or, will you embrace enthusiastic courage?
It’s a curious exercise searching yourself on the internet. I searched both “Tori Eversmann” and “Victoria Eversmann”. I used these search engines: Brave, Qwant, Mojeek, and Google. Fortunately, there are no phalanges or metacarpals prying open the closet doors of my past. Maybe some unfortunate haircut choices, but I haven’t been arrested (yet) or caught in an uncompromising position. The search results mostly reveal articles about and reviews of my 2015 novel, The Immortals. Oddly, there’s a BBQ sauce recipe of mine from an Eversmann Family cookbook project I discovered on the Google search engine. But my food blog disappeared.
About a dozen years ago I wrote a food blog called FignFennel. It was a lot of work, because in addition to figuring out a recipe to share, staging and shooting the process and result, I also married a story into the recipe. Being a storyteller and writing it down is challenging enough, but also photographing food so that it looks like something you might want to eat is time consuming. Needless to write, I didn’t keep it up after a couple of years. I stopped paying for the domain a long time ago, but I was hopeful that maybe I could recover at least one of the posts to share with you.
Nope. All that work. Gone. C’est la vie.
The only remnant of FignFennel I found showed up on a website for Mouth Party Caramels because I included their caramel sauce in a post about my blondies. My essay is embedded on their site, so it is not easy to find. Re-reading the post, I caught some typos. Oh Lordy. My spelling can be spotty, and I think I forgot a word. Editing your own writing can be cumbersome, especially when you’ve read it multiple times.
However, what struck me the most about re-reading the essay was two-fold. I still love Mouth Party caramels. It is not uncommon for me to have them out at Christmas and our (somewhat) annual Preakness party. Sharing recipes inside of stories about my life was my way to inspire people to cook at home but also to invite people into my life; and, to suggest taking a few moments away from the hustle of to-do lists and distractions, the macro events and caricatures, to sit and read my blog. To return to a quiet place.
FignFennel’s intention was connection. I wanted to create a connection between the little things that we take for granted: the preparation of food for others, the beauty, and the companionship. The more important observation that jumped out at me was my input on making blondies with Molly, my daughter.
At the time of that post, Molly was still in elementary school. That intimate moment, baking blondies together in our small kitchen in Baltimore, gave rise to a flood of joyous memories raising her: teaching her how to bake, the tenderness of our relationship, the miracle of motherhood. Building companionship with Molly was and is one of my driving forces in life. Moments of companionship are the inches we toddle together that become yards that become the miles and miles of the journey of life.
Who do you want to escort you on this procession? I assume, most of us, do not prefer to tootle alone.
We were not designed to straggle life alone.
According to many articles I read recently, loneliness is an epidemic in the U.S.
I don’t know if this is true: an epidemic? But it could be at that level. Everyone understands loneliness – that sadness. The final tender scene of Steve McQueen’s scorching 2011 film Shame exposes loneliness and the search for human warmth. Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a sex addict, suffers deeply from mental isolation using impassive sex in an attempt to fill the gaping hole of his pain, grief, and anger. The film is a blunt instrument, a lonely spiral performed perfectly by Fassbender. This human condition, loneliness, is unbound by borders.
Why do we struggle so to find intimate companionship?
In our orbit through life, no one formally teaches us the art of forging and nurturing deep intimacy. The knowledge of maintaining and fostering closeness, trust, desire, and a sense of unity remains untaught. Yet intimacy is the crucible in which all effective, positive companionships are formed. In fact, there are different types of intimacy: emotional (accepting each other “as-is”), physical (our need for nurturing with hugs, kisses, touches, holding hands, physical strokes but does not have to include sexual intimacy), and sexual[1]. We need to genuinely understand all three. Emotional intimacy comes first in all of my solid relationships.
“But Tori,” you’re thinking, “I don’t even know where to begin. How do I make a close friend?”
In a world that sometimes feels filled with a disposable society, ‘anti’ social media, and suffering, the antidote is this: unalloyed companionship. To understand what companionship means, you may be interested in its origin. The word ‘companion’ comes from the two Latin words ‘cum’ and ‘panis’ which translate into “with bread.”
Ahhh, we’re back to food.
While you do not have to source Mouth Party caramel sauce to fold into your homemade blondies, sharing a meal with someone else requires a slower pace. It requires us to participate in quality time and meaningful conversation. It is during this time, we get to choose how we present ourselves.
This is scary stuff.
We’ve been abandoned, betrayed, and rejected. The threat is real.
No thank you. Not doing that again.
Thus, we are back at loneliness. Desperate for connection. Images of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the steep hill come to mind.
sisyphus by jeffrey hummel
We crave connection though. Not with that digital devil we carry in our pocket. If only someone “got us”…
In my novel, The Immortals, I explore companionship among five women during the Iraq war. Their husbands absent – all deployed on the front lines. They need each other.
We hunger for another person. A soul in flesh. Not just a warm body, but also someone who encourages us, nourishes us, nurtures us, and uplifts us. And we, them.
Therefore, here is the lesson in vulnerability. It’s about going forward, not looking back.
Are we going to show our persona – that which we show the world? That façade most everyone puts on their social media account. Or will we risk it and choose intimacy? Our true character? Our genuine self?
Should we make the courageous, enthusiastic decision to be vulnerable, to seek intimate companionship, to share a meal that provides the opportunity have a real conversation, in real time, with a real person sitting across from us? Should we invite someone to share our table? Jamie Erickson writes, “Our tables hold a valuable secret the world longs to know. A meal of bread and wine was God’s plan to remind the stranger that He is good and loving and true.”[2]
If you are weary and longing for companionship, tired of allowing yourself to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief, need your spirit filled, and are ready to appreciate someone else, I invite you to try hospitality.
It matters not whether you can cook. Putting together a meal doesn’t have to signal whether you have talent in the kitchen. Lots of people have no aptitude in the culinary department. You are not trying to prove that you could run a 5-star restaurant’s kitchen or cater to the stars.
Disdain for cooking? Get take-away food to reheat but invite someone over to share it with you. The point is to demonstrate your willingness for companionship. Remember “with bread”.
When you look back in your rearview mirror, what will you see in your relationships with others? Will you see the “good stuff” – the little, cherished things and ardent moments, the pint-sized idiosyncrasies, the peccadillos, like a wife farting so loudly in her sleep that it wakes up the dog -- that Sean (Robin Williams) shares with Will (Matt Damon) in Good Will Hunting?
It’s time to embrace enthusiastic courage and make your tribe. Risk loving deeply.
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