Cheesecake

I've got graham cracker crust on the brain. Maybe it's because it was my birthday a couple of days ago and I know that I shouldn't eat cake, so of course I obsess about it, or it's the cooking show on my TV this morning that was all about cheesecake and a chicken salad made with grapes and walnuts, both of which made me think of an old friend and things that happened a long time ago.

When my sister was dying, I found that all I could bear to watch were home improvement shows and cooking programs. I'm not sure why, but they were comforting and played like excerpts from someone's perfect life where things got done and people ate together and not only enjoyed the food but each other's company. Food connects me to a constant stream of memory. For instance, I'm eating a tuna salad sandwich as I write this and that same cheesecake friend and I split a tuna sandwich on the morning after we found out her boyfriend had been killed in a motorcycle crash. That's my memory anyway; I also remember her grabbing my hand and telling me that no matter what, we weren't using this as an excuse to go off our diets. She's also the first person who ever served me a chicken salad that contained grapes, and it was a revelation. That's when I began to understand that there was a world beyond limply boiled vegetables and special meals weren't just a grilled T-bone steak with frozen fries from the oven. My family never stayed in a place longer than two years and adapted to living in a number of exotic locations, but it seemed to me that making that salad expressed a real sense of adventure. Hard to believe I got that all from the contrast of sliced grapes, mayonnaise and chunked chicken, but there you are.

I'm not a cook, though I can cook some things well enough to be grateful when someone goes to the time and trouble of making something for me. That brings me back to the famous cheesecake with the graham cracker crust that my friend only made on special occasions. Good friends got one on their birthdays and she even made one once for a famous director's birthday shortly after she started working for him. He didn't appreciate it; he thought it was too personal a gesture. We're all a lot older and maybe wiser now, and I hope that director understands just how dumb he was. She showed a generosity of spirit that he lacked.

Baptist Sno Cones

A friend of mine is starting a blog and her search for a title brought back memories of the summer that I became a Southern Baptist. I was ten; my family was living in Corpus Christi, Texas, where my father ran a satellite tracking station for NASA. It was incredibly hot and there was nothing to do. Every other kid on our block went to vacation Bible school at the local Baptist church and would come home every afternoon licking sweet, icy sno cones that came in every color of the rainbow. My parents believed in the Chinese restaurant menu theory of religious studies, i.e., try a little bit of everything, and I wanted a daily sno cone, so my sister and I joined up.

I did really well too, winning a prize for memorizing the most Bible verses: a highly varnished slice of tree trunk with a decoupage picture of Jesus praying at Gethsemane. On Sundays, we had Communion (Grape Hi-C drink and saltine crackers) and wore red robes and sang in the choir. By the end of the summer I was ready to be immersed in the big tiled baptism pool by the choir loft. My sister was baptized that same Sunday. The very next morning, two adult members of the church showed up at my house to tell my parents that since their daughters had joined the congregation, my father was required to tithe 10% of his salary. That's when I stopped being a Baptist. I knew instantly that they never wanted us. All they wanted was the money. It was the biggest betrayal I'd ever experienced from anyone outside of my family.