| My husband picked this up right away, my change in verbal demeanor, like I had seen a ghost walk by our table.”What’s the matter, honey?” he asked.”Nothing.” I have never been a good liar.
“No, really. What?” He wouldn’t stop until he cracks me.
“They have Egg in a Hole on the menu,” which is all I needed to say.
He registered my emotions and let me alone. He knew I was taking a second here at the diner to remember when I used to cut holes into slices of bread and slide them into a frying pan with pats of pale butter, cracking brown eggs into the middle of the bread slices…and how the egg, butter and bread together emitted a milky scent and crackling sound before 7:00 a.m. on the weekdays or before ball games on weekends, for a hungry kid waiting for his favorite breakfast. For my stepson, Dillon.
“Oh, gotcha. Want to order it?” Careful consideration.
“No, I’m good. Maybe next time.”
I don’t cry by nature; I eat, act nonsensical, and write. This is why my husband asked me if I wanted to order Egg in a Hole; because I have been known to order something for Dillon, my stepson, and have it packaged to go, or take a few bites and set it aside. Why would I do that? Order food for someone hundreds of miles away?
Simple. I have to see if the chef makes it better than I do. And because that all-of-a-sudden, wish-you-were-here energy derived from food can reach my stepson faster than an egg fries in butter and is more tangible than a formulaic text message.
So I got past that culinary memory, the way people put a scrapbook or photo albums back on a shelf. Then I spotted cornbread on the menu, offered with the chili.
“Think they use sour cream in the cornbread like I do?” I asked my husband. He placed his menu down and looked at me, saying with raised eyebrows, yes, I remember when Dillon specifically requested your cornbread with meatloaf, steak and chicken. Enough already, eat something and you’ll feel better.
Rather, my husband said “You want to call and see if he’s eaten well today?” I shake my head from side to side, silently, like a kid about to cry. But I don’t call, and I don’t cry, because I know Dillon is probably working the second shift at the restaurant where he is employed, where his lunch is comped. “Just order the chili and cornbread. Okay?”
Okay. That was a good suggestion, of course, but nothing can replace the feeling of cooking for someone you love. There is no better time spent as a family than sitting around a table together. No parallel sensation of your loved one enjoying what you have made them or the endearing bother of your child liking your entrée more than theirs. And when you can’t have that, you fall back to a time when you did, and you look forward to the next time you can.
I visit this place through menus and cookbooks. For me, the food tells the story. The familiar scent, the coveted flavors, the setting full of colors, and the coincidence that really isn’t (how many places serve Egg in a Hole anymore, anyway?).
Sometimes when I think Dillon is slipping away to his teenage commitment to be as cool as possible, that he’s forgotten just how much he’s loved from a different geographical location, he’ll call our home and ask how I used to cook something. He’ll request “that thing you made us all the time,” or “the side dish I used to scarf down.”
I smile. Who needs the extra entrée now?
I pull out the sixth chair from our kitchen table with the phone in my hand, sit down, and say, coolly, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” I’ve got to make sure he still comes back to have it the way I made it.
“Come on. Tell me how to make the cucumber salad. Please?”
“Alright, get a pen.” I say to Dillon as I look at my husband, who registers this, and listens as I dictate the list of ingredients and share instructions, with that wishful energy traveling great distances, rooted in hunger and in memory.
For me, the food tells the story, and the menus, all of the menus I am lucky to have, could fill a book. |
