Do you know the story of The Uglified Ducky by Willy Claflin? (If you don't you should. In fact, you should go to the website right now and buy three of his books. Or maybe five. And a CD. Or two.) Well, this is how the story starts:
"Do you ever feel like maybe you have been borned into the wrong fambly? Like maybe you are a little porcupine being raised by a fambly of kangaroos-- boing! boing! And the mommy kangaroo does not like to have you in her pouch-- ow! ow! And all the other kangaroos make fun of you because you cannot jump. Or maybe you feel like you are a little bunny rabbit being raised by a fambly of rhinoceroses...."
Or maybe you are a mermaid growing up in a fambly of other mermaids, except you really like terrestrial things and sometimes pretend to have legs because that feels like normal? Or maybe you are a white girl growing up in a desert in Nevada with other white girls and boys, but you know you should have been borned on the Coast of Somewhere and you should have been borned brown?
I used to look at the pages of National Geographic and try to imagine what I would look like if I had coffee-colored skin, or what would it be like to wear all those colors! Then as an adult I discovered food. Not the bland white people food of my childhood, but real food. Food with personality and color and flavor and point of origin. All of my favorite foods came from places where the people were brown, the sun was high, and the coast was near.
I live in the East Bay area of California now. Going to Costco is a cultural experience, I mean there are Indian, Chinese, Mexican, and Hippy-organic-tree-hugger rices available-- in 15 lb. bags! Waiting in the checkout line I will hear mommies shushing their squirrely toddlers, and couples discussing whether or not they should get the pot-stickers in no less than four different languages. Yesterday I went to the ghetto grocery store because they have a better selection of Indian, Thai, and Mexican foods. Right next to the apples and oranges are guajillo peppers, jicama, and green chana. There was a little girl dressed in a folklorico dress, her brother in a pressed caballero shirt and boots, shopping with "mami", a young woman wearing a modest headscarf analyzed pineapples, an old Indian granny turned up her nose at the guavas, which were not ripe enough. When I got in line to buy my produce, the Hispanic man in front of me politely invited me, in Spanish, to go ahead of him in line because I had so few items. I thanked him, and waited as the elderly Chinese couple before me finished their transaction (American money was still a little new, though pound cake and ice-cream were apparently old hat!).
And suddenly I understand why Ariel left the ocean. Eric-schmeric. She was in it for the food.
