A Tale of Dispossession

It was early 1977, and my family had just moved from South India with its temples and monkeys and identical black bicycles to...well, to Minneapolis, with its skyscrapers and stadiums and malls. So this was a big move. I was eight when we moved away. My brother, whose story I am telling here, was ten. And it must have been soon after our arrival that this incident occurred.

The house in which we were staying was located on 46th Ave South, and it belonged to my grandparents on my father’s side. We were borrowing it, which worked out fine, because the two of them were down in Texas for the winter so that my grandfather could play some golf. He had retired recently and wanted to play the amateur circuit. They were to be away till the late Spring.

Back then the streets of South Minneapolis were still lined with elms. The houses had canvas awnings and stucco siding, and if you went inside of them, they smelled like roast beef and potatoes. The names on the mailboxes were names like Ellingson and Starr and Tollerud and Arnold. And of course ours said Bjornstad.

The nearest heavily trafficked street (or “main drag,” as my father liked to say) lay only about six blocks away. This was Lake Street. And right across Lake stood a convenience store, a Seven Eleven. It was to this Seven Eleven that my mother sent my brother Kris, one winter afternoon.

“For dinner tonight, I need some curd,” she said, handing him some money.

Now most American readers would probably recognize the word “curd” as something out of a nursery rhyme and nothing more: “Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey.” Otherwise the word here is rare and about as meaningful as “tuffet.”

But back in India, we had used the word practically every day, because practically every day, we ate the stuff it signified. Curd, when served with curry, cooled the mouth. Plus it added protein to the diet. And when you asked for it at the dinner table, you’d say “could you please pass the curd?” and it arrived in your hands and that was that.

Had my mother forgotten that Americans said “yogurt,” instead of “curd?”

Maybe.

Was she out of her mind anyway, thinking, back in 1977, that there would be yogurt available at the Seven Eleven on Lake Street and 46th? Probably. 

But in any case, my brother took her at her word that the errand was possible, and headed out to the Seven Eleven for curd. Though as he left, my mother made sure to tell him--and with some urgency--NOT to cross the street unless the pedestrian light said WALK. Was that understood? If it said DONT WALK, he was not to cross. Was that clear?

Yes he answered, of course he understood.

About thirty minutes later, having successfully crossed Lake Street on WALK, he was at the Seven Eleven, searching for curd. It was, of course, taking him some time. After all, the stuff he was searching for probably wasn’t there, and even if it had been, he was searching for it under the wrong name.

He doubled down on his efforts. He continued to search the aisles: The gum and candy aisle. The snack-cake aisle. The aisle with the batteries and the headache medicine. He also checked and re-checked the fogged-up refrigerated cases containing the ice cream in boxes and the milk in plastic jugs...

Finally the cashier asked what he was looking for.

“Curd,” said my brother.

“Curd, what’s curd?" asked the cashier. What, was the guy kidding? What was my brother supposed to say?

Well so there was nothing for it. My brother left the store, and went and stood on the corner of Lake and 46th, and waited for DONT WALK to turn to WALK. It was winter. It was cold. It was taking a long time.

It was still taking a long time...

The DONT WALK wasn’t changing...

He stood there for fifteen minutes or so, waiting for the light to change to WALK.

“But so why did that happen with the light?” I asked my brother. This was just last week when he told me this story--for what I think was the first time--some thirty-seven years after it happened.

“What do you mean?” he asked, “why did what happen with the light?”

“How come it said WALK getting to the store, but DONT WALK on the way back?”

“I have no idea.”

“And how come you didn’t just press the pedestrian request button to get the light to change?”

“Because I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Mom didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

I considered this for awhile. Then I said:

“Seems kind of existential.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’m thinking, if it had been me, I would have felt as if I was getting a DONT WALK signal because I didn’t have the curd. Because I hadn’t completed the quest.”

“That’s because you take everything so personally. You take the whole universe personally.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Of course it’s true.”

“So what happened?”

“Dad came and got me. Mom must have gotten worried.”

“Figures, she didn’t come herself.”

“She was probably still fixing the dinner.”

So my brother told me this story just this last week. And I can’t get it out of my head. And what I’ve been wondering about it is this: how was his probable emotional state, as he stood on that corner, a ten-year-old, waiting, waiting, really all that different from mine now in middle age?

I’m serious.

Here I am, forty-five years old, and over and over again these days I get the feeling that the big quest on which I was sent when I was born, is just not going all that well. Whatever I was supposed to get; whatever I was supposed to achieve; whatever I was supposed to discover before turning around and heading back home--well I just don’t have it, or I just haven’t done it. I haven’t located and purchased the curd of life. And now it’s starting to get late and what do I do? How do I go back so empty-handed to mother earth? And I wonder if maybe others around me on this planet might feel the same way. Maybe, Dear Reader, you?

“So, what are you looking for?” people ask me, in so many words.

“Well,” I say, “you know, I’m looking for the really nourishing stuff--the curds of life.” And I’m picturing the sunshine and wind and rain. The laughter of friends. My own two hands in the rich black earth. Lots of conversations with family. Campfires. Hymn-sings. The superb pleasure of sitting in a circle in the living room, just passing around someone’s new baby, and commenting on how super-cute her cheeks are, while she gurgles back and smiles.

And of course I’ve HAD that. Sure, sure I’ve experienced all that. But the point is, that I want more of it, so much more, in fact, that it sometimes feels as though I haven’t even had what I’ve had. Plus, as my brother was learning that day at the street corner, the fact is that this whole project of curd isn’t something any of us can really do on our own. Like the angels that sing in choirs “alleluia” and the bees that dance in code, in the middle of a crowd of other bees, saying “here’s the honey, here!” we’re social beings. We're dependent on others for so much of the meaning in our lives. Which means that other people’s poverty of understanding and experience is our own. Inward, outward, material, imaginative, it doesn’t matter. Other people’s poverty is our own. 

But these ordinary pleasures: why, in our time, have they become so rare and undervalued? Heck, I have to admit to that I’ve undervalued them myself. I’ve allowed my impatience with people to ruin time spent with them. I’ve devalued and avoided physical labor, simply because it was physical and somehow therefore “below” me. And I believed for ever so long that the only thing wrong with my own privileged life as a citizen of the richest country on the planet was that the privilege wasn’t spread around quite yet. But time would take care of that, right? Time and science and progressive politics and maybe a smattering of the stock market and the Federal Reserve. Right? Right? 

I’m working on mending my ways, but it pains me to think of how much meaning and how much real honest life I’ve missed over the years on account of my participation in the "what’s-the-curd-of-life?" lifestyle. 

Time to unplug all that smart-stuff and put the i-phones in context. Time to cool it on the packaging. The pure convenience. The consumption. And really cool it. Time for life, real life. Life with the grit in the gears. Life with the grubs on the leaf. Life lived in connection with the earth. Time to encourage other people, by way of example, to do the same. 

Maybe my writing here at 9-volt amounts to a kind of penance for me. A way of confessing my collusion with the forces of depletion. A way of trying to nurture the many life-sustaining connections that for so long I have so thoughtlessly lived to prevent. A way of finding and staying happy exactly where I am, and not demanding more of what really does not inwardly satisfy. A way of accepting that others really do have what I need--that I just cannot find meaning on my own. A way of begging for my curds, with a bowl of words.

So how about it? Any curds for a needy nomad? Any curds? Anyone? Any curds?

HB