I MAY BE OLD…

But my mind is old too!

TLW

The other day TLW (The Little Woman) and I were talking about some friends and things of the past that we did together. She couldn’t remember one event in particular and I did.

“No, I can’t say I remember that!”

“Oh sure, don’t you remember, they stayed over that night?”

“No, no I can’t say I do. Where did they sleep?”

“Well she slept in our bed with you and he slept in the living room with me, and the kids got the bedrooms.”

This was about 35 years ago, and I added:

“I remember making breakfast that morning. Remember, I made Thomas’s English Muffins with cheese and tomato that I broiled in the oven so the kids would eat?”

Suddenly her face lights up and she starts laughing at me-

When I was alive

“No I don’t remember but I know you would!”

Gee, you’d think she would be happy that I still have my memory, and not slipping into “Old timer’s disease” as Dad would say, meaning Alzheimer’s.

I have been accused of remembering what I ate the day I was born, like I’m some kind of food junkie that remembers every meal he ever ate! That is impossible and I deny it: maybe most meals but not ‘Every’ meal.

The reason I remember these things is they are associated with something else, usually the event that occurred. It is natural for me to remember that way because being raised in a simple family life, things and events centered around family, we sat together at the end of the day and discussed what our lives were like at the dinner table. When I married TLW, she and I did the same thing with our kids, her coming from a similar happy home life.

Thursday Night Pasta

Of course eating was not the significant event for Irish families like it was for Italians, no we ate more elaborate meals, cooking was an identity for an Italian mother, and she always took pride in it. Irish cooking in those days was more simple and basic. Nothing wrong with pot roast or roast beef and mashed potatoes especially on a cold winter Sunday afternoon.

However, meals were like a marker in a sense, every night of the week you knew what you would get, Sunday afternoon was pasta and meat and salad with pastries, Monday was either chicken or beef soup, Tuesday was pasta, Wednesday was chicken, or shrimp or scallops or veal and maybe lamb chops, Thursday was pasta with peas or some other pasta dish other than meat sauce and meatless Fridays, because we were Catholic ate pizza, and Saturday night was steak, on an open gas fueled stove. 

By the way, the couple that stayed over that night 35 years ago, for dinner we had pizza, home made!