By Joy Caires
There are times when I crave the island I grew up on–missing it with a longing indeed a yearning, that nothing can fill. Last week, I was in line at the pharmacy’s photo kiosk and a man came up behind me. He looked like any of a number of the men I grew up around—the uncles, cousins and friends who would gather around my dad’s pick-up truck late in the afternoon “talking story.” I knew it wouldn’t be appropriate to turn around and say “where are you from?” That would have been rude. But, I longed to speak. I longed for a tangible reminder in the middle of my summer afternoon and I began to long for home.
But, rather than speak, I waited for the photos from our mission trip to download—glancing behind me a bit too frequently for politeness. Then, he picked up his cell phone and began to speak. And suddenly, the familiar lilt of Pidgin English filled my ears—intonations I rarely hear, except in the occasional long distance phone call. As he finished his call I steeled myself, turned and asked, “Excuse me, are you from Hawai’i?” He looked startled—this was probably not a question he’d heard often in rural Ohio! With his “yes” we plunged into conversation—how often do you get back, how long have you been here, where do you get good Hawaiian food, wow, they really let you check a cooler full of Ahi tuna!
As we talked the photos from the mission trip to Kentucky downloaded and soon it was time to go. But, this encounter cued the longing in my soul for the smell of the salt air, the taste of kalua pig and a time zone that fits me just a little bit better than the one here does. So, as my longing for home has increased I’ve cued up the Hawai’ian music in my car and I crave the foods that I grew up enjoying: Spam musubi, manapua, kalua pig, poi (the list goes on) chicken long rice, haupia, lau lau, cone sushi, pulehu beef, char siu, hekka, komoda’s donuts, saimin, opihi. (Are you hungry yet?) This food represents comfort and my taste buds long for it as this litany of the soyu soaked, sugar filled and salt cured appears across my computer screen.
When I graduated from high school I was given a rice pot—just like every other graduating senior who was headed to the mainland for college. Our relatives feared that we would starve on the mainland without rice. Rice that had been rinsed in cold water until the starch was released from the grain, rice poured into the pot and swirled with your hand and then drained. Rice which was cooked in the rice pot where it would sit, waiting to be scooped into the next bowl or plate, until it was time to make more rice. Rice came in 25 pound bags—and there was only one kind of rice. Going away to college with our rice pots in tow was our community’s way of telling us that we were loved and would be missed. And, for many of us, our rice was salted with tears in those initial days.
I’m guessing that most people know what “home food” is, what “comfort food” should taste like. Southern friends search out grits of the right texture, taste and consistency and know that most things improve with a generous lashing of bacon grease. Fry bread, baked beans, biscuits, rice, spaghetti…we all have our own litanies. But, for most of us, our hunger isn’t about the need to fill our bellies; it is about the need to fill our hearts. My hunger for local food isn’t about the food—although I wouldn’t turn down a plate of chicken long rice or a stick donut if it were offered. It is about the familiarity, the love, the sense of wholeness I have when I am back on Maui.
It is about the security that comes of being related to everyone and the comfort of fitting in. It is about the unity of family and the way the air smells of flowers and salt breezes. It is about being surrounded by people who are more than happy to speak the truth in love and who, despite their grumblings, love you even when you are most unloveable. It is about being with people who share my story and quite simply, get it. I long for the bread, or in this case rice, of eternal life—the rice that gives me back that sense of home, of family, of being known and belonging. It is this yearning, this craving, which brings me to church and calls me to the altar. This is the hunger that drove me to awaken with the bells on Sunday mornings in college and to warm up the car’s engine on wintry Ohio Sundays. It is a soul deep hunger and I long to fill and be filled with good food, food that will indeed “give life to the world.”
So, approach the railing and extend a hand—fill your soul and abide until you are home once more.
The Reverend Joy Caires, a graduate of Episcopal Divinity School, is currently the Associate Rector at Church of Our Saviour in Akron, Ohio. Joy’s first call, after ordination, was as the pediatric chaplain at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.