Mark Lamb - Into the Fire

 

 

When I left home, my mama gave me an iron skillet that was seasoned years before I was born. Now, if you don't know what it means to season a skillet, basically, every time you cook in it, the food emits the oils into the iron. And the iron, it absorbs it and it creates this natural Teflon. You don't want to wash it out with soap and water, first of all, iron rust. You just wipe it down with a paper towel. Where I'm from, we like our skillets good and greasy. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, that skillet that mama gave me went with me across many estate lines, different homes, different kitchens. And then, somehow, and I hate to admit this, I misplaced it. Honestly, I think I misplaced it amidst the pieces of a shattered heart. [audience laughter] 

 

Have you ever been cooking all day like Thanksgiving? You finally sit down to eat and you're not hungry and you're watching everybody devour the food and all you can think to yourself is, “Oh, Lord, now, I'm going to have to deal with all these leftovers.” Well, my family were food pushers, so we start pulling out Tupperware and Ziploc bags and saying things like, “No, Aunt Velma, you can have as much of that sweet potato casserole as you can carry. I mean it, Hun.” 

 

Well, when the love of my life broke my heart, I looked around at all the things we had accrued together, all this stuff that was seasoned with mutual memories. I didn't feel like dealing with the leftovers. So, I said, “You know what? You can just keep everything. I mean it, Hun” 

 

Well, years later, when I asked my mother for my grandmother's cornbread recipe, she gladly gave it to me and she said, “Now, you make sure you cook it in that iron skillet.” “Oh, Lord.” My face felt like something on low boil. I didn't know what to say to her. It just bubbled up and I blurted out, “It's gone.” Well, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “You know, it took years to season that skillet.” [audience laughter] 

 

It was time for me to go. [audience laughter] I was about to walk out the front door and make a five-hour drive from west Kentucky to East Tennessee, where I was living at the time. All these hills and valleys and mountains, and the whole time in the back of my head, I could hear her saying, “You know, it took years to season that skillet. It took years to season that skillet. It took years to season that skillet.” [audience laughter and applause] 

So, when I got back to Knoxville, I did what I know best to do when I need to heal and make things right. I make art. See, I'm a choreographer and I was working with a dance company at the time. I asked about 12 different dancers to go out and interview their family members on what an iron skillet meant in the history of their families. And those stories, they bubbled up like cornbread batter hitting hot bacon grease. You could just smell those memories. 

 

There was Karen, who talked about four generations of women standing around this large iron skillet filled with a pone of cornbread, and they're pulling apart that cornbread for their Thanksgiving dressing. And a few pieces go in the dressing, and then they pop a piece in their mouth and she said that it felt like communion, [audience laughter] because her family believes in Greece. [audience laughter and applause] 

 

 

I don't mean the country. I mean, the pork fat. [audience laughter] And then, there was Julie. Her grandmother had passed away. She was from a well-to-do family. They all gathered around a big board table in a lawyer's office, and he commenced reading the will. And she inherited her grandmother's beautiful diamond engagement ring and no one batted an eye. But when she asked for that iron skillet, all hell broke loose. [audience laughter] 

 

Well, we assembled all these stories into a dance theater piece called Into the Fire. It was critically acclaimed. I asked my mom what she thought about it and she said, “Mark, Hun, the singing was real nice.” Well, a couple years later, [audience laughter] I was in the parking lot of a liquor store. Those of you who know me, don't find that hard to believe. This woman rushes me-- She's a little tipsy, and she grabs me real hard by the hand and she says, “You're Mark Lamb?” And I say, “Yes.” And she says, “I want you to know I saw your piece, Into the Fire, and it touched me so.” And I said, “Well, thank you.” 

 

She pulls me real hard over to her car, to the back of the car, and she pops open the trunk and she says, “I just want you to know that that piece helped me so much. My beloved aunt had passed away a couple weeks before I saw that. I was having a real hard time.” I'm getting real nervous. And then, she reaches into the trunk, and she pulls out an iron skillet, and she places it in my hands with reverence and she says, “This was my aunt’s iron skillet.” 

 

She says, “I'm a family therapist. Whenever I'm conducting group therapy, we pass around the skillet and people tell their skillet stories. [audience laughter] I think it helps them to open up, and I think it helps them to start the healing process.” And I thought to myself, “I am so glad that she did not push me in that trunk.” [audience laughter] And then, I thought, “Well, by God, I have done my job.” 

 

Now, I may never fix a meal and feed someone from that iron skillet ever again, which turns out to be my great grandmother's, my mama, Minnie. But I think in losing that skillet, maybe I help feed folks in a different way, and like me, help them to remember where they come from and simply who they are. Thank you so much.