When Life Gives You Chicken Livers

Prompt #1:

If fate throws a knife at you, there are two ways of catching it - by the blade or by the handle.
                                                                      -Oriental Proverb



When life gives you chicken livers…….

When life gives you chicken livers, you can eat them of course. But
what if you don’t like them?  You can starve.  Go to bed without supper. 
You can go fix something else.  You can close your eyes, grit your teeth
and try to swallow the squishy, metallic tasting organ meat then chase
it with a cold drink.  You can be thankful you have food on the table. 
What would you do? 

What would your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents tell you
when you didn’t like something or when things didn’t go your way? After all, theirs were the generations of walking a mile up the hill in the snow-both ways- to get to school, of having to work in the cotton mills at fourteen-or ten, of sacrificing for the troops and support staff serving in Europe, Africa, or the Philippines during WW I or II.  Their childhoods were made of scrimping and saving, doing without, making do, chipping in, and so many other clichés that add up to the adage, “you can’t always get what you want.”  And no, the Rolling Stones did not coin the phrase; they just became famous for singing it.  Then they added, “But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” 

On a rural farm in Northeast Alabama, there is slender 73 year old woman, about 5’5” after osteoporosis and with loose platinum curls covering most of her scalp.  She's holding a cigarette in one hand and a bamboo fishing pole in the other. She sits beside her wiggly, brown headed great granddaughter, teaching her how to fish for her supper.  She had food in the refrigerator but that wasn’t the point.  This great granddaughter, earlier in the day, had just wrinkled her nose at the prospect of chicken livers for dinner.  The spunky old lady clicked her tongue against her dentures and gave her a wry smile.

“Follow me, young lady”, the woman says to the child, nearing ten or so.  She’s tall but not so lanky, a little awkward from rapidly growing legs and a pre-teen pudge.  She spends weeks at a time with her grandmother in the brick ranch house down the driveway but her great grandmother’s trailer on the property is where she feels most comfortable, where she can truly be herself.  “Get that tub of chicken livers from the freezer and come out to the pond.  I’ll meet you there.” 

The old woman gets her garden shoes on, grabs a fresh cigarette and her lighter, and heads through the back door of her tan and white trailer.  She carefully steps down the cinder block stairs where she hides her used cigarette butts in a mason jar so her daughter won’t catch her smoking, and walks up the hill to the pond using her eight foot bamboo fishing rod as a cane.  She kept the rod leaning against the trailer by the back door for times like these.  There were more poles by the pond but this was her favorite. 

The girl hurriedly puts on her flip-flops, grabs the tub from the freezer and scrambles out the door to catch up with her sprightly old great grandmother, clad in blue jeans and an old button-down of all things.  The girl is switching the icy tub of chicken livers from hand to hand, wondering what on Earth they need livers for. 

She reaches her great grandmother and sits on the dusty ground well away from the fresh cow patties that polka dot the pasture.  Cows are standing in the water on the other side of the small pond, ignoring the two humans.  The girl wonders when they will start fishing but is told they need to “sit a spell” and let the livers warm up. 

They talk about the show they just saw, The Walton’s, where the great grandmother cackled earlier in the afternoon when one of the Walton boys hopped in their truck after having spent his “dime” at the county fair.  The girl was amazed that a kid could spend all day at a fair and only spend one measly dime.  That’s just what made the woman laugh so hard.  She knew that was an alien concept to a kid her great grandchild’s age.  It was time she instilled some of the old wisdom passed down to her by her own grandmother.  Fishing was just a ruse to get the child quiet and still for a few minutes.  She’d been waiting for such a time all summer and summer was almost up. 

So they sit.  Despite a gap of two generations, there is little difference.  Both being told what to do, how to do it, or that they weren’t able or shouldn’t.  It was exhausting to the both of them.  The culprits:  The old woman’s daughter, the young one’s mother.  Or could it simply be the generational shifts, the cycle of life, diapers to diapers, dust to dust.  So they sat on that dusty hill, dried grass padding their rear ends, waiting for their chicken livers to thaw and talking about life. 

The old woman tells the child some little bits of wisdom.  Like this one.  “Don’t ever date anyone you wouldn’t want to marry, 'cause you might have to".  Or, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade".  Or, “if you’re old and your daughter won’t let you drink a beer, keep one under the bed and put it in the freezer for a few hours, then pour it in a small glass and savor it, for you might get caught and you might not be able to get more for a while”.  And then there’s the one about it being “easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission”.  If she didn’t learn that one as a child, she learned it from being an aging parent dependant on her daughter.  Funny what a kid can learn from watching the rebellion of an old lady, grasping at what little independence she has left. 

Years later, the great granddaughter sits on the pier, fishing with her son.  Her mind travels back to that afternoon with the chicken livers.  Some of the wisdom shared will be passed down later, when her son is older than six.  Some have been shared with clients and friends, especially the one about not dating who you wouldn’t want to marry.  Standing in line at the bank trying to fix a bounced check, the great granddaughter remembers this one.  The old woman at the grocery store being asked by her daughter if she had enough money for “that”, probably cigarettes, a Find-a-Word puzzle book, or maybe an occasional six-pack, and the old woman saying “I got more checks, don’t I”. 

Sitting on the pier with her little boy, there is one piece of advice she can pass on right then.  Her six year old son, bottom lip sagging, complains that his day is ruined.  The fish won’t bite and his friend can’t come over to play.  She tells him about making lemonade out of lemons and she knows he’s trying to figure out what lemons have to do with fishing and friends.  She explains it another way.  The fish aren’t biting, and friend didn't come, but here they are sharing a moment between mother and son, rare these days. 

The boy smiles as he finally gets it.  “Oh, so it’s bad we didn’t catch any fish but it’s good we don’t have to hurt the fish by poking them in the mouth with the hooks.  Anyway, if my friend was here, I guess I’d be sitting here with him and he’d probably push me in the water just to be funny, so I guess you’re right.  Maybe it’s a good thing he’s not here and I really didn’t want fish for dinner anyway.”  She tousles his dark hair and tells him she loves him. 

Back at the pond, almost thirty years before, the old lady uses the pole to ease herself down the hill, carrying a string of three small catfish in the other hand.  Her great granddaughter holds the half-filled tub of livers.  The woman sends the child to the back bedroom to fetch a can of beer from under the bed while she cleans the fish and prepares the corn meal for frying.  Putting the beer in the freezer, she then pulls out some milk from the fridge to make those tiny crumbly biscuits they both love to eat with homemade fig preserves. 

The two, old and young, finish cooking their small dinner of fried fish and chicken livers with biscuits, jam, and ketchup to make the livers go down easier.  They set the table and pour the drinks; a tall glass of sweet tea for the girl, a half glass of beer for the great grandmother to sip and savor.  Both are aware that this time together has been special, something both needed and cherished.  As she took another sip of her beer, the great grandmother winked like a schoolgirl sneaking a smoke behind the bleachers.  They were partners in crime with a little secret between them, that is, until they heard the grandmother’s footsteps on the front porch. 



SWPoet
Southeast USA
1535 Words