Community
April Ambles: Reflections of a Philosophical Forager — Day 19
Today’s amble led me onto the Pétanque courts, where weekly, for the last year, I have tossed a metal ball across a sandy expanse, chasing a smaller ball called a cochonnet (little pig), in the company of other Pétanque enthusiasts who have become a new and unexpected family.
This is one of many communities that have become family over the decades, from my own core family of parents and brother to my extended family of grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, to the next generation of children, nieces, nephews, in-laws, to the grade school, high school, college mates, band mates, fellow chefs, women entrepreneurs, community center board members, fellow truffle aficionados…
The list of communities when we consider a lifetime is continuous, ever evolving, sometimes nourishing us even yet in present time, sometimes a distant memory of something which held a purpose in a certain space and place.
Sometimes the communities we feel in the background are shadows as in the photo accompanying this particular story. We feel them even if we can’t see them. We don’t have to reach out and touch them to know they are there.
Other times the communities are all that stand between us and a dive into a darker place. They are the melting pot in which we find ourselves in our larger, more generous days, a crazy quilt of color and tastes where we can bathe until we emerge with just the right tone, just the right flavor for who we feel we are at that moment.
Large or small, current or distant, we are all a part of multiple communities, and continue to feed them and feed from them for as long as we live.
For more amblings from the author, check out Child of the Woods: An Appalachian Odyssey.
