Caregiver as onion

Nancy Huggett

Less perishable than other foods, can be carried on long trips, easy to grow in a variety of
soils, containers, and climates. Useful for sustaining human life. “I will not move my army
without onions!” chants General Grant and other warriors through the ages. Symbol of
eternal life going on and on and on and on, pressed into the eye sockets of the dead, healing
an alphabet of ailments, used to pay rent in the Middle Ages, rubbed on Roman gladiators to
tone their muscles.  A hefty weight in hand, snug in the palm like a baseball, an orb of
wounds, the moon. Something that wants to be held and thrown. Does not bruise easily but
softens over time, or in the heat of the fire or fry pan. Thin-skinned, papery, oozes as a sharp
knife slices through her translucent layers until an emptiness appears. Uncontrollable tears, a
chemical chain reaction of self-defense. But cooled, will not make you weep. She is
versatile—baked, boiled, braised, praised, bullied, grilled, roasted, sautéed, fried—in all its
meanings, or eaten raw in salads. The beginning of every good recipe, and in the end how she
enhances the flavour of every morsel in the pot and disappears.

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Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Published in Event, Ex-Puritan, Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly, she’s won some awards (RBC-PEN Canada 2024 New Voices Award) and a gazillion rejections. She keeps writing.

You can read Nancy’s poem, Caregiver Support Group, Ongoing in Issue 17 of Funicular

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