my pear madeleines
I sliced up a pear for Greta to eat. After a while, she brought it in to have me slice the skin off the pieces, so she could just enjoy the flesh. Just as the flesh of a pear has a grittiness that offsets its buttery smooth texture, the skin has a grittiness too. Somehow the grittiness perfectly complements the flavor of a good ripe pear.
I've noticed over the years that when a pear is just the right size and just the right color (deep yellow), and has just the right amount of blemishing, and is just the right softness, it brings back powerful memories of my grandmother, my mother's mother. In our old house she lived on the other side of the same block, just a couple of houses down; in a neighborhood with only some fences around back yards, it was easy to navigate through to her house, even at a very young age.
I'd go over there and dig with her little red wood-handled shovel, perfectly proportioned for little men. I'd see her paintings, smell the turpentine smell of her house, work in my laboratory (the upstairs middle bedroom with the salmon-pink silk duvet, from which I could look out and see impossibly far: the Joske's Department Store, the odd swoop of a car dealership's big sign).
She'd fix me food, sometimes whipping up mashed potatoes, sometimes a special treat of raisin bread with icing, and sometimes a freshly cut pear. Slicing the skin off the pear today, I could see her apparition, in a blue polyester dress that looked stylish on Megan Draper in 1969 but looked grandmotherly on her in 1972, sitting there at her breakfast-and-tea table that looked out onto her backyard. She always got a patient, methodical look on her face when she was preparing food. I've seen that same look cross Greta's face when she does something like cook or draw or build.
I picked up the slim shavings, all grit and no butter, and as I tasted them I wondered what Greta and Clara will carry with them from their grandparents: will the taste of mint ice cream (Catherine's parents) or applesauce (mine) in just that certain bowl bring tears and memories of long-gone balcony people, the first people they loved?
And will an interesting, odd man, forty-six years old in the year 2124, long after the death of Grandmother Greta or Grandmother Clara, find himself wracked with love and loss, weeping in the living room, shoulders heaving, weeping like he never did at her death, the great pageant of time before him like a Treasure-Room of Requirement that only opens when the sky decides to turn around above him and reveal the blessings of a thousand generations?
I've noticed over the years that when a pear is just the right size and just the right color (deep yellow), and has just the right amount of blemishing, and is just the right softness, it brings back powerful memories of my grandmother, my mother's mother. In our old house she lived on the other side of the same block, just a couple of houses down; in a neighborhood with only some fences around back yards, it was easy to navigate through to her house, even at a very young age.
I'd go over there and dig with her little red wood-handled shovel, perfectly proportioned for little men. I'd see her paintings, smell the turpentine smell of her house, work in my laboratory (the upstairs middle bedroom with the salmon-pink silk duvet, from which I could look out and see impossibly far: the Joske's Department Store, the odd swoop of a car dealership's big sign).
She'd fix me food, sometimes whipping up mashed potatoes, sometimes a special treat of raisin bread with icing, and sometimes a freshly cut pear. Slicing the skin off the pear today, I could see her apparition, in a blue polyester dress that looked stylish on Megan Draper in 1969 but looked grandmotherly on her in 1972, sitting there at her breakfast-and-tea table that looked out onto her backyard. She always got a patient, methodical look on her face when she was preparing food. I've seen that same look cross Greta's face when she does something like cook or draw or build.
I picked up the slim shavings, all grit and no butter, and as I tasted them I wondered what Greta and Clara will carry with them from their grandparents: will the taste of mint ice cream (Catherine's parents) or applesauce (mine) in just that certain bowl bring tears and memories of long-gone balcony people, the first people they loved?
And will an interesting, odd man, forty-six years old in the year 2124, long after the death of Grandmother Greta or Grandmother Clara, find himself wracked with love and loss, weeping in the living room, shoulders heaving, weeping like he never did at her death, the great pageant of time before him like a Treasure-Room of Requirement that only opens when the sky decides to turn around above him and reveal the blessings of a thousand generations?
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