Food

I don’t like chocolate. To the women in my family, this is cause to question my being switched at birth. I blame my father. As the story goes, mom was off shopping, and when she got home, my dad was feeding me chocolate cake and braunschweiger. I was six months old. I haven’t liked either since.

My Dad likes unusual food. Like Limburger cheese. You cannot go near it before realizing it is not supposed to be ingested: the smell is horrible. I don’t remember how it got started, but it ended with a bunch of kids hiding in the bathroom, because dad was chasing us with Limburger cheese. Somewhere in the middle was a chase around the neighborhood. From the graphic memories that I have, I think the Limburger cheese won.

My dad grew up on a farm. He decided that Anna and I should have the farm experience, even if we lived in the suburbs. He brought home cute little fluffy chicks. Anna and I took care of them: feeding them, corralling them, catching them when they got lose, and even though we were warned not to—naming them. Six weeks later, dad set up “the block.” It was a thick piece of wood that had two nails in it, with just enough space between them to slide the neck of a chicken.

Mom was chosen to hold the chicken while dad positioned the neck and sliced. Anna and I ran inside and cried, so I didn’t get to see what happened next. Mom wasn’t much of a country girl herself, screaming and apologizing to the chicken after it went running around headless. As the story goes, when my dad went to reach into the chicken to clean it out, the air suction created a noise and my mom swore it was talking.

Every summer my dad sees to it that we have an amazing garden. I used to slip out of my diaper and run striking out the back door to the raspberry patch. Makes sense to me. Raspberries are still my favorite fruit. Anyone who has grown tomatoes knows it is impossible to keep up with them. After awhile, some just get wasted. Well, not our tomato patch. The next door neighbor boy and I had the most fantastic rotten tomato fight. Epic. I think that should be a part of everyone’s childhood.

My mom always makes my dad’s lunch for him to take to work. I remember “helping” her, standing on a chair to help spread the mustard on the sandwich. But the special part was always the napkin. I would get to help write a secret message on it: a secret like I love you. Even now when I return home, I hear mom moving around the kitchen, making dad’s lunch. It is just a part of how things work.

We didn’t have a lot of money when I was little. It was the best thing ever, except for the instant milk and pulpy orange juice. At the time, it was cheaper, so that is what we got. When I turned eight, for my birthday I asked my mom for REAL milk, please. Every day, Mom would put a glass of instant milk and pulpy orange juice on the table and tell me to drink it before lunch.

I was sneaky, and mom suffered from health problems, so it wasn’t hard to find ways around digesting the horrible liquids. I tried pouring the milk and juice down the kitchen drain, but I was too short. I tried pouring it down the toilet, but it looked suspicious carrying a glass of milk into the bathroom. But then I found it. The heating and cooling duct. Right there in the kitchen floor—a hole where things magically disappeared.

Fast forward 10 years, sitting around the table telling old stories and laughing. Someone brought up instant milk. I brought up how I hated it and found ways around actually drinking it. It was then that two and two were put together: the mysterious sticky duct leak, and Rachel not complaining about drinking her milk and juice anymore. Mystery solved.

Cod liver oil was even worse than Limburger cheese because we weren’t allowed to run away from it—we had to drink it. It was an old bottle of green slime and come cold season, my whole family lined up and got a spoonful. No sugar. My father thinks it is educational to try new foods. Liver, tongue, and sauerkraut were my worse memories, trying to chew without breathing and thinking, “Why can’t I just be in a normal family?”

*

Apple pie is on my shoulder. Why is there apple pie on my shoulder? I look at my sister next to me. Apple pie is on her window. The plate and fork are in her hands, but the apple pie is everywhere. She gasps for air, the seat belt burnt into her skin.

Panic. But not yet. Maybe no one will notice if I drive off. But the car won’t start. With a sigh of resignation, I check the damage. Distractedly jumping out of the car, I slam my finger in the door. Visions of the police showing up to arrest me with my finger stuck haunt me enough to yank it out.

No, the car isn’t going anywhere. Neither is the little blue Geo Metro, fatally parked in the spot my car now possessed. Luck is not on my side, even if apple pie is. Lights go on in houses. People come running. My forehead’s bleeding—sit down on the curb, they motion. Word is sent two blocks down, where our little white church sits full of people eating their apple pie.

My sister is still breathing hard. “No,” she says indignantly, “I did not throw up apple pie.” Emergency room or jail, I am not sure where they will take me. I am the one stupid enough to look down while driving, turning the steering wheel in the process. Do they take you to jail for that?

Bright lights and an ambulance. No, I am not getting in there: I am going home. But Sister Parran will have her way, as she drives me to the hospital. Sister Parran always gets her way—that is how the world works, I think sullenly. But she does make good apple pie.

*

Sitting in a Chinese buffet restaurant. That is when it happened. Between sauce covered broccoli and fortune cookies I stepped back from the table talk around me and realized it. I had the family I had always wanted.

When you grow up, you have this idea in your head—the idea of the perfect family. I thought I’d met them when I was eight, but then I spent the night at their house and we had to go to bed at 7:00pm. That was NOT the perfect family. In fact, the more I got to know other families, the more I realized mine wasn’t as bad as I thought.

And then I became an adult. I grew up and left home. Fortunately, it wasn’t permanent and I keep coming back, so a Chinese buffet it was. We have issues. We have problems—I actually wrote a letter to my first boyfriend telling him to run away, very, very fast. But we are a family and we love each other.

And sitting there together, not caring about if we laugh too loud or eat too many noodles, I knew those people would always be there for me, and I for them. And if I could choose anyone, it would be them. Bonus points for being fun, too.