The day breaks sweaty like the last. Like every day in summer. And especially so in the city where there are no trees to provide shade – only countless blocks of cement baking like the desert, or like the desserts baking in oven pans from the church basement after service. All we can do is hope for rain.
Gogo was raised by her uncle after her mother died and her father left for Argentina. Her father never returned from South America, and whether he was alive or dead she never cared to find out.
Love is freedom, Gogo said. Love is flying and falling and falling and catching and getting up again. Love is not what it was before, she said, but what it will be tomorrow.
It is nearly Christmas. The year is drawing to a close and I realize I will again be late on rent at the start of month. There is work available in my old friend Boron’s restaurant. He calls and asks, with a certain note of desperation, if I might be able to fill a dishwasher
I think about the plate, empty, washed by someone with wrinkled fingers forever reeking of sweat and astringent of cleaning chemicals, waiting to be full again.
The meal, consisting of something from the garden, something from Lake Superior, and something that Ralf across the table made with his hands for the pièce de résistance, is over.
Good food is meant to be eaten and enjoyed. But it is as much about what we are eating as it is about where we are eating, and who we are eating with.
Mirrors sparkle in candlelight as the tastes and smells of food root deep root deep in memories we’ll hold onto when we’re old and gray.
Everyone needs to eat – but not only to survive. Here we take a look at America’s relationship with food and drink.
Cooking rice from a big bag of it in the corner. Often potatoes, and canned black beans. Tomatoes if we were lucky, though they never lasted long.
