When Turkey Wings and Pralines Stand in for Real Talk
When it comes to my parents, food provides our best lane of discourse
My parents have never asked me if I had a boyfriend. It’s just their luck that I never have one. Still, it would be nice if one day while sitting on newspaper, eating crawfish my dad boiled in the front of the house like the country Black man he is (compliment), my mom and dad would look at each other and say to me, “Ain’t you a lil’ old to be in one of those situationships?” as I chewed my way through the sausage and potatoes before proceeding to ironically suck the head of the crawfish after such an inquiry.
But, as sure as America is to turn into Gilead should that racist reality show host get reelected, this delightfully progressive scenario is sure to not happen.
There are only certain subjects that I know I can speak to my father about. To jump right into the clichés of life, of course, the list launches with the weather. While I will concede that in light of climate change, conversations about “how it feel outside” have gotten decidedly more interesting, they still manage to feel like an impersonal life-suck. We could probably speak at length about the music of Johnnie Taylor, because if you have never heard “Disco Lady” or “Last Two Dollars,” you are missing out, but I have yet to…
