What I Hope I Remember

Okay, I put my keys down right here.  I know I did.  Then I went in the kitchen to get my coffee cup.  Now I can't find them.  Where did they go?  I need my glasses.  Where are my glasses.  I won't be able to see the keys unless I find my glasses.  So, they were over there on the shelf when I answered the phone.

Remembering is a topic of more frequent conversation among my peers (Baby Boomers) who anticipate their golden years more anxiously now than they ever did before.  In the past, retirement hardly seemed relevant, and those of us who were in good health felt ourselves warmed by an eternal flame of vibrant youth.  The joke was that aging was only something that happened to wine, cheese and our parents.  Most of them got more mellow with age, but some got stinky and difficult to tolerate.  I am happy to say my own parents are ones who have mellowed and who are still fine examples of their generation.  

Let's see, I forgot where I was going with this.  Oh yeah.  Memory.  By now, enough scientific studies have proven that memories are able to stick around longer if they are associated with emotion, pain or adrenaline.  If a car nearly runs you down as you step out into a busy street, it's safe to say that that particular memory and its associated lesson for survival will be vivid in your mind's eye for, oh, the rest of your life.

When you write a grocery list of ordinary things and set it down while you look for your keys, no emotion or adrenaline is attached, so the memory fades about as quickly as your breath on a mirror.  If you write a grocery list while you feel stressed about whether you can get back in time to cook the chicken before the family comes home, that mild stress will help you remember things better; you probably won't even need to write it down.

On the other hand, if you are trying to remember tiny details and you are near panic, the blankety-blank shopping list will be impossible to deal with as your nervous system will be primed to fight or flee.  One way or another, you've noticed by now that some things are clear and other things are very difficult to recall.  Science is working on this whole realm of brain neurology feverishly these days, but there still remain many questions about how our memory works and how to improve it.

The blank in memory about ordinary details such as what actor played the main role in that movie that won the Academy Awards in 1966 is not cause for dismay as far as I'm concerned.  More important to me is a consistency of character, living in alignment with one's beliefs and values.  I might forget a few things, but I am going to act in a way that is congruent with honesty, loyalty, honor and a few others I can't remember at the moment (just kidding).  Except for those of us stricken with Alzheimer's disease,  good character and being aligned with one's values will perhaps be the more important focus for me and my peers.

No matter what age I am at the moment, living honorably and with love more prevalent in my life than fear, I'll be well served; it's how I intend to live.  As long as I remember to keep my values, I'll probably be okay.

Hey!  I found my keys.  They were right here the whole time.

Grandmothers' Cooking

I'm being held indoors against my will.  A wet storm is bumbling around, looking for an exit and having found none, now sits on us heavily.  I think it's going to be a while before I'll be seeing the sun again.

I'm remembering comforting meals I've had, rustic peasant foods, made of unsophisticated ingredients by hardworking people in simpler times.  Tables in many kitchens over many decades, centuries, were like magnets to the families that sat down together.  At the end of a long day, they were soothed with savory meats, vegetables, flavors and fragrances.  Their words and expressions, gestures and laughter come to me if I cook the same foods they did, taste the flavors and savor the aromas they did.

I was fortunate to have grandmothers who lived nearby and that I could spend time with and learn from, make a connection to what their lives were like, taste their foods.  It's a relief to know I can recall them whenever I cook a food they taught me to make, and it's very easy to see them across the table from me.  We sometimes sit in silence as we eat, but we are content.  It's a strong comfort and a true pleasure.

I like to give myself a challenge:  If my refrigerator looks bleak and empty, I take what little is there and come up with something - not only edible but grand.  Something from nothing.  I believe a memory is like that, too, and has the undeniable power to recreate other, former lives out of what might be said to be nothing.  Life from remembered love and a shared common experience.

Because of my grandmothers and almost in tribute to them, I've learned to keep these things on hand, no matter what:  Salt, pepper, onions, garlic and olive oil.  You could take an old dried stick (practically) and make it delicious with those things.  I haven't actually done that, but nearly so.  When I am fortunate enough to have a fresh tomato, a bit of protein of some sort, I can conjure heaven and set it out on the table to enjoy.

The grandmothers taught me this:  You must coax the soul of the food you are preparing out into the open by handling it with respect and attention.  Cook it slowly if it's to be cooked.  Use sharp knives if it's to be cut.  Cook it, don't kill it.  You mustn't rush it.

When you've had food that's been prepared by someone who understands the nature of the food they have cooked, who appreciated having it to cook, then its flavors are fantastic.  At those times you are elevated to a place of collective memory, and your ancestors gather around with you and sit at your table again.

So, on a funky day like today, I feel the call of the kitchen and hear the whispers of many centuries of ancestral women who took time in their kitchens coaxing forth the soul of food they had available to prepare and eat, even if it was a weed in the garden or a scrap of fish.  They had listened to their mothers and their grandmothers, learned, watched, and became teachers themselves.  Sustenance, the role of food, feeds my spirit today.