Lean On Me

“Anytime You Need a Hand” is what my extended family wrote on the handmade apron they made for my birthday a while back, with the variegated handprints of old and young strewn along the front. It reminds me powerfully of my favorite gifts over the decades: a T-shirt from my kids, an African-print bathrobe from my wife, a lovely short story from my daughter.,

The apron is far too nice to use in our soul food kitchen on a daily basis. In fact, it reminds me a bit, but only a bit, of the story by Alice Walker, “For Everyday Use,” in her In Love & Trouble collection (1973). The story is far too rich to synopsize here, but weaves the strands of beauty and use around the tensions among family members.

My birthday apron hangs on a pegboard in the enclosed balcony just outside my kitchen along with my other workaday aprons, asking to be worn. I don’t dare. I’m superstitious. It’s as if, were I to sully the apron, I would also ruin or degrade the loving thoughts embedded in it. Somehow diminish its specialness. Couldn’t risk that, right?

But when I think about it rationally for a moment — and only for a moment — that’s the whole point when we really serve others. Risk dirtying things up, messing things up, screwing up? Because as the apron itself says back to me, it has my back, no matter what.

Now that’s a dish I’d like to have an epitaph written about.