Not long ago, I spent a teary-eyed hour reading food news on the Internets. Yes, I said tears. I usually turn to food writing for cheer, but these two articles reminded me, yet again, how deep a subject we are treading on when we write about food.
First, I read Michele Kayal’s essay Learning Who You Are Through What You Eat about handing down her Syrian culture to her daughter through traditional foods. I could almost taste the yebrat and lahem’ajeen (I’m not Syrian, but I have fond memories of goodies made by my best friend’s Lebanese aunts and, of course, the Northside of Chicago -- Lawrence and Kedzie to be exact. Head on over. It’s next to the bakery). Kayal also has a lovely blog, The Hyphenated Chef, which you Juicy readers should check out.
As if that weren’t enough, I then read this article in the New York Times about movie critic Roger Ebert, who is still cooking, although he can no longer eat or talk, due to cancer of his jaw. The process of cooking seems to help him stay in touch with his most fond food memories even as he is given over to “ghost pain” memories of foods and flavors from his past.
We all know, at some level, that food and memory are the briar and the rose, but these two articles gave me new perspective on the topic. As I was pondering these stories, I had to drive my kids to Indianapolis. I stopped, as requested at Marx’s bagel store (Kenwood Road in Blue Ash, Ohio). As I put the bagels in the car, I noticed the bag was warm, which always makes me remember the warm paper bags of bagels my father would bring home from Wriggler’s bakery (used to be on Millburn Avenue in Millburn, NJ. Shout out to me if it’s still there) on Sundays. It’s the same warmth as holding new baby around her bottom.
About twenty minutes in to the drive I was caught in stand-still traffic (this almost never happens in southeastern Indiana). As soon as it broke, the kids announced that they were hungry in their various ways (She Who Is Not Named Phoebe started crying and Bartleby tried negotiating for McDonalds). I pulled off the highway and over to the edge of a field. I went to the back seat, mixed formula for Not Phoebe and reached into the warm bag to give Bartleby a bagel. I ate my bagel as I watched the setting sun turn the grasses gold. I observed the clouds in the sky. I thought how this would always be known as “the time we got stuck in traffic, but we had a bag of warm Marx’s bagels in the car to eat.”
Now the bagel and the field, and the sun and the trip with the kids are all linked and, because of these readings, I was aware of the linkage in the moment when it happened. I was watching the process, letting the briar and the rose climb and entwine.
1 comment:
Nicely said.
Post a Comment