Hometown Rounds

Coming back to the DC area always feels a bit routine. Typically, each year I return twice – summer and around Christmas time for the holiday season. DC summers are hot and humid, but it’s crab season! If you haven’t eaten blue crab, you haven’t yet lived. Go ahead, tell me I’m exaggerating and I’ll tell you what you don’t know about seafood, tradition, and the power of nostalgia.

Growing up, food was the language of love in my extended family. Not so abnormal I’m sure, but influential nonetheless. One of the first short stories I wrote in college was entitled “Grandma’s Kitchen.” The story was a recollection and appreciation of the love and community produced in that space more than the food shared there, but both of my grandmothers created essentially a home within a home where memories abound. The good, the bad, the joyous, and sometimes sad times have often centered in that room over food and drink, shared amongst young and weathered hands. 

I don’t have a single negative memory associated with eating crabs. We didn’t eat them all the time and perhaps that’s what made the times we did so much more magical. It was a badge of honor to grow from being handed the meat plucked by your parents as a young child to being able to dissect the shellfish yourself. It is, in fact, a good bit of work! A slow and methodical ritual that promotes good conversation and time to savor both the food and your company. Only recently, on this trip actually, did I discover a video online of a more efficient way to take apart the crabs and was relieved in my shock to see that many of my Maryland-born friends were also finding this out at the same time. At first, I was a bit outraged to think about how much time and effort I had wasted over the years, but then again, perhaps it had a purpose. It’s one of the few memories I have of my dad teaching me something, showing me where to place my small fingers as I dutifully tried to follow his every instruction. Even though I have no intention of producing offspring, I’ve always oddly imagined teaching someone else with great pride how to enjoy a Maryland crab, passing along a tradition generations-old and the joy that comes with the result. 

Perhaps blue crabs are an odd thing to feel such joy and pride about for a girl who couldn’t wait to leave Maryland. There were, though, plenty of positives about where I grew up; the proximity to the capital afforded us tons of (free) learning opportunities (museums should be free everywhere by the way – who do I need to write to?), exposure to a variety of industries, and normalized diversity in such a way that both expanded my understanding of cultures as well as muted it – because we didn’t really dig in either. Like most kids, I still had to have my bubble burst when I went to college and have continued to learn much about the plethora of peoples and perspectives on this planet with flubs and milestones along the way. But it was good preparation to be sure. Though I only have a few remaining close friendships with folks from my childhood and most of my time here is spent with family, there are always far more friends in the DC area than I ever have time to see in one trip – or even two! 

Coming of age within such a large family who saw each other often had its pros and cons. I used to only halfway joke that I’m probably related to 86% of Black people in Maryland and an absolute lack of privacy in simply going down the street fueled my calculations. As an adult, though, the close relationships I formed with my family, particularly with my cousins, are the ones I most cherish. I’ve been blessed to know my grandparents in a way that so many people never get the chance. I have plenty of people that I can count on and I don’t take that lightly. For someone who has only progressively moved further away from nearly all of my brethren, I probably wouldn’t strike most as a “family” person. And maybe I’m not, at least in a traditional sense, but I definitely believe that knowing where you’ve come from is an integral part of knowing who you are and where you’re going. Family connections are unique in that shared history and understanding. In some weird roundabout way, that’s what blue crabs taste like to me. To be clear, they’re just plain good and better than that mess they try to feed me in Cali, but they are so much more than a fleeting meal. They reinforce for me where I’m standing and where I’ve stood even as I look ahead. No matter how far I travel or for how long, some things will never change. 

Photos – Top: AYCE Crab Feast @ Avery’s Maryland Grille. Bottom: Mural wall in “downtown Crown” aka the new Rio for us lapsed locals.