At six years old, I sat down after Sunday morning cartoons and wrote my very first story. The illustrations were nothing to speak of, but the premise went something like this:
Bugs Bunny becomes a priest and takes over my parish church, Good Shepherd. Unexpectedly, he looks very sharp in a vestment. He delivers a sermon that lasts only one minute long, and then Mass is over. From the pulpit, a carrot is loudly, unabashedly chewed. Before we all genuflect and skedaddle, one young lady is called forth from the congregation (myself, of course.) And in an exercise of Divine intervention, Bugs makes an exception for me, little two-more-years-till- communion me, and lets me taste the sacramental wafer. The end.
I gave the story to my father, a British Catholic in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, and he loved it. At a time when he mainly intimidated me (his accent, his suits and cigars, his bowls of spicy radishes) I found in his appreciation of this story a common thread for the two of us to hang onto. My father was amused by this story because he knew what it felt like to be apart, and to long for something.
Later I learned that he was a war-raised boarding school boy, but at the time, the simple knowledge that he and I both shared a common emotion -wanting what we couldn’t have- made his camaraderie feel more attainable. He understood, much more than my generically Judeo-Christian mother, what this fantasy was really about.
It was about eating, and more specifically, how certain British Catholics eat. My father and I may have finished all our vegetables, but as soon as the plates were cleared we were scarfing down the ice cream like dieters after Lent. If you’ve ever been impressed with the magician Uri Geller’s ability to bend spoons, just talk to my mother.
“Are you kidding me?” she’ll say, “My husband and kids did that every night with the Haagen-Dazs.”
Dinner, it seems, was merely a means to an end. Were my father and I grateful for our meals, for the nourishment, ritual and family? Of course. Did we break our bread and say, “Thanks, God. I’m full now”? No chance: we’re Catholic. We’d suffered through those green beans, damn it, and now we wanted our reward.
No matter how many times my sister told me that the Eucharist tasted like paste, like cardboard, I was convinced it was an incomparable delicacy, cruelly withheld from me at the point in Mass when I got the hungriest. No matter how many hours I spent in religion class contemplating that the wafer was in fact the body of Christ (umm, yuck?) or that unleavened bread didn’t actually sound so good, whenever that procession to the altar began it took all I had not to bolt to the front of the line. My nail biting, I am certain of this, began in those cold pews.
The sacrament was, above all else, forbidden to me. As a Catholic, my dad understood the rather biblical scope of this appeal. Having been confirmed long ago, he had perhaps a distant memory of yearning for that tiny holy cake, but had undoubtedly transferred this yearning to cakes of other kinds. A middle aged, successful, tea-totaler: my father turned to one of the lesser (though no less enjoyable) vices this earth has to offer: dessert. And although it has been years since I attended a Catholic service on my own, I can no more pass up a cookie tray than I pass a church without making the sign of the cross. I can’t help it; it’s a reflex, and a symbol of my cultural inheritance.
My father, more than anyone I have ever known, myself included, subscribes to a sin and repent method of sweet eating. I speak here not of dieting, but of a lifelong and daily pattern of sacrifice, then rejoice. Recounting his lunches, his neat, sit-down, unvarying lunches, I see the evidence of culinary piety:
For lunch he eats one wedge of sharp, hard cheese, one green apple (crisp enough to make your gums bleed), and one celery-stick, sea-salted.
Every. Day.
To me this seems a meager, very British meal, although I can hear him protesting. “Apples? Meager?” he would say, “the closest thing I came to a piece of fruit as a lad was a fresh turnip.” After lunch he takes his plate to the sink, washes it carefully, and proceeds to look through the pantry. He then stands there eating at least ten pieces of shortbread, or a small box of chocolates, or multiple slivers of pie (which in the end, equal about one proper slice that probably would have looked more satisfying that way). Pastries? He’s a dead man. Dove bars? You bet. Those Dare maple cookies from Trader Joe’s? Too late: he polished them off yesterday.
He eats “lunch dessert”.
Every. Day.
God love him.
He also starts off every morning with a white grapefruit. Not juiced, not sugared, just cut in half and served with a barbed spoon. My mother, an artist, once did a cartoon of two women at a kitchen table, one saying to the other:
“I think it was his continual assumption of the moral superiority of white grapefruit over pink grapefruit that finally did it.”
My sister and I found this cartoon hilarious, namely because it made fun of our dad, and I still have it, hanging over my desk. It occurred to me much later in life, however, how true it really is. To my father, white grapefruit actually is morally superior. Taste one and you’ll know: it’s like a hair shirt for your tongue.
And after that torture, what’s the harm in one little section of Pepperidge Farm Milanos as a snack, for “breakfast dessert”? But if the bag is nearly empty anyhow, and the two of us are sitting down together, a smile is bound to cross his face.
“Go on then,” he’ll say, laying the accent on a degree thicker, “let’s both have another little taste and finish this up. That way we can start in on the rum ball tin after our salads for dinner.”
And he’s so happy, and so persuasive, that it’s like a benediction. He is the ultimate enabler because, after seventy years of church every Sunday, he really knows how to make you feel absolved. There are times as a child when you’re too young for the sacrament, or the party going on downstairs. Your dad has just put you to bed after a dinner party, but you can hear the laughing and the clinking of glass. What you don’t know is that sometimes all of life feels that way, like a thing you aren’t grown up enough for, or a party being had in some other room.
My father recognized this in my Bugs Bunny tale, and on those rare visits home, when we share a cookie, or a crumble, or the last of a bowl of whipped cream… I am reminded that he still understands. That rich, decadent, sugary thing on the kitchen counter? We think we deserve it. Because the sacrament, I can tell you now, is neither tasty nor filling. It is kind of sweet in a whole wheat bread way…. But the crisp cookie shape? Don’t be fooled.
Quick Caramelized Figs with Cheater’s Crème Fraiche
(Simple enough for lunch dessert; best eaten after sad, plain greens)
6 fresh figs- black Mission are best
3 tbsp butter
6 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp water
Sour cream
Brown sugar
Cut figs in half and broil skin side down for a couple minutes. While figs are broiling, melt butter, sugar and water over low heat, stirring until syrupy. Turn figs over, broiling a couple minutes more. Remove and spoon syrup over, returning to broiler just until bubbling. For the topping, mix brown sugar into sour cream until it fools you into believing it’s crème fraiche. Dollop generously and serve. (Very loosely adapted from Intimate Gatherings by Ellen Rose and Jessica Strand.)
Agatha French is a Boston based writer about to make a cross country move. After 12 years away from her home turf of Southern California, she will be returning to Los Angeles in the fall. She, and Ryan, are very much looking forward to the year round fruit.