Season to taste

My grandfather appears to me in ice cream sundaes. Growing up, I occasionally accompanied him while he ran errands. As a reward for patience and staid hands among drawers of gleaming nuts and bolts at the local hardware store, he would take me to the nearby Friendly’s. I can’t remember if he got anything – if I had to guess, it involved peanut butter (Reese’s Pieces, or “Ree-sees Pee-sees”) – but for me, it was the same every time: Monster Mash. Mint-chip ice cream, dyed a lurid green, and hairy with whipped cream. Its maraschino cherry nose went first, then its peanut butter cup ears. And when he didn’t have anything to do or buy, I’d still get ice cream – a bland New England company’s Neapolitan or chocolate chip, it too under whipped cream and always, always, rainbow sprinkles. The final course for me, my cousins, and brothers. We sat cross-legged on a waxed picnic sheet in the living room, and were served with coffee mugs and thin silver spoons.

There are some foods and meals I’ll never forget: those sundaes, the deep bowl of mussels and salty tomato-garlic broth for my first dinner in Ireland, the eggy yellow cake with chocolate frosting and dense crumb I ask for every birthday. I navigate my surroundings using scent and taste, readily allowing food to sustain my identity, to feed my memory. (Seriously, ask any English professor of mine in the last four semesters.) So, as you may guess, I hungrily (har-har) anticipated the next memoir on my list, The Gastronomical Me by M. F. K. Fisher. The cherished American food writer, and good friend of Julia Child tells of her life in early childhood through her mid-thirties, when she settled in Europe during both World Wars. I gravitated towards this book for our like-minded gluttony. Fisher and I learn through our senses and unabashedly participate in food rituals, honoring ourselves and others. We remember using sound and sight, yes, but also scent and taste.

Benedictions

Diaries, journals, personal blogs. The furthest I’ve ever come to finishing one was during the previous summer, when I thought my life was worth documenting. I filled only half of the journal’s available pages, but I said what I wanted to say. At least I think so.

Instead of doing other work (you know, assignments with deadlines…), I read A Prayer Journal by Flannery O’Connor, and felt somewhat guilty while doing so (not because of those deadlines). The prayers inside are, to say the least, written at the height of emotion, fervent and desperate. Even her handwriting gives her away: a facsimile comprises the final twenty to thirty pages, misspelt words and all. After finishing the edited portion of O’Connor’s journal, I know she would never have wanted me to see such sloppy handiwork and raw feeling. From her entries, I gather that the only material she wanted the public to read was her short stores and novels. She wanted to appear powerful, in control, yet full of God’s Grace. She wanted to be merciful, wise, attuned to the Whole of her feelings. I only know this, however, after reading her journal, the result of obsessive searchings in pursuit of greater scholarly knowledge. I wonder if we – the researchers and readers – are in the wrong, for who has the power to decide how we view a person?

Moving (on)

Last night, I finished I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and lingered over its poetic exactitude. No word seemed out of place. Just when the prose began to drag, usually from the weight of one of life’s/Angelou’s many trials, I was shocked to alertness, (literally) passed through the waking state, to a world of Sight unlike my own. Although the following analogy is, structurally, a bit mundane, the following comparison indicates a change in both Angelou’s way of Seeing, and recalls a change in my own. Here Angelou is an independent teenager, made more resilient and perceptive after her “vacation” in Mexico:

My car was an island and the junky an island at sea, and I was all alone and full of warm. The mainland was just a decision away. (245)

Though I cannot remember a time when I have felt completely alone, I can remember the familiar security of self-imposed isolation. As a teenager, I was prone to hysterical outbursts, the sources of which escape me. I locked myself away in the bathroom, sobbing over disproportionate feelings of humiliation, rage, and loneliness. One glimpse of my swollen face sent me into harder, sadder fits. Our “islands” could not be built on more different mounds of sand, heaps of feeling – mine anger and alienation, hers dejection then confidence – but, still, we felt alone. We left to find our own place, on our own accord. Reconnection “was just a decision away”: I splash water on my face and unlock the door, she returns to the violent Dolores and her rakish Father Bailey. With these decisions come consequences, of course, but I think in the back of our minds, we knew this wasn’t an expulsion, but a departure; we packed our bags for a safe haven, found it, spent some time there. We needed to run away from home. (Though when I think about my example, I locked myself an unoccupied room, yet one in my house. I didn’t think that through entirely…)