My mother once told me what Easter evokes in her mind. She grew up in Lackawanna “on the other side of the tracks.” She’d work in my grandfather’s grocery store on Ridge Road. During the Easter season, as she walked up Ingham Avenue to her father’s shop, the alluring aroma of ethnic cooking wafted through her nostrils.
Those smells told you what neighborhood you were in—Polish, Italian, and a mixed ethnic conclave of everything from Mexican to Croatian. Even before getting her master’s degree in Home Economics, the teenage version of Lena had a nose for food. The yeasts were her favorite. From them, she could tell what type of bread each kitchen baked.
Arriving at her dad’s mom-and-pop supermarket, she entered an aromatic atmosphere that defined Easter, not just for her, but for nearly everyone of that era. The sweet scents of purple, pink & lavender hyacinths mixed with the perfumes of the tulips and lilies. My grandfather sold these potted flowers each Easter so families could adorn their festive tables with colorful centerpieces.
Fast forward a generation and the smells were still there. Only the tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils aren’t in pots. They’re planted along the front of the house between the sidewalk coming from the front door and the wall of pale yellow bricks. The flowerbed sat just below the four rectangular panel windows that open up to the parlor of the modest raised ranch home of my youth.
It’s funny. I don’t remember the smell of those tulips. I do remember the smell of the Continue Reading “Hats Off To Easter!”
Ode To Fire And Ice (Cream)
Through it all, as you drilled deeper into his heart, you discovered the impish smile. He knew his talents and shared them with unrestrained joy. Yet, he also knew his limits, and just as gladly allowed others to shine above him.
He thrived in this dichotomy of opposites, well aware how he could summon them to create a powerful whirlwind of meaning, influence, and steadfast certainty. For him, it wasn’t a philosophical exercise akin to Yin and Yang. No, such a thought would repel him.
Instead, it was the raw energy that percolates in the hearth of real life, forged from the Continue Reading “Ode To Fire And Ice (Cream)”