oysters

So, last Sunday, I went to an oyster fest.
It was after a packing frenzy of a friend's house, and I didn't want to do, but I did. In otehrwords, I wanted to go home, sweaty and tired after moving boxes, but hating to miss any sort of social event and go back home.

So I went.
And it got me thinking about oysters.

I first found out about oysters in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1962, one year before JFK. As a military kid, I measure my memories in bases, world events, and geography. Rarely personal, few life time friends, little tie in to holidays, mostly where we were and what grade we were in.

I was in 8th grade and Biloxi was segregated, Southern, and in the path of the tornadoes. We were on base, but on a military segregration the officers lived on one side and the enlisted on the other side. We went to school off base, on base we all mixed. Our own segregation was by rank. A bus took us from our school off base to the other. The white bus picked me up at my white school the black kids bus picked then up at theirs. And they dropped the kids off on the right side of the base.
One day, I was not paying attention and got on the bus. When I looked around, all the kids had been dropped off and I realized I had gotten on the enlisted white kids bus and they were all gone. The bus driver said no problem this coming bus will take you to your side of the base. It was all black kids. On base, no problem. BUt as I got off the white kids enlisted bus and got onto the black kids officer bus, the few remaining white kids who were going home off base jeered and chanted. I rode in the front of the bus until I got to my side of the base and got off. I was raised to not discriminate and knew that in Mississippi at 8th grade the integration was year by year, and had only worked to the 3rd grade that year. But this introduction to a glimpse of what it might feel like to be on the other side, the wrong color, the wrong bus was searing and affects me still.

what does this have to do with oysters?

Off base there were clubs and we would pass them with my parents. One officer, a favorite friend, and a southern boy, took my Dad to a club. You could join for $5 which really meant you could join if you were white. There, one could eat all the oysters they wanted for $5. I often felt that the piles of oysters around the tree trunks outside the restaurant were labels of whiteness and somewhat tainted.

From Biloxi we moved to West Germany and then for me, to California and college. Oysters disappeared until 1972 when I went to Seattle to apply to grad school. My future husband met me, took me to interviews and then we went out to eat. I was amazed that it was still light out at 9 pm. We ordered seafood and out came the Oysters Rockerfeller. All gushy, gray, and sliding in their shells, topped with chopped spinach. I gamely downed then and moved on. I moved into grad school, marriage, moving, and motherhood. shells inclucated, I became a pearl, immersed inthe life of my life, absent from any irritants until he wanted a home, child and divorce in that order.

Shells open, he left and I was a mom, a homesteader, an artist, and single in that order. Exposed in the hot sun of divorce, I lost my well, re drilled it, kept the home, kept my friends, raised my baby and moved on. I took care of it all building a nacre of a pearl around me to survive. I finally after one year, and the legal document felt I could date. I did, I have always pushed myself into new arenas as needed: advertising, new home, building, fertility clinics and childbirth, motherhood and well buidling...I am strong and can do it. so, it was time to date. And, that I pushed just like a job. So, here I was in the bar at the athletic club, and having champagne and sliding oysters down my throat and laughing and all of a momemt I realized, " I am having fun. I will survive." I did, the boyfriend ended, but I began to begin again. And I discovered I was good at, and loved cooking.

Oysters, more of them over the years then they dropped off. I must pay attention to these small symbolic gestures. The marriage was waning but I didn't realize it until the cul de sac of living was breached by non-ommittment and slovenly attitudes. My nice tight little shells, my oyster world was drying up, and I didn't realize it, like the shellfish happily in the pot, slowly dying as the water heated up, to burst their shells and die. LIke a knife jamming in the hinge, it pierced my small soft wet oyster heart and twisted upright, opening the shell to the elements. I was sliding off the shell into the heat, unto the mouth, into the gullet of dis-efranchisement. And died.

So, now what? Once again, though not in a bar, one year later, I was in Seattle with foodie friends and gathered around the oyster bar, We were happy, I was happy, we were cheerily slurping oysters into our own gullets and the briny softness was bracing, it was alive, it was food, it was sex. The lips of the oyster shells beckoned with hidden treasures. The folilate edges of the oysters glistened, moist with their own juices and salt, briny, fresh living tastes. They invoked life, sexuality, and freedom, not the death I remembered. They tasted like our own taste, we all came and come, from the sea. They slid down my throat like so many things, and we were happy. Oysters were back.

so, in the back yard of a friend, ex-lover and still friend, we both hid behind the grill making oysters for the non aware friends. He forgot it was the athletic club that we had had oysters 20 years ago. I didn't remind him. We passed oysters until all got thirds. I scavenged the mussles on the outside of the shells, and placing them on the open shells, grilled them also, a by product of the oysters. Once more we slurped and loved the chance to sieze the moment, find food, nurture ourselves and cut into the secret world of the sea.

Oyster like, I am choosing to open my own folliate shell and soft edges to those I would choose myself. No hard knife is needed, but the heat, the steam, to open the inner world. And, sliding down the gullet of life, of temporal love, into another stage of my life. No longer segregated, no price of admission but my own awareness and consent.