barbeque

Smoke, fire, and big slabs of something from an animal...barbeque. I have begun to think about it as the weather warms up. I only have a small deck at my new home, and so am beginning to think that one of the cantilevered ones like those hung over an outboard might not be a bad idea. Until I flip with a spatula the t-bone over the deck to the wildlife waiting far below. Must re- think this.

We have always barbeque'd, as I grew up I have a mental photo shoot of shish kebabs on our fifth floor balcony in Izmir, Turkey. Mom had purchased the three foot skewers in the market, and Dad would make the shish kebabs to grill. I have those skewers yet, in a vase on my mantle, and use them often.

Americans grill. If Chinese set up restaurants all over the world, and they do...I have had egg rolls in Frankfurt, New Delhi, and Panama...Americans take their grills.

In Germany we lived on the fourth floor, and no balcony. The apartments were divided into three stairwells, with eight homes to a stairwell. And, in the front of the homes were line ups of grills. Dad would run down the flights to do the steaks and bring them all the way back up for dinner parties. The smell of coals on the base evoked America, and fourth of July and fun.

Later, when my brother was a young Air Force officer, he was stationed in a base in England. They did not have enough rank to be on base, so he and his young wife found a place in a small village. The taciturn villagers, British to their crumpet soul, did not really come forth with open arms. What to do? Walt and Ingrid decided to have a good old fashioned Texas barbeque, complete with potato salad, the works, and invited all the neighbors. It was a huge success, slabs of commissary beef on the grill, and these grizzled WWII vets took them to their collective hearts and made Walt an honorary Rotary member. Wins them over all the time.

Over the last few years in my marriage we had collected barbeques, to no success in using them though, we would always forget to start the coals. We didn't start a lot of coals it seems. It became a joke, from the very lovely cast iron Lodge cookware one, to a small Webber, electric, and antique hibachi. Never got used, like so many presents, they were appreciated but not accessed. Wonder why. Concept over performance, like so many things, plans which rolled from year to year with no sense of time. I loved that Lodge grill, but was the only one who used it, although grilling is supposed to be a guy thing. Macho. And yet, there I was, using it, de rusting it, and now it is rusted.

That too is a metaphor, I tend to be forthright, and take charge, and do the "guy" things, maybe because I am a military kid, or the first, or in a post feminist angst not wanting to look like a girly girl.

To hell with that now, I want to be more of a girly girl, I want someone else to open the wine, buy my dinner, take care of me. but not too much. I can start my own coals, thread my own kebabs, in fact I took a BBQ class from the CIA. Big, Big, men with whole cows on the grill. Me, feeling petite, something I do not feel often, and still having to work with whole cows on the grill.

Where was I? Oh yes, feeling petite AND assertive at the same time. I want a grill on my deck. I want a party, I want people to come and go in my home and grill, and the sound of men's laughter as smoke drifts over the trees. I want elegant appetizers, champagne glasses on the deck and plates of food for the summer as we look over the valley. I want my own grill, not one that was seldom used, or enjoyed. I want my grill to make its own history. And, I want someone else to help me with it when needed, and to stand back when I damn well want to do it on my own

There is a book out by a friend called "Girls who Grill" and I get it. And, the grill is not Barbie pink, in fact, I don't think Barbie ever had a grill. Only Ken, but then again it took him 20 years to get hair.

This does not mean in any way that I plan to tune my own car, change my own tires or drive a stick. It does not mean that I will swill beer and bait my own hooks. It does mean that I like fire, I can invite men over to eat, and turn out something that was not immolated in the coals. And, tired metaphor that it is Phoenix like it will, and I will rise again. I am looking forward to the summer.