Before I left for Alabama last week, I was craving fried chicken. I realized I hadn't had a piece in a very long time because there's no KFC in the islands, and I don't generally cook fried foods at home because they are simply not that healthy, and my eating habits have developed into more realistic ones for a 36 year old mom than they were when I was a teenager in the South. The fact is that in the South, you don't have to go to KFC to enjoy fried foods. They are all over the place, so when we headed over to Crackel Barrel for some down home Southern cooking tonight, I ended up ordering the Sunday Fried Chicken special with mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, fried okra, and splenda sweetened iced tea. The funny thing is, having fried chicken didn't satisfy my craving like I thought it would. In fact, I remember fried chicken being much tastier than that. This was heavily breaded chicken skin, nice and crunchy like I used to enjoy eating it, but somehow it wasn't the same. And I don 't think it was because the restaurant doesn't make good fried chicken. It is because I'm not used to eating like a Southern Belle anymore. Sushi, grilled chicken and rice, pancit, lumpia, Greek salad, and all kinds of other Asian and island style dishes have become the preferred fare for me now. Of course, some of these are fried as well, but a majority of the things my fiance and I prepare for ourselves on a daily basis are not of the greasier variety. I suppose this doesn't make me any less of a Southern Belle, but there are some other things I've noticed that have proven I have become a bit more "cosmopolitan," so to speak during my years living on the atoll and traveling to different places.
For example, now I notice the differences between the South and the rest of the world as soon as I hit that first Southern airport on my way to visit family. In Houston a few days ago, the accents, style of dress, make-up, and hair, and even the way Southerners carry themselves and interact with each other stood out to me. It had a strong familiarity for me, but it also felt very distant from who I am now. The homes and look of the countryside driving around Alabama has its own distinctive flavor now that I have seen the landscapes of Europe, Oregon, New York and Washington state, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Bali, and the Marshall Islands among others. More often than not, I no longer refer to a trip back to Alabama and "going home." It's usually stated as "going to visit family" much more often than it was a few years ago when I was still so closely tied to the South. I have lived in the islands only about 7 years less than the amount of time I lived in Alabama full time, so I suppose by now you could say I'm an island girl. For the very first time on the trip this time, I didn't hesitate when someone asked where I was from to say, "the Marshall Islands" instead of Alabama. It's interesting, right? How life takes you from one place to another and one experience to another and molds you into not necessarily a different person, but a more unique person whose life story is all its own. I will never stop being a Southern Belle on some level, but I also believe I will always share a bond with others from the islands as I am just as much an island girl today as I was born a Southern Belle over 3 decades ago.
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