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Hello, family, and welcome to Issue 10.
Whether you love or hate doing it, every Marylander knows how to pick crabs.
You see, crab picking is a thing someone has to teach you how to do. There’s a technique to it. Mastering it yourself is almost ceremonial.
I talked to Debbie Bredbenner about a lot of interesting family history. She started telling me, almost as an aside, about spending childhood summers at her uncle’s house down by the Chesapeake Bay. She remembers that at five years old, her family decided it was time for her to learn how to pick her own crabs.
Maybe it’s just the Maryland girl in me, but I found myself rooting for the five-year-old whose elders looked at her and decreed — she is ready!
No matter where you’re from, I think this story will bring you, too, back to a time and place of knowing exactly where you’re meant to be.
Wishing everyone a relaxing (and work-free) Labor Day. Enjoy 🌻.
Maryland Memories
A vignette from Debbie Bredbenner
This is Debbie’s story, as told to me orally. I edited and re-arranged lightly for readability and clarity.
My aunt and uncle lived off the Chesapeake Bay.
They lived in this little cottage. They saved up their money and bought land cheap in the 60s because no one wanted to live in Edgewater back then. That was the country. They slowly built their house right on the water with the little pier and everything.
My grandfather would pack up and get in the car and drive us there from the D.C. area. It felt like hours.
I was the only one allowed to sit in the front seat with my grandfather in the convertible.
Grandparents have ways of making us feel special, right?
My uncle would build a big fire next to the water, and he’d have a pot of chili going, hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. We’d have fish for breakfast every morning. He’d go out and get a fish and fry it up in the pan with fresh green peppers and onions. And eggs. That’s what we ate every breakfast.
And he would have these crab feasts.
I would sit next to my grandfather, and we would eat crabs, and my grandfather would pick the crabs for me. That until I was about five, when someone said, “Debbie needs to learn.” So my aunt, she sat next to me and taught me how to pick Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.
And from then on, I learned. I could pick my own, and I’d sit for hours and pick.
We would be on picnic benches, under the trees, with the breeze from the bay, and it was just the most calming thing . . .
And it’s because all those times, just so wonderful, and these crab feasts that we had, I felt the calm and the normalcy. I felt like I belonged down there at the beach, and that house.
When I got down to my uncle’s and aunt’s, they took me up. They took me in.
My uncle was the best human being on this earth. He loved everyone and anyone. He never had a negative word to say, and he affirmed everybody. And he would always tell me he loved me.
It’s medicine.
Now, I have a crab feast once a year for myself, and when I sit and eat crabs — all-you-can-eat crabs — after the first couple, it’s almost like subconsciously, the most calming feeling comes over me. It brings it all back. It’s mental medicine.
You are the product of your upbringing from the beginning. You can choose to be one way or the other, or learn to be a different way from the influences in your life.
When I became a mommy, it just was automatic that my children were going to hear that I loved them every day.
What’s the food that takes you back to five-year-old you?
Never Precious is curated and published by Tyeesha Dixon.