More food memories.

It happens that the topic of food memory is a rich though non-caloric one. I prefer the digestible length of one page notes but some subjects require more commentary than others. Broadly, there are the holiday food memories, ordinary food memories, the memories evoked by aroma or by taste and the memories prompted by sight and occasion. Most of these in my experience are good memories although the complex nature of human biology does allow for unpleasant and unsavory reflexes when confronted by certain foods. Sadly, my dear Wallace couldn’t eat onions for years due to an untoward experience with them during silly college fraternity hazing.

Anyhoo, in my experience a food memory can be extraordinarily intense, sometimes in a literary way, provoking floridly descriptive passages of less than novel length. It casts me back to the entirety of the circumstances at the time of my experience. I may be 5 years old or I may be 25 and the reminder of the time, place and feeling can be overwhelming. Often when I drink a certain sweet tea in a certain glass with a certain sprig of mint I am fully transported to the front steps of my childhood home, on a warm June day, a soft breeze ruffling the leaves of the great pecan tree in front, the aromas of mown hay sweeping across the road and up our little sloping yard, to enfold me in a safe and happy embrace. It is pure calming pleasure and contentment. This complete feeling is total and really does begin at the top of my head and travels to my toes in a sort of force field of emotion. It is fleeting but I can see and hear and sense all the things as richly as I did at that prior moment. From the mossy green step I see the slouched figure of the farmer across the way, one hand on his tractor wheel, one adjusting his hat, stirring the field and its creatures like the pilot of a ship traversing the waves. He glances at me and raises his hand in recognition and I do the same in shared approval. It captured serenity and the promise of glorious summer all in one gesture.

On the other hand a birthday cake of the white kind with yellow, red and blue icing reminds me too well of the party where the guest of honor got so over-excited and ate so much that he threw up in multicolor hues across the table from his youthful guests. I haven’t felt the same about birthday cake since, favors notwithstanding.

Distinct from that, those special ‘dining out’ experiences with one’s parents can have a strange and powerful hold. The appearance of shrimp cocktail in a little dish of shaved ice centered on an ampoule of unbearably hot tomato sauce always reminds me of my parents’ delight in treating us to utter extravagance from time to time and to my high school graduation in particular when their mood was so genuinely gleeful that I cried the entire time, for what I am still not quite sure, but you know what I mean.

Fond hugs,

Celeste