after dinner
In April of 1997, I was sitting around with Julie Ingram and Jeff Walker in Julie's Upper East Seventies apartment, and happened across the website afterdinner.com, which is now defunct. It was a collection of literaryish, bloggy essays by various contributors, curated by Alexis Massie, a writer and confessionalist I read for years after. I was so struck by the first essay I read, written by Adam Rakunas, that I saved it.
Now you might think that bothering to save something in the age of the internet is a strange thing to do. After all, everything's in the cloud, right? Nope: the other day I got a hankering to read it again, and an exhaustive Google search did no good at all. I just don't think this essay is anywhere to be found on the web. So I'm doing my civic duty and resubmitting it to the world. Adam Rakunas, if you're out there and don't want this here, just let me know. Meanwhile, you (and everyone else) can enjoy a really nice rhapsody on food and fellowship, and I can finally thank you for words that still pierce my heart.
When I was in sixth grade, I did something really stupid. Mom was serving dinner —– burritos, I remember —– and I didn't like them. I took a bite, made a face, and told Mom it sucked.
She put down her burrito, leaned across the table, and gave me that look that mothers have perfected over the ages. "You don't like it? Next time, you make it."
Little did I know, but my snide comments would change my life.
I started out with burritos. When I graduated from that, I learned pasta. Then chicken stir-fry. Then when I was in high school Mom got me The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors for Christmas, and it all went downhill from there. I became addicted to cooking and started throwing dinner parties for my friends.
We're not talking about a li'l ol' barbecue with Ball Park franks and Doritos. I mean homemade pizzas an inch-and-a-half thick with a crust loaded with basil and rosemary sitting underneath pesto sauce and peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, and sausage and two or three cheeses. Enchiladas full of lime-marinated, mesquite-grilled chicken and smothered with a green sauce made of tomatillos, onions, garlic, and fire-roasted chilies that was made in an old cast iron skillet. Multi-course Chinese meals of rice and noodles and dim sum that I rolled and stuffed until my hands smelled of ginger and shrimp paste and cha siu sauce. Indian feasts with curries, lentils, flat nan bread and spices that permeated my kitchen for weeks.
Put me in a kitchen and I can make food that will make your taste buds sing. Put me in a kitchen and I can give you joy on a plate with a side of hummus. Put me in a kitchen and I can kick Martha Stewart's ass.
See, somewhere along the line, cooking went from sustaining the body to sustaining the spirit. I lived to make food and get my hands covered in bread dough and serve up banquets for my friends who subsisted on Top Ramen and dorm food. We would all eat and eat and eat until our bellies and our souls were filled to capacity. We did this so many times in school, slowly filling my old apartment with people and warmth, then grabbing plates and silverware and whatever I'd cooked and mmming our delight.
I've since moved out of that place, and we are all scattered across the world. But I can still make phone calls and send emails and have my home fill up and warm up and I can watch it happen again. And something wondrous hits me.
There is a feeling I get at a certain point in the evening. It comes right after we've cleaned our plates and we're draining what's left in our goblets. We all sit around the dining room table or drift into the living room or spill out into the cold night air of the porch. We are all almost comatose from eating too much, but we are also so happy to be with each other again and telling stories we've all heard a dozen times but will never grow tired of. There is a feeling that arrives between us putting down our forks and me realizing how much of a disaster area my kitchen is, and I love it very much. I still can't give it a name.
It is so wonderful. It is so joyous.
When I was in grade school, the nuns in CCD used to tell us that Heaven is an eternal banquet where we feast on the bounty of God. I think that that's close, but they missed something important. If there is a Heaven, I hope that there is a banquet, but only if we sit at the table right after we arrive. What I hope is eternal and everlasting is that part after the feast, where we can sit around with the ones we love and smile and enjoy each other's company and tell stories that we've heard for millennia but still haven't grown tired of. An eternal after dinner.
That, and someone else to do the dishes for me.
Adam Rakunas
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