A Ham Cluster

The week before Easter, I took care of our neighbor’s cats and fish while they were away. They received a large package on Tuesday that week. I put it in the house and didn’t look at the return address. On Thursday, Annette texted me and asked if her honey-baked ham had arrived. Uh-oh, I thought, and said yes, it had arrived and was still sitting just inside their front door. She said it was their Easter dinner and could I check to make sure it was still cool and put it in the fridge in her garage?

It had been packed well and Easter dinner was saved.

On Saturday morning, Rob and I drove across the state to visit one of the few writing couples that we know – Hilary and Jeff. The drive is easy and scenic and when our daughter was in college in Sarasota, we frequently traveled this route.

The route takes us to Fort Myers, where we head south for eight or nine miles to where Hilary and Jeff live. In between, there are two major towns – Clewiston and LaBelle.   For years, Clewiston had a great Cuban coffee shop where we stopped to refuel with caffeine, the really strong stuff – cortaditos, a small, explosive shot of caffeine. Usually, it comes loaded with sugar but we always ask sin azucar, por favor – no sugar, please – and are rewarded with a powerful, delicious boost of energy that only Cubans know how to produce.

A little while before we hit Clewiston, anticipating our cafecito, Rob and I were talking about ham. The traditional ham that people have for Christmas and Easter. I haven’t eaten ham in any form for probably twenty-five years, and Rob has indulged only a few times in those years. But for some reason we had memories of hams on our minds – hams from Christmas and Easter traditions in the past in our respective families. When you think about it, hams on those two holidays is something of an oxymoron, since both holidays involve Christ, a Jew who didn’t eat ham.

Hilary and Jeff had asked us to stay for their family’s Easter dinner (ham) on Sunday at 4 PM. But we knew that would mean staying so late that we would be crossing the state in the dark, an unpleasant prospect because so much of the road is just two narrows lanes and no street lights. It’s just you, the road, and the darkness of sugar cane fields and Everglades on either side.

By the time we got to Clewiston, we had talked so much about ham I was wondering if Rob was nostalgic for those former Christmas and Easter holidays. In Clewiston, we found our favorite Cuban coffee place, which was now owned by Mexicans. There was a barbecue grill on the front porch and lots of people milling around. I went inside to order coffee and use the restroom, and Rob and our dog, Noah, settled on the front torch.

As soon as I reached the counter inside, one of the men who worked there came out and seemed surprised to see a gringa there. In Spanish, I ordered two cortaditos without sugar. Behind him was the machine that created this magic. But he didn’t seem to understand what I’m ordering. “Cortaditos?” he asked.

“Si, si,” I replied. “Sin azucar, por favor.”

I was the only person at the counter, which was lined with huge bags of chips. Not plantain chips, Cuban style. These chips are the kind that you find in Mexican fast food restaurants. The guy making my coffee kept loading up the expresso machine, emptying the coffee dregs, going at it again, and I realized he was using BIG cups, not the short expresso cups.

I glanced out the window and saw Rob sitting on a bench on the front porch with Noah, eating something from a Styrofoam cup.

By the time we left, we had two huge cups of coffee, two bucks apiece, that were not that tasty at all, and Rob was laughing. “You won’t believe this,” he said. “The woman at the grill came over to me and handed me a cup of soup. For free. It’s ham soup.”

“Well, there we have it,” I said. “Law of attraction. All this talk about ham and Easter and you get a free cup of ham soup.”

I have no idea what this synchro means. We were talking about our memories of ham. This was preceded by our neighbors receiving a ham last week while they were away and I was watching their cats and didn’t’ realize the package that arrived was a ham. Then, on Easter morning at Jeff and Hilary’s, Jeff made French toast and bacon. And I thought, wow, this bacon looks crispy and perfect and helped myself to two slices, breaking a 25-year fast of ham. It was yummy, but I probably won’t indulge again.

So, I guess this qualifies as a ham cluster and it may well be a trickster synchro. Ham, Trish? Okay, here’s your ham.