Catfish Stew
A taste of home.
It can’t be described, but you know it when you taste it. It’s that distinct taste of something that came from the same land as yourself. Or, in my case, the same water.
Once the sun went down our bare feet would skim over the planks of the dock, careful not to catch a splinter in your heel. I swear you could feel each grain of wood stretching itself out after baking in the Carolina sun all day. Under the crescent moonlight, with the sound of a light wake splashing on the shore and the stench of chicken livers or stink-bait, we’d cast our lines off into the muddy waters of Lake Marion and we’d wait.
Usually it would get nibbled off by bream. You’d occasionally snag a turtle. Eventually you’d catch what you were after: dinner. Careful not to get stung by the barbells off their cheeks, we’d pull small channel catfish out of the slough and bring them in for Papa.
Mounted up against the dogwood tree was a tiny wooden cleaning table. He’d lay the fish on top, slice down each side of the spine, beside the dorsal fin and behind the rib-cage, pull off the skin, finish cutting the filet, and pick out the bones.
Back inside, Papa would go between the pantry and the stove, dumping ingredients into the deep stockpot. No recipe card in sight. Condensed tomato soup. Onion. Potatoes. Bacon. Butter. Humility. Hot Sauce. Instinct. Salt. Pepper. Garlic. Love.
And it would simmer in that pot all day, eventually with chunks of polliwog. The next evening, over a bed of rice, the thick stew would be ladled out and taken in. I’d gulp up his quips, his quiet strength, and his commanding presence.
You can’t describe it, but you know it when you taste it. Home. A home swimming with love, but the love is hard to see when all the muck on the bottom gets stirred up.
We didn’t start saying “I love you” until it was too late. When I go to see him, I’m turned away. No visitors today, but we speak on the phone and he says he’s sorry and that he loves us. Instead of sitting with him, I sat at a local restaurant in the small town I grew up in. It’s the only place I know of that has catfish stew on the menu. This place isn’t home, but I can taste it.
His memory is as murky as the water. I’m back home, and I can smell Lake Marion on my skin.
Family is complicated.
