Mai Tai — Someone Else’s Table, and That Was the Point

The Tennessee State Museum. November. Chloe's photographs on a WALL. Not a fridge — a museum wall. The Tennessee Youth Arts exhibition, featuring the top five entries from the statewide competition, and entry number two is: "A Day at Sarah's Table" by Chloe Mitchell, age 14, Nashville, Tennessee. Five photographs. Printed large. Framed. Hung on a wall in a building that houses the history of Tennessee, and now that history includes: Mona's hands. James's smoke. Sarah Mitchell reaching across a counter. The reading corner. The cornbread, golden and cracked open, the crumb caught in the light.

We went on opening night. All of us. The whole crew. Me, Chloe, Jayden (who wore a button-up shirt without being asked, the respect of an eleven-year-old brother who understands that this matters), Elijah (who wore orange shoes and behaved for approximately forty-five minutes, which is forty minutes longer than expected). Mama came. Mama put on her church dress — the one she wears for Easter and funerals and apparently museum exhibitions — and she walked through the museum with the bearing of a queen surveying her kingdom.

The moment. The MOMENT. Mama standing in front of the photograph of MY hands — not Mona's hands, the other photo, the one Chloe took on the second day, the one of my hands kneading dough on the counter, flour on my wrists, the sunflower tattoo visible — and Mama standing there and reading the little card next to it: "Sarah Mitchell, owner of Sarah's Table, preparing cornbread from her grandmother Earline's recipe." Mama read it. She read it twice. She stood there. She touched the wall next to the photograph — not the photo itself, the wall beside it — and she said: "Earline." Just the name. Just: Earline. And I understood. The photograph is not just my hands. The photograph is Earline's recipe in Earline's great-granddaughter's camera in a museum in the city where a woman from Alabama's cast iron skillet ended up on a restaurant wall and the restaurant wall ended up in a museum wall and the wall is: the line. The line made visible. The line hung in a frame. The line preserved.

Chloe stood next to her photographs and people — strangers — told her they were beautiful. Strangers looked at my daughter's work and said: beautiful. Chloe said "thank you" each time with the quiet dignity of a person who has practiced receiving compliments in the mirror (she hasn't; she's just fourteen and composed in a way I never was, in a way I don't fully understand, in a way that makes me think the girl got something from someone in the genetic line that skipped me — maybe Earline, who was, by all accounts, a woman of terrifying composure). The strangers. The compliments. The museum. The wall. The fourteen-year-old. My daughter. In a museum. In Tennessee. With my hands on the wall. With Earline's name on a card. The night was: everything.

Dinner: we went out. To a restaurant. Not Sarah's Table — a different restaurant, because even restaurant owners need to eat at someone else's table sometimes, and tonight we ate at a Thai place in East Nashville and the food was: good. Not my food. Different food. Someone else's grandmother's recipes, probably, from a different country, a different kitchen, a different line. But the same thing: someone cooking because someone else is hungry. The same thing everywhere. The same thing always. The feeding is: universal. The table is: universal. My daughter's photos prove it. Amen.

We didn’t cook that night — and that was exactly right. After Mama said Earline’s name out loud in a museum, after strangers told my fourteen-year-old her work was beautiful, after Elijah held it together for forty-five whole minutes, the last thing any of us needed was me behind a stove. At the Thai place in East Nashville, I ordered a Mai Tai and held the glass and thought: someone made this too. Someone’s hands. Someone’s recipe. The feeding is universal, and sometimes you receive it instead of give it, and that is its own kind of grace.

Mai Tai

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: 1

Ingredients

• 1 oz white rum
• 1 oz dark rum
• 1/2 oz orange curacao or triple sec
• 1/2 oz orgeat syrup (almond syrup)
• 3/4 oz fresh lime juice
• 1/4 oz simple syrup
• 1 cup crushed ice
• Orange slice and maraschino cherry, for garnish
• Fresh mint sprig, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Combine. Add the white rum, orange curacao, orgeat syrup, lime juice, and simple syrup to a cocktail shaker filled with ice.
2. Shake. Shake vigorously for about 15 seconds until well chilled and combined.
3. Pour. Fill a rocks glass or tiki glass with crushed ice, then strain the cocktail over the ice.
4. Float the dark rum. Slowly pour the dark rum over the back of a spoon so it floats on top of the drink — this gives the Mai Tai its signature layered look.
5. Garnish and serve. Add an orange slice, a maraschino cherry, and a mint sprig if using. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 245 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 5mg