You can take the girl out of the country. But occasionally, that girl, feeling a pang of nostalgia will procure the ingredients for a proper southern breakfast. She will bake biscuits, and fry sausage, and slice a tomato. She will scramble eggs in the sausage drippings and she will then, defying all the city knowledge that she has accumulated in all her city-dwelling years, take gravy and pour it on top of all those already-delicious things and she will smile, pleased with herself.
For a brief moment, right before the first bite, she will inhale deeply all the aromas surrounding her and she will be nine again, in her Granny’s kitchen, stomach grumbling and impatient knowing that she can’t eat until Pa comes back from the milk barn. And then he arrives, white t-shirt and denim jeans. He sits down and stirs sugar into his black coffee and scratches the short curls on top of his head. Granny brings the plates to the table and we bow our heads “…bless this food for the nourishment of our bodies…”
And you blink and a teenager is smiling at you. There is no gravy on her plate; no biscuit either. She did consent to eggs scrambled in sausage drippings because, afterall, fat is flavor. Will she blink one day and return to this moment or another one from the past or one yet to be lived?
I don’t know about that. I do know that even though you can take the girl out of the country, there is nothing on this earth that can ever take that girl out of her Granny’s kitchen and she will always love sausage and biscuits and gravy.
