A Small Woman in a Large City

A Small Woman in a Large City

            She used to wage hours of war against the mixing container. Her in the long brown hair, the sweet summer skirt and the white apron around her waist. New York’s heat would take a toll against her in the kitchen, where 2^nd Avenue’s breeze consistently failed to air condition our apartment. It was like an oven some days, yet she slaved over her fudge as if the world depended on it. She knew something however that I didn’t know – she knew that fudge would bring smiles to the faces of everyone she knew. She knew a secret about food that I still cannot figure out. My mother could manipulate sweets to bring you the best tasting desert in the world. I was only a kid then, maybe seven years old, but her sweets never fail to bring delight - explosions in the mouth you could say.

            Food never was the concrete of our family like it was for some of my Russian and Italian friends in Brooklyn. My mother would cook dinner for our family every night – my sister, my father and myself. My dad wasn’t ever around though, so most of the time it was just the three of us. Occasionally I would slip out and take a stroll downtown with some friends, pretending we were were fancy businessmen attending an upscale dinner. We never could afford anything more than a slice of pizza and a Dr. Pepper. The price of Manhattan took a toll on our family in those days, and it wasn’t until we left the city that my father’s work began to pick up. But back to the pizza. New York style pizza wasn’t just any pizza, it was that thin styled dough with the tomato and mozzarella that came from the only home I ever knew, and that New York style pizza still makes by mouth water. You were not content until the grease was dripping down your face and your lips were puckered. Once you fold a pizza in half, you’ll never want to eat it any other way.

            Pizza however wasn’t the only food that made my mouth water. My mother used to take us out every now and again to a hole in the wall ethnic restaurant. She loved taking us out, because she knew how much we loved it. That’s the kind of woman she was; if we were happy, she was happy. We would take the seven train across the East River, and into Queens we would wander, three small people walking in one large city. We would stop by the Thai restaurants, and the Chinese restaurants, the Moroccan cookhouses and the Middle Eastern falafel stands. New York was never for a second short of diversity. When almost nine million people speak over three thousand languages in five suburbs, you were guaranteed a run for your money.

            The food from those areas brings me back to the time, the nineties that was, right before Mayor Giuliani cleaned up the streets. The streets weren’t nearly as safe as they are now, and I remember those sketchy train rides and unpredictable bus stops where there was almost certainly one crazy person. I personally loved meeting crazy people, but my mother, not so much. I still like to pretend they weren’t crazy; they just had their own New York swag, they had their own agenda. It is amazing how much changes over such a short period of time.

            My favorite may have been going to Cooney’s Island in Brooklyn and eating those world famous hot dogs. I would not recommend the rollercoaster after the hot dogs though, being that it is the oldest wooden rollercoaster in the world, you may not feel too hot afterwards. I don’t know if it was so much the hot dogs I loved, or if it was the soft crashing of the waves against the shore. Those were beautiful days, where the waves crashed softly against the shore and the sun beat gently against my face. Perhaps it is the memories I hold of food that brings me back to the moments that really mattered in my life - my mother’s hand pressing against mine.

Even now, she remains nothing short of a champion in the kitchen. She is the baker’s rival, a short woman with a tough ego – not the sort of ego that drives you mad, but more of one that makes you want to give her a hug every time you see her. The compassion in her heart always gave you a new appreciation for the meaning of love, and that love manifested itself in the tastiest of treats. That sweet soul cooked for hours on end in the cramped, four by four space we called a kitchen. Yet deep down inside, I know she helped make the world a more decent place to live in the process.

            My mother continues to cook, however not like she used to. She is older now, and she has become delicate and fragile with time. She no longer has kids to raise or a husband to feed, but once a year I still check my mailbox around Christmas in hopes of receiving that one white box of fudge with a golden ribbon sealing the edges. It is a glorious package, one that causes the eyes and taste buds to glow in content. Today when I see that box of fudge, my stomach churns and my heart becomes anxious. It is nothing short of an experience, perhaps one I can share with you some day.