As a daily consumer of Facebook I am often amused by the posts and ads that I encounter that speak to the days of my youth. We humans are rather sentimental and tend to look back on the times of our childhood with great joy as long as our experiences were positive and loving. Mine was quite wondrous save for the time when my father died so suddenly. I am reminded of how strange it was for a man so young to die when I see my former students celebrating their thirty third birthdays and I think of how many moments of life lie ahead for them. It seems almost unreal that such a young man left the earth forever and yet is remembered to this very day by those of us who knew him.
One of the common posts on Facebook asks what our favorite places to eat were back in the day. When my father was alive that would have had to be a Tex Mex restaurant that was located in the Montrose area of Houston, Texas. It was a glorious place with polished tiles from Mexico welcoming us from the time we walked through the doors. The colors and the ambiance were exciting, a dining adventure that I knew from the start would be yummy. I loved the food and joy that my family felt on those excursions.
Once my father died our nights out mostly consisted of visiting my grandparents and aunts and uncles. Because my mother’s budget was as slim as they might be our dining adventures consisted mostly of visiting local cafeterias where we were allowed to select three items however we might wish. Mostly my brothers and I would choose meat or fish with a vegetable of some kind and a dessert. I was a fried fish fan and almost always wanted macaroni and cheese to go along with my entree. My dessert of choice was apple pie.
If the budget was doing well our mother might take us downtown to munch on hotdogs from James’ Coney Island, a local hangout where we would see celebrities and wealthy matrons mixing it up with those of us who were ordinary people. We sat at school desks munching on the delightful hotdogs and celebrating the fact that we got through the line for ordering without being yelled at by the men working at the steam tables. Eating there was exciting and I still have an addiction to the hotdogs even though the original location with its local color is long gone and the hotdogs have grown ever smaller over time.
Sometimes for birthdays and other special times our mother would save enough from the budget to take us to the Tel-Wink Grill on Telephone Road where we enjoyed waffles or roast beef with gravy on a bed of white bread. The food there was almost as good as the country cooking that my grandmother Minnie Bell had become famous for preparing. Other times we joyfully gathered at a local Tex Mex place that did not have the ambiance of Felix’s but did have very tasty food.
It was only after I met my husband Mike that I learned that there were other more opulent options for dining out. After we had been dating for a time his parents wanted to meet me at an elegant restaurant that specialized in steak and seafood. From the moment that we entered I felt uncomfortable and wondered if I would know how to act. It was quite obviously a place where prices seemed to be no object and I almost gulped when I saw them posted next to the entrees listed on the menu.
I did my best to pretend that I was accustomed to such experiences but even the elegance of my future mother-in-law with her diamond rings and gold jewelry made me feel out of place and somehow lacking. I found myself wondering if I would have been more comfortable there if my father had lived and we had gone to such places as a family. I remember the whole affair as a kind of out of body experience in which I felt as though I was there and not there at the same time. I can’t even recall what I ordered or how it tasted because I was in a world that I did not fully understand.
Eventually all of that changed but first I used my skills at living on a small budget as Mike and I attempted to survive with an income so small that it barely paid the rent on our apartment and allowed us to purchase groceries for the month. Mike was amazed by my ability to squeeze a dime and make it last far beyond its limitations. He learned about my world and then we built our earning power from there. Eventually eating at an expensive restaurant would be more commonplace for us but inside I never really forgot to appreciate my good fortune and to think about those who were hungry because they had such small incomes. I have never taken the comfort of my life for granted.
I ultimately became the best of friends with my mother-in-law who was more down to earth than I first thought she was. I bonded with her when I learned that she had lost her father when she was in her early twenties. That loss was as traumatic for her as mine had been. We often spoke of how much we missed our fathers and how losing them had defined us. She became one of the wisest women I had ever known who made it feel okay for me to long for my father even years after he was gone. I learned that she was actually a very humble woman and that my initial assessment of her as a wealthy women with whom I would never bond was totally wrong. She had mostly wanted to welcome me with a special feast and never once thought that it would make me uncomfortable.
My favorite outings for dinner became her Sunday feasts that were so much like the ones my grandma Minnie had prepared in my childhood. We would sit around the dining table munching on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and then the two of us would enjoy an after dinner treat of hot tea and cookies. In those moments we began to realize how much alike we were and she became a kind of big sister and mother-in-law all in one. Somehow money or lack of it did not matter. Only our kinship and understanding of each other made those meals as special as the ones that I had enjoyed as a child.
I have never taken a shared meal for granted because it is in the sharing of our bounty that we understand our common humanity. It is a spiritual moment when what we consume matters far less than the people who are there with us. They are the moments that keep our memories alive.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 