FOOD FOR THOUGHT

FOOD FOR THOUGHT RESILIENCE

BY JESSICA TUNIS

Resilience. Roll the word around in your mind or your mouth, tasting iron, or earth, or a springy loaf fresh from the oven. Look out the window and see it in action; your neighbor making masks to pass out to strangers, curbside pickups from local stores, or the efforts of protesters who march for justice and wield brooms to clean the streets the next day. Resilience is elastic, stretching and bouncing back, adapting to changed conditions. It’s a touch word for our times.

Resilience implies a struggle or a problem to overcome. It is through struggle that we are tested and through this struggle that we realize what we are capable of. This is just the beginning of changes that will reverberate for generations. Here we are in it, all together, reaching out and breaking down and getting it back together, donating to causes we support, wearing masks, trading sourdough cultures and trying not to touch our faces.

Americans are reckoning, perhaps for the first time, with shortages of basic necessities: toilet paper, eggs, flour. Many of us have never had to wait in line to be allowed inside a grocery store or had limits on how much we could purchase. And while it has been disconcerting, this aspect at least reminds us that in much of the world and throughout much of history, this was the norm and not the exception. American exceptionalism is over; some might argue that it never existed.

In any case, if we have had to adjust to new, uncomfortable changes, we are not alone. While the devastation that this virus has wreaked is real and not to be dismissed with platitudes, it has not been without its lessons. It is perhaps in poor taste to talk of silver linings, when so many are facing great loss — loved ones, businesses, jobs and more. So we will not use that term. But we will speak of lessons that we have learned and skills that we have remembered, that have been hidden or buried like potatoes in the ground; humble, grounded truths that can serve us long after this virus has passed.

We are being constantly reminded what community is and how to sacrifice for and take care of each other. We are being reminded of the value of jobs and persons that our current system does not honor or compensate fully enough. Grocery and postal workers are heroes in this time, as are the bent-backed laborers in the fields of our fertile farmland. Their work has always been vital and meaningful. May we remember it when our current troubles have resolved, and treat them accordingly, and vote in ways that will support their basic dignity.

Farmers have always been resilient, adaptable folks. Each year begins anew, with too much rain or not enough, with rising rent and falling prices, storms, blight and a shifting climate. It has never been an easy undertaking, although in these times, when many restaurants have been shuttered and people’s shopping habits have changed overnight, the work of farming seems less certain than ever. But many local farms have risen to the challenge by shifting their businesses almost overnight, using everything from CSA models to farm stands to pop-up sales announced on social media to get their produce onto the plates of hungry people.

The big supply chains are faltering and the artificially low, subsidized price of mass-produced food has risen. But the local food system is nimbler, better able to adapt in real time to the vagaries of the market and the current situation, and its value is unmistakable. If ever there was a time to shop at the farmers’ market, or go in with another family on a half a steer, or to reduce your reliance on packaged food, this is that moment.

This is a time to examine our habits of consumption and make choices that better reflect the world we want to inhabit. The streets are less crowded, the birdsong more audible. The morning air is clear and full of possibility. Breathe it in, before you slip the mask over your face. The clear air of a world in which much has been lost, but much might be created anew. Embracing the opportunities for growth and change as we move through and recover from this pandemic is the work we all must do, to build a more resilient world.

Like dough that stretches as we knead and knead. Like potatoes in the ground. Like warm eggs lifted from the nest of a backyard hen. Resilience in all its forms has always been a basic quality of life on earth. Let us not be dinosaurs, trapped when our old way of life becomes unsustainable. Let us be farmers, sowing the seeds of the world we want to live in. We’ll keep a weather eye on the storm clouds and make sure our neighbors are fed. In the oven, the bread is rising. Resilient.