talbotlucas.org: a word to the wise is sufficient

I read the article in Sunday's New York Times about "meth orphans"--those children who are now in the foster care system because their parents were/are addicted to methamphetamine. The article caught my eye for two reasons, really. Terrence was at an out-of-state Target store and noticed that on the shelves, in place of many of the cold medications, there were little tags that you could take to the pharmacist to redeem for the actual product. This is because pseudoephedrine is a key component in methamphetamine manufacture, so many states are restricting the sale of any OTC cold medication that contains it. So my attention was heightened.

The second reason was that I can't fathom why anyone would ingest a drug that may have been cooked on someone's stove and made from a combination of pseudoephedrine and "common fertilizers, solvents, or battery acid." Battery acid? Solvents? Fertilizers? Weren't these all the things my parents used to treat as POISON and keep out of my reach (and the dog's reach) when I was younger? This boggles my mind.

My awareness was also heightened because The New Yorker recently featured an article about meth use among members of the gay community in San Francisco, and its devastating effects. It struck me as a sad state of affairs, even though the article dealt with adults, not children suffering the effects of an adult's poor choices.

But after reading the Times piece another thought struck me. The article describes a scene in which the parents "...cook these chemicals in the kitchen....They're on the couch watching their stuff cook, and the kids are on the floor watching them." Meth use has become a huge problem across many disparate communities. It's one thing, in my mind, if adults choose to use a drug for their own sexual/emotional pleasures, but I was saddened to think that for many parents, it's more desirable to cook up a batch of meth than a square meal for their family.

Cooking used to be something that was part of home life. Part of being a family. Now, for many people, cooking has some sort of elitist aura. Somehow it's become, in their eyes, an expensive hobby, or something snobbish, too difficult, or too time-consuming, or not really important because there are so many other options available for filling the stomach. And yet cooking is so much more, or can be so much more, particularly when family is involved. This is one of the reasons I became so interested in the Slow Food movement, and why I'm so supportive of the work that Alice Waters is doing through her Edible Schoolyard and Delicious Revolution initiatives.

My memories of our Chicago kitchen are the fantastic wood-and-glass cabinets that used to hang on the walls when I was a child, and of the huge white Universal stove that dominated the room; of lasagne and chili and paprika steak with mashed potatoes, or the smell of crepes in the morning. Of pineapple upside-down cake and so many cookies at Christmastime that sometimes we'd lose track of a tin. In many ways, the kitchen table was the center of the house: it was where my father read the paper, where meals (and the occasional sardine-and-fig newton snacks) were served, and where announcements were made. It was also where most arguments took place and l-o-n-g lectures were delivered, but if memory serves it was also where the resulting wounds were healed over cups of coffee and more l-o-n-g conversations.

With all that in my memory bank, it's sad to think that for some people, the outstanding memory of their childhood kitchen will be that it was the place where the drugs were cooked.

No great insight here, just my observations.