Alien Acorn Squash Almond Soup

6:45 am. I stood in the dark at the bus stop, looking for signs of the mobile fluorescent waiting room to zoom by, but it was too early for buses. I shook out my umbrella and began following the school of workmen headed toward campus. They were uniformed in dirty Carharts and had coolers swinging like briefcases from their giant hands. The rain painted streets reflected headlights in all directions, and my mind stirred with the transient reflections of a passenger waiting on an airport runway. I was late, but hesitant to quicken my stride due to the dull ache of my left shin. A nagging reminder of where I was going and what I didn’t want to find out.

As I walked through the revolving doors, I marveled at the pristine cleanliness of the university hospital. Everything was perfectly squared or curved, with clean glass and polished edges. The whites were perfectly white, like new teeth, as though born from a paintbrush overnight. The hospital workers had a relaxed alertness about them. They were immune to the predawn haze that fell on those of us coming from the world outside.

Down the long white corridor, on the left, there was a little waiting room. There I sat, shuffling my feet and assessing the germ content of the side table magazines. Like everything else in this building, the edges were crisp and pristine, germ free. A short stocky man with a helmet of dark hair and the protruding ears of a politician approached me. He wore a white coat with gold buttons and shoulder bars. He looked like a Star Trek character. I blinked.

“My girls are Cinderella characters this year, I am supposed to be prince charming. Follow me please, right this way.” I had forgotten it was Halloween. I followed the little man as he guided me to a large room. In the middle of the room, was a circular white machine with a smooth human-sized hole. I lay obediently on the table while he strapped my feet together.
“How does it work?” I said, my voice echoing into the vacancies.
“We will be shooting magnetic waves into your body. The waves will bounce off of the iron in your blood. We will be capturing an image of your insides by capturing those waves.” He then turned and walked out of the room.

If I leaned my head back on the table I could see wide eyes peering though the tinted glass of the control room, peeping out, then disappearing behind square monitors. Aliens. The machine began to hum. The operator spoke to me in a gentle voice over a loud speaker, parroting an automated machine voice “next picture, three minutes”.

We are all aliens. Everything we imagine comes from our experiences. Every day we operate machines we don’t understand from bodies we don't understand. We poke and prod at ourselves trying to figure out how it all works. Then, one day, the aliens of our future become the ghosts of our past. The magnetic waves pulled at my ring and I heard Christina’s voice in my head. She had interrupted me in the car when I was whining about not being able to run.

“Reinvent yourself" she said, with little sympathy for my self pity. Her mother once warned me that one would have to be a strong person to be with Christina. Reinvent myself, yes.

Here I stand, with my aliens and ghosts just at the doors of my beginning. Here I revolve, changing uniforms as I build myself, or work myself, or break myself down. From Carharts, to lab coats to hospital gowns, building, working, studying, breaking down, shifting, building. Sundays are good days for aprons.

Alien Acorn Squash Almond Soup
1 large acorn squash (a lot of people don’t think highly of this variety, but it can be very amicable once you get familiar with it)
½ yellow onion
1 Tbsp oil
1 Tbsp butter
2 cups almond milk
1 tsp vanilla
fennel seeds
salt
ground clove, cinnamon, nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 390 degrees. Cut a LARGE acorn squash in two (this recipe only feeds 2-4 people). Scrape out the seeds and rinse and drain them in a colander. Place the squash face down in a casserole and pour 2 cups of water into the pan. Cover with tinfoil and bake for 40 min until soft.
When you take out the squash, turn the heat down to 300 and bake the seeds (toss in oil and salt and lay flat on a cookie sheet)

Dice ½ yellow onion. Saute in a soup pot with 1 Tbsp oil and 1 tsp salt. Add 1 Tbsp butter. Scrape the squash into the onions (you may want to wait until it cools a bit). Add about 2 cups of almond milk, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp fennel seeds, a sprinkle of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves (optional). Use a hand blender to puree the soup. Garnish with a drizzle of maple syrup and toasted squash seeds.

Christina's vote: "Best soup I have ever had"