Guest Post: Medicinal Nourishment

Disordered Numbers and the Weight of Worthy

I learned to count at 14.

5’5”/170 equals 28.3.

1500 kcals is the key to this equation.

The scale requires better balance.

I learned to reduce at 14.

28.3 equals too much.

1500 kcals minus joy equals 130.

Subtract comfort, gain beauty.

I learned to restrict at 14.

5’6’/170 equals 27.4.

1500 kcals is not negotiable.

Shrink my waist to belong.

I learned to binge at 14.

27.4 equals obesity.

1500 kcals is unobtainable.

Weight of my worth in disorder.

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My great-great-great-great grandparents, Christopher Colombus Hatcher (Wacccamaw Cherokee) and Sara White. In 1837, Hatcher’s father, William, rode from South Carolina to DC with a "pillowslip filled with money" to change the family name from Hachee to Hatcher, sparing his descendants from the Trail of Tears by passing as White.

Evolution of Scarcity and Tuna Noodles

My great-great-great-great-grandmother never knew scarcity.

In the hills she found sustenance.

The soil, the rivers, the trees, the plants, the animals,

Together a landslide of abundance.

My great-great-great-grandmother felt the winds changing.

The pale people came ravenous to the woods.

They built fences unbroken by ancient trails.

Consuming all with abandon and gnashing teeth.

My great-great-grandmother knew the depths of hunger.

Names changed, identity hidden, traditions buried, language lost.

My great-great-great grandmother, Amanda "Mandie" Wilson. My great grandmother remembered sitting on her lap as she rocked on the porch in South Carolina. She smoked a clay pipe with a reed for a stem and "blew smoke rings that haloed around her white hair."

Her nourishment contingent on moldered commodity.

Succulent greens a foreign intruder on their plates.

My great-grandmother fed her thirteen children with the sweat of her brow.

Hard-won scrip traded for dusty tins of dense calories.

A garden of precious life springs from the labor of her hands.

An army of youth with full bellies and sore bones.

My grandmother ladled her history of scarcity straight from the pot,

Egg noodles, tuna, Campbell’s soup, cheese, milk, and peas,

Conveniences of bright supermarket aisles and a switchboard operator’s salary.

Tuna-noodle casserole the lasting flavor of comfort in survival.