When you were little, did you ever try to run away from home? What made you want to leave? What did you pack? How far did you get?.Describe one of your earliest childhood memories. How old were you? What bits and pieces can you recall?.
It’s good to write down our recollections. Other childhood memories recall the mysteries of new baby brothers coming on the scene, building a hideout among the branches of a fallen tree, and giving my best friend’s parakeet a ride down the stairs in her aqua Barbie convertible. In my mind’s eye, I can still picture driving from Illinois to Wisconsin beneath a canopy of crimson leaves against an blindingly blue sky. I remember Passover dinners with a million Jewish relatives in the basement of some wizened old uncle’s apartment building. Those childhood m emories of my grandma are largely synonymous with food. Together Grandma and I would walk to the corner of Roscoe and Broadway, where we’d explore the wonders of Simon’s Drugstore, Heinemann’s Bakery, and Martha’s Candies. This was the 1960s, long before big-box stores came on the scene. Her well-stocked pantry and doily-covered tabletops contained loads of delectable treats I was often denied at home: pastries, chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies, and delicate bowls of jellied orange sticks and other candy. I can picture myself reaching way down into Grandma’s frost-filled chest freezer for the ever-present box of Eskimo Pies. My brother and I would sleep in the small bedroom off the kitchen-the very room our mom shared with her own brother growing up in the north side of Chicago. Every door in the house was fitted with wobbly crystal doorknobs. Her desk drawers, lined in green felt, spilled over with card decks, cocktail napkins, and golf tees. I loved visiting my grandma’s apartment, with its fringed window shades and faint smell of eucalyptus. Butterflies with eyes on their wings, parrots in candy-colored plumage.My childhood memories are rich and varied. It hurts now, to think of that little girl, her innocent wonder: flashlight in hand, turning the glossy pages and marveling at the wild and wonderful creatures. She would hide under the covers reading, in the small, silent hours of the morning while her parents slept in the next room. She'd collected vividly illustrated books about them. She remembers begging her mother to spare the moths that fluttered out from wardrobes, the gauzy spider's webs that clung to the ceiling. She was fascinated by insects as a child.
The word swims up from the depths of her brain: a damselfly. The dragonfly-like creature with the iridescent wings. She shuts her eyes, opening them again when she feels something brush her hand. She stays like that for a long time, listening to the birds, the water, the insects. She can't remember what it's called: smaller than a dragonfly, with delicate mother-of-pearl wings. I even saved up a whole month's worth of allowance when I was in seventh grade so I could make 'Buela a special birthday dinner of filet mignon.” Sausages that I watched Italian abuelitas in South Philly make by hand. Fish we'd never heard of that I had to get from a special market down by Penn's Landing.
When other kids were saving up their lunch money to buy the latest Jordans, I was saving up mine so I could buy the best ingredients. But 'Buela let me expand to the different things I saw on TV. I started playing around with the staples of the house: rice, beans, plantains, and chicken. This self-appointed class is the only one I've ever studied well for. I have long lists of ideas for recipes that I can modify or make my own. Like, actual notes in the Notes app on my phone. When other kids were watching Saturday morning cartoons or music videos on YouTube, I was watching Iron Chef, The Great British Baking Show, and old Anthony Bourdain shows and taking notes. “Since my earliest memory, I imagined I would be a chef one day.
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