Circus peanuts. I find myself this week thinking about circus peanuts…not the salty kind that you toss the shells in the floor of a bar but the soft, orange, marshmallowy candy circus peanuts. Why you ask…well here it is.
I was raised in Houston, Texas and much of my youth was in the 70’s. Now, many people don’t consider Texas to be the South but it is. It’s not dixie South but it’s the South. The people, the attitudes, the independence, the hard working blue collar environment, the mannerisms, the “y’all’s”and the food all come together to give one that Southern experience. Maybe as the modern times are increasingly making us more of a global community, it may seem less Southern but the southern ways still are major threads in the fabric of society down there.
A major staple in the southern way of life is the love affair with food. Whenever you went to anyone’s house, food was always in the picture. It reminds me of going to my Granny and Papaw’s house as a child. You couldn’t get inside the door for more than 5 minutes before my granny would be asking if you wanted something to eat or drink….she would start pulling things out of the fridge and the pantry, pulling out plates and utensils, to the point that even an individual with the staunchest self control would buckle under her super power and succumb to eating something. She was magical like that.
There were a few things that were ALWAYS available in my granny’s house and they are as follows: Blue Bell homemade vanilla ice cream (because there is really no other kind), Coca-Cola, Ho-Ho’s, and Circus Peanuts. Now, you may wonder, how is it that an ice cream company doesn’t make more than one flavor of ice cream. Well they do of course!
But once the pure taste of Blue Bell’s homemade vanilla ice cream passes your lips and takes you back in time to a simpler place you will never ever want to eat a flavored ice cream again! When I eat a bite of this ice cream images of hot sweaty summer days and dad cranking the old ice cream freezer while I add rock salt, sounds of cicadas off in the trees, the sting of a mosquito bite on my leg are a few of the things that come to mind. I can see my Papaw standing in the kitchen mixing my coke float, taking his time to make sure it was perfectly mixed through and through, checking at the last minute for taste with his finger.
It’s like going home.
So back to circus peanuts. It’s another one of those things that I think of and even crave when I’m homesick, sad, or preoccupied with a problem. It’s comfort food to me. Now of course, there is comfort food and there is comfort food. When I’m not melancholy, comfort food is all the good things Southern….buttermilk fried chicken, fried chicken steak with cream gravy and mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy, fried okra, corn on the cob, peach cobbler, Texas chocolate sheet cake, pecan pralines, and the list goes on and on.
But when I tell my husband I really want an old fashioned coke float or circus peanuts, he knows the comfort food I’m looking for is much deeper than it sounds. He will come and rub my shoulders and ask me what is troubling me….he knows it’s SERIOUS. See that was my childhood. At my Granny and Papaw’s house, they fixed me a coke float or gave me circus peanuts (or both) EVERY SINGLE TIME I visited. I cannot for the life of me think of one time I did not ingest either one of those items in all my years at their house. (So there is no doubt why I have always struggled with my weight.)
I can close my eyes and see their little yellow house with the chain link fence and the big tree in the corner. I can see all of the beautiful flowers blooming in the yard. I can see the perfectly manicured grass. I remember the clothes lines in the back yard with the sheets hanging on them to dry. I remember the gray porch swing that I fell out of when I was little, breaking my two front permanent teeth out before they got a safety chain. Those broken teeth broke my Granny’s heart. She cried and cried.
So this week I was thinking of circus peanuts and I’m headed back to Houston. I have to say goodbye to my dear aunt who lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. While it has been expected and I know she is in a better place now, I am having a harder time than I anticipated. I have spent the last several weeks on the phone with my cousin who was actively losing her mom and I realized how much I miss home. She told me on several occasions that she wished I lived there. My other cousin was there sitting with our aunt and remarked to our other aunt that it reminded her of when she and I sat with our Granny as she was dying. And just like that I am transported back to that ICU room in Park Plaza Hospital.
Granny had undergone a kidney resection because she had a tumor on her kidney. She had done quite well but a few days into her stay took a turn for the worse. She had always refused to be on dialysis…even if it was temporary. She had watched her neighbor for years get transported every day by ambulance for dialysis and she had decided that dialysis was just pure evil…even if only for a few days.
So Granny went into renal failure and organ failure and we abided by her wishes even knowing that dialysis would’ve given her a chance. I stayed by her bedside for days on end holding vigil, many times with my cousin Bridget. Family came and went but none could handle seeing her that way for very long. She had some very lucid moments though…many times in the middle of the night. I remember one night, I was laying with my head in my crossed arms on her hospital bed, she reached down and grabbed me by the pony tail and pulled me up towards her face. “You worry too much”, she whispered. Sometimes she sang to me…”don’t mess with my toot toot”. Those were some of the most precious moments of my life.
When her heart rate slowed and her breaths grew further apart, I stroked her beautiful face and told her how much I loved her. I held her in my arms when she took that last breath. I literally felt her spirit leave her body, felt the warmth of it in front of my face, and then swoosh, she was gone. I close my eyes and I can feel her there with me.
So I’m going home to Texas, home to say goodbye, home to love on my family and home to Southern comfort. I know I will eat things I shouldn’t but I’m not going to worry about that. I just accept that it is my portal to the past….to the simple life as a child I was too anxious to grow out of. Love your life my friends….and don’t waste a moment of it.