Did you know it’s National Ice Cream Month? And what a month! What a substance! So I’m sharing my ice-cream recollections with you. (In Print has the text version of this piece.) You can hear more about my adventures with fresh peach ice cream at Vacation.
Thank you so much for sharing your friend Miriam! I needed to hear her take on lunch as an only child…it was like reliving my parochial school days all over again…and a chance to “grow up” about something I had forgotten, yet needed to let go. What a blessing! Leah
On Peanut Butter Neglect
I took a little journey through the Chanukahs of my childhood, which were filled with evenings of fiercely competitive dreidel games after the candles were lit, the meal was eaten and the presents (mostly socks and pajamas) were opened. We played for chocolate or nuts. When my Mother got bored she would start to eat her reserve, which was the beginning of the end. For all of you who need a little course in dreidel, there is a Hebrew letter on each side of the dreidel (a top made of wood, plastic, even clay) The player spins the dreidel and if it falls with the Gimmel up, the player wins the whole pot. If the hay is up, player takes half the pot. If the nun is up, player takes nothing and if the shin is up, player puts 2 in. You ante up again and another player has a turn. The letters stand for the phrase nes gadol hayah sham, a great miracle happened there. The miracle was that the small amount of oil found for the eternal light in the temple lasted eight days until more could be refined.
My mother’s decline into dementia, from The Passaggio. Pills to poultry.
On the road, surprise is always one of the markers. Budapest is a marvelous city that offers so much, wrapped in a language that got lost in my family two generations before.
Maybe this is how objects take on personalities. They accompany us through the maelstroms and meals of our lives. We are our favorite toys.
Where did I get that slap in the face? Traditional routes of childhood and loving Sunday morning of stinky dead fish. Ah….
