This House Has Soul

In completing Marilynne Robinson's recent novel Home, I encountered a sentence that took me back to my childhood. It basically said, "This house has soul that loves everyone, no matter what." The context was that the mother of the eight children at home always went to her kitchen to cook comfort food when problems in the household became too great for her. Essentially, it was a sign that all would return to normal at a later time. She especially liked to cook chicken and dumplings.

Today I find myself in the midst of a major family problem, religious questioning regarding the church to which I belong, and the threat of what economists are calling a "major meltdown" of the American financial markets. I go to the refrigerator and pull out several Granny Smith and Gala apples from the crisper. It is a good day to make an apple pie, I tell myself, as I begin to roll out a pie crust.

My grandmother and my sister, I believe, also were (and are) believers that houses have souls, and those souls can be expressed through cooking great comfort food. My grandmother cooked a lot of soul food, being raised in the Mississippi hills and delta. There was always fried okra, fried corn, cornbread, ham, fried chicken, and turnip greens with hot sauce simmering in her kitchen. My sister, who has spent the past thirty years in Texas, makes chicken enchiladas to die for, as we say in the South.

We, of course, have always known that comfort food will not solve the problems we are dealing with in our families and in our world, but I believe it goes a long way in soothing our feelings in difficult times.