—
as migrant workers are bullied
into ICE vans,
while some suit in Washington
claims to have their best interests at heart.
I once raked blueberries
on the coast of Maine,
twenty-something, handed a rake,
told to walk the rows,
gather berries, not leaves.
The migrant workers knew the rhythm;
I thought I did too.
I lasted under two hours.
Backbreaking. Hot. Brutal.
I turned in my rake and my meager harvest,
too embarrassed to ask for pay.
I learned humility—
what I could endure,
what I could not.
And still—
people who have never worked retail
bark orders at Home Depot clerks.
People who have never labored
mock those who do.
People who fear difference
listen to prophets in Armani suits,
eager to tell them who “those people” are,
and why they should be afraid.
But fear only begets
more to fear.
And here in my kitchen,
with nut shells cracking one by one,
the tide of the ocean steady outside,
I remember:
every bite is miracle,
every hand belongs,
every life—
hard or tender—
is stitched with wonder.
Harvesting cloves ~ bj 2017
And that is why they are expensive… but that buttery taste is worth it. Savor every bite!
Exactly!! Mahalo, Eliza! ♥️
thank you, Bela.
Welcome. 🙏
A reminder that is we who build and then tolerate the systems we establish-until we don’t. The resulting upheaval is as predictable as the next system-in-waiting. Life is cyclical.
I so agree with you, Pauline! I can feel the emergent paradigm, out on the fringes. And once it takes hold, once it catches fire, nothing can stop it. 💗
Most of us in the United States no longer have any idea of the physical labor needed for anything really. I’m amazed at all the able bodied young people who can’t even deal with cleaning their own houses/apartments or cooking their own meals. My grandparents’ generation still grew much of their own food, or lived in a community where the labor needed for food production was local and obvious. So easy to lose that connection, so difficult to return. (K)
Kerfe, you make a really good point. I raised my kids in the Maine woods, so they knew what growing things was about, how to cook from scratch, how to keep their personal space clean, while having some basic household skills as well as doing physical work outside and such. (I used to refer clients to them for yardwork, and they were so happy to make money!)
But you are right, so so many kids, many of them older now, are quite out of touch. Personally I blame mass media and parents who just were either too busy making money or too self involved to notice. And I wasn’t a slave driver, my kids actually liked doing tasks, learning things. And if we had a day of brush piling and burning, I would pay them a nominal wage to help out instead of just expecting them to put everything else aside. Money was always an incentive because we didn’t have much. So this was a way to earn what I might otherwise have bought them anyway, but there were no mandates attached.
Cell phones only became popular when the youngest was in her senior year of high school. Smart phones have really changed the whole landscape that way. Also the mass production of what I can only call crap, and dangling this crap in front of a TV screen so kids get hooked really early on. There were many years we did not have a TV at all. And I do blame this consumerist attitude for the fact that many people do not realize that meat comes from animals, not plastic wrapped Styrofoam.
I have a friend is a vegetarian who said when her daughter was young, she was invited over to a friend’s house where the mom went out in the backyard to kill a chicken to make dinner. When this little girl came home, she said mom! Do you know chicken comes from chicken?!?!
Anyhow, sorry for the ramble. I should never answer comments when I’m in the midst of too many things. 😜 Curious to know what you think have been the biggest contributors?