Food, Family and Memory

This is an excerpt from the book "Clothing Optional: And Other Ways to Read These Stories"

We had just started Saturday Night Live, I was an apprentice writer, 24 years old and I felt intimidated.  Chevy was hysterically funny. So was John and Danny and Gilda and Franken. And Michael O’Donoghue, well, Michael O’Donoghue simply scared the shit out of me. So I stayed pretty much to myself. One day I came to work, and on my desk was a framed cartoon. A drawing – no caption – of a drunken rabbi staggering home late and holding a wine bottle. And waiting for him on the other side of the door was his angry wife, getting ready to hit him with a Torah instead of a rolling pin. I had no idea who put it there. I started looking around and out of the corner of my eye I saw a white-haired man in his office, laughing.  He had put it there. That was the first communication I had with Herb Sargent– which was significant given that he never spoke and he gave me a cartoon that had no caption.

I had seen him years before. Or at least I think I did. When I was a kid. My father manufactured jewelry and he had his shop on 52nd Street between Fifth and Madison. I used to come into the city from Long Island and run errands for him during the summer. And no matter where the delivery was supposed to go, I made sure I got there by going through the lobby of what was then called the RCA Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, with the hopes that maybe I would see Johnny Carson (whose show was upstairs) or some of the people from That Was the Week That Was: Buck Henry, Bob Dishy, David Frost – or Herb Sargent, who was the producer. I knew his name from the credits. As a young boy who wanted to be a TV writer some day, this was like hanging around outside of Yankee Stadium waiting to see the players going through to the clubhouse.

When I would visit my friend Lisa in London in the early 80’s, I would sometimes see my bi-country friend Allan.  He lived here in L.A. and also London where he was a television producer.  His flat was in the Holland Park/Notting Hill area, but I love the name Ladbroke Grove so much that I want to say he lived there.  I love all the names of the streets and villages in Great Britain.

On occasion, he took me along for a Sunday lunch he had been invited to.  Allan would say, “This bloke wants me to come round, would you fancy joining us?”  Once there, I was in awe of the carefree, unkempt, unfazed style of the host, hostess and everyone really. 

When I entertain, I’m stressed out, dressed up, have too much food and am just generally overwhelmed by it all.   Whereas, these folks looked like they stayed up too late (not a touch of makeup on the women) and hardly gave a thought to the guests they were now entertaining in their home. This was the antithesis of the Martha Stewart entertaining regime. 

The houses weren’t straightened up, nor the tables set.   Drinks went around first.  Drinks seemed much more important than food.  Then slowly (sometimes hours had passed), and oh-so casually, the women would find their way to the kitchen and start hunting for leftovers.  WHAT?  They invited people over without even the forethought of what food they might serve.  It was baffling. 

I keep connecting with an early childhood memory about summer days at the beach.

To get to the beach we'd drive a long time in our hot car and coming home, I was always sunburned, with gritty sand in my swimsuit.  The travel part wasn't what I liked, but the picnic lunch my mom packed sure was. Fried chicken, potato salad, biscuits with butter and honey, watermelon slices, and egg salad.

My dad rarely came with us so usually my mom had a friend along for company while my sister and I splashed in the water, determined to annoy one another as much as possible.  After awhile we'd get tired.

Then it was time to eat. We'd load up paper plates and settle down on the sand watching the older kids body surf.  We didn't talk much but we'd share the moment enjoying our mom's food.

Monday, mid morning, I found my five year old Sara, in the kitchen,
Curious, standing on her stool at the island counter,
Fiddling with the 24 table grapes on the plate,
The ones that were part of our experiment,
The ones that would answer all of our questions.

I admit, my questions:

How long does it take to make a raisin from a grape?
I don’t know daddy…
Will our raisins taste better than the ones out of the box?
I don’t know daddy…
Over time, what the heck goes on inside of a grape anyway?
And how? And why? And so on…

“Hey Sara Bear, how many grapes on that plate?”
I was tempted to start grouping them for her.

“I don’t know daddy, do you want me to count them?”

“Good Idea!”