Children of Persephone

It’s time to light the fires. It’s above 45 degrees, it’s time to reclaim cooking outside.

Nothing is more significant to a warm April evening than the smell of a freshly ignited grill wafting through the neighborhood. I guarantee that campus kids all over town will be huddled around their mini-Webbers, grilling up burgers and dogs to go with their leftover keg beer.

It’s the same thing that drives us to look for restaurants with open patios on the singular sunny day in March. We’re coming above ground, we’re leaving the coats at home, we’re wearing flip-flops even if our toes are cold. It’s the understood bargain of living here, we are the children of Persephone, escaping Hades for the beautiful and the brief.

In celebration, I think it’s completely appropriate to burn some food. A crispy blackened hot dog, splitting with exuberance is a fitting tribute to the first frog sounds in the swamp. Daylight Savings allows me to actually see the steak I’m cooking, leaving the pinky warm center uncompromised. I don’t care if the kids are covered in mud, as long as they stay clear of the asparagus while I gently roll it across the hot iron. All this and no bugs.

But just as Holiday stations started stock-piling bags of charcoal, a story came over the wire about another study showing that grilled meats caused cancer in rats. Does it give me a moment of pause? Do I look at my grill through the window and consider shutting it down? Never.

I’m not glib to the potential darkness of cancer, quite the contrary. I lost a very important man during the Spring a few years ago. This man was a thunderstorm, sometimes bellowing and causing confusion, but always leaving things greener and fresher in his path. He took nothing for granted, whether it was the last beer in the case or just a good day to take the kids for a ride on the orange tractor. Harding’s cancer came in the worst way possible for someone in our circle, his throat closed and he could no longer swallow food. Yet he still sat with us at dinner, enjoying us enjoying the meal.

He taught me that it’s not the quantity of life lived, it’s the quality of it.

I refuse to let the fear keep me underground. Granted, I’m also not going to go and eat three charred chickens everyday either. What I really seek is the balance. I love a blackened rib eye, but this year I’m making sure it’s from Thousand Hills Cattle Company where the grass-fed beef is chocked full of healthy omega-3’s. And certainly I’ll wash it down with a glass of red wine as I watch the sun moving quickly across the sky.

Light ’em up. Grill on.