Memories

I suppose it may have been a hypnopompic memory ... one of those haunting images that come after sleep but in the cleft that sits there in my minds before we can describe ourselves as awake. I was walking home from kindergarten with an older sister. No content beyond that ... but as I reached for consciousness in my bed, other memories flashed ... and passed from my grasp. Maybe 60+ years of memories ... a wisp of the scene at M and I's wedding, I think was there ... with only our parents and some witnesses there to sign. My maternal grandfather speaking from the pulpit to his congregation. Quick flip to another religious leader involved in some apologeia with his congregants and explaining that they had "misconscrewed" (sic) him. Playing catch with Ronnie who lived next door. Wrestling with Sanford at a religious meeting. Knocking out a wall with my Dad.

There are those times when a return to sleep in one of those Last Quarter mornings isn't going to occur ... and one knows it. I'm taking off Fridays in the Summer and I had time. I toddled downstairs and sent GuntherDog out for his morning toilette and decided to prepare a kugel ... an Eastern European casserole for the grandkids who are coming over this evening. Their Mom is avoiding Gluten so it was clear in my mind that I'd cut out the wheat flour that typically is used as a binder to keep the Kugel more solid than runny. We're all trying to cut down on heavy starches, so I decided I'd use 1 motherload clove of garlic, 2 onions, 3 carrots, 4 sticks of celery and a fistful of broccoli with 6 grated potatoes. The sleepiness and the playful use of sequential numbers amused me.

I went about the business of pre-stir frying the vegetables in a couple of tablespoons of oil ... pealed the potatoes while they were cooking and threw in a palm full of salt and 60 turns of my pepper mill. What shall I ever do if my pepper mill breaks and I need a new count on how many turns go into a single meal's dish? Ah! The grinder is likely to outlive me, anyway.

Potatoes, vegetables, a bit more oil, three eggs and some potato starch were being mixed as I turned over the grater and began scraping every bit into the bowl. It was now a torrent of memories of my Mother and my maternal Grandmother before her in their kitchens. Here I am carefully removing the last maybe 1/100th of a percent of the mix into the red enamel pan that Adelaide, another very old woman, gave to my wife. Addie was the first or one of the first tenured professors of Biochemistry ... a rabid liberal to the end of her near 90 years. She would've liked to have lived to see a non-white President and would sign her e-mails ... "Fuck Bush." M is not so loud but they were dear friends. Maybe M needed a Mother and Addie had been too busy to marry and spawn. Her dad was a barber in a small Pennsylvania town, O! Little Town of Bethlehem, and maybe the idea of having everything
was too much for her transitional status. Who's to say?

But this much I think I know. I miss my Mother, Grandmother and Addie and much of what I learned in life was gathered up looking up at Old Women respecting the foods they were cooking.

As Mississippi John Hurt was prone to sing/say: Good to the Lassst Drop!