Feeling Friday

A part of me does understand why people wonder whether a novel was based on the author's own experiences - although literature is not supposed to be therapy, your own experiences are, afterall, the things you best know about. But I wouldn't be able to write about my family in that way. I've tried, and failed. There is something about my family that I haven't digested or made sense of yet, I suppose, which is why every time I write about them I feel there is something that slipped out in between the paragraphs. This has not stopped me from trying - for next week's class, I was trying to write a story based on my family, but after 200 words I realised I was stumped. How can you capture everything - the fights and frustration, the crazy things you do for each other, the fun you have with your siblings, the madness of growing up - without sounding like a phoney from a psychiatrist's couch? I had a madcap conversation with my parents and my little sister in the morning, and perhaps that is why I feel a little bit sad - I miss them, and I wish someone would hurry up and invent the travelling machine they use on Star Trek - and a little bit nostalgic.

Of course, I am glad to be here with M. and happy he is part of my family now. We made chicken sausage shrimp gumbo for dinner yesterday, and it was so great to have him pottering around in the background, stirring the chicken and sausage and tasting the gumbo. I always feel the recipe will turn out better when he is around.

It was my first attempt to make a gumbo, so I followed the recipe as closely as possible. I started cooking the celery, onion, green pepper and garlic first, then fried the okra in a separate pan. Okra is such a great thing to eat, and so strangely sticky when sliced. The chicken and sausage were also cooked separately then added in later, after the okra was put into the pan with the other vegetables, and after the vegetable broth, Creole seasoning, extra dried thyme - because I love the fragrance - and chopped fresh tomatoes. We stood around our tiny kitchen peeling the small but sweet, pink but barely cooked Maine shrimp to put in last. M. checked the seasoning and fiddled around with a Tabasco bottle while the air filled with the savoury scent of the spices and the meat and vegetables. We heaped the gumbo onto white fluffy rice in bowls. He was so surprised when, after having finished off the whole pot, he learned the gumbo recipe came from InStyle magazine (they have a surprisingly good food writer).

I wish my little sisters and my mum could have been here to eat the chicken sausage shrimp gumbo with us.