Time to Gather Around the Table by Pascale Beale “If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.” — Cesar Chavez
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or the past 16-odd years I have met almost every month with a group of friends to discuss books. At least that is the premise of our little “book” club. We discuss a lot more. Over the years, as our lives have crisscrossed and as we have watched our children grow, we have giggled and laughed out loud, cried tears of joy and anguish, cheered on our kids from the sidelines and rejoiced in all the milestones as our families have evolved. We gather around each other’s dinner tables, share a meal and talk. This past January was to be no different. Two days before our get-together the usual string of emails flurried back and forth: “I’m bringing a salad” “I’ll bring dessert” “Wednesday at 7pm—see you then,” and so on. Then came the deluge. The New Year had bought clement weather to the Central Coast and a sense of peace had just begun to settle upon the town, so for everyone who lived through the long, ash-filled, weeks of the Thomas Fire, the very thought of the impending storm on January 9 was ominous. Everyone along the entire coastline held their collective breath and hoped we would all survive the dire weather predicted by the forecasters. Our nerves had already been rattled by weeks of incessant safety alerts on our phones, and everyone was tired: tired of evacuations, tired of packing and unpacking, tired of masks, tired of coughs, tired of the ash that crept into every nook and cranny, just plain tired. I woke up in the middle of the night to the thunderous noise of the rain pounding on the roof. No sooner had I gotten up to check outside than the severe emergency alerts blared again on my phone, announcing flash flood warnings, and to take protective action to stay safe. I kept my fingers crossed for all my friends who lived beneath the burn areas. At daybreak I sent out a message to our little group. “Everyone OK?” “Our house has gone,” was the shocking first reply. “Well, I won’t be hosting book club here anytime soon,” came the second.
“We’ve evacuated.” “We can’t get out…” Over the course of the next few hours it quickly became apparent that Mother Nature had wrought its worst. The mudflows decimated Montecito and the surrounding hillsides. Everyone was in shock. Thousands of people were displaced. Everyone checking in on everyone else and wondering what on earth we could do to help. Helicopters flew incessantly overhead ferrying the wounded and evacuating those trapped. It sounded like footage out of a war zone. Everyone asking questions: Who is missing? What happened to your home? When did you get out? How are you? Where are you going to go? Can you get to work? Can you get home? That first night as my family gathered in the kitchen, displaced friends arrived with their harrowing tales. I did what many people did that night—I cooked for them. Comfort food, lashings of it. Over the next few weeks this became our evening ritual. I cooked more food, more friends arrived, a bottle (or two) of wine was opened. We would nibble on some cheese and then sit down, eat and review the day. As we communed together we found our collective strength. I realized as the days wore on that this catastrophe triggered a visceral reaction in me. Sudden memories popped up at the most unexpected times, reminding me of past natural and not-so-natural disasters that we had lived through, all of them, oddly, occurring in the middle of the night. From fires and earthquakes to intruders, these unsettling events prompted a desire to be with our friends and family, to see and hold each other, and to draw solace from our common experience. We gathered around the table then too. Two-plus weeks into this odyssey our motley book club crew got back together, all of us finally in town, straggling in from disparate parts. We cooked up a storm, as the saying goes, huge bowls of salads, roast vegetables and lasagna. We toasted one another, grateful that we were all in one piece; we shared stories and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. How good that laughter felt!
Opposite: Shaved Asparagus, Broccolini and Farro Salad. MEDIA 27
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