Repast

A memoir is not a factual recitation of history,
it’s a recollection, a musing and merging of images,
dreams, reflections about your life journey.
Linda Joy Myers  

Because Dad was in the military, I was a gypsy child, moving from South Texas to Alabama, to Virginia, and then to points around the world. But my southern eating habits followed me like ghosts.

With scary foods encountered in our travels, like fish-eye soup in Tokyo, I mulishly refused to eat anything new. In Paris, the dreaded special was escargots – no matter how much butter and garlic, they were still snails to me.

At 18 I left home for college in Boston. Invited to stay with a classmate over Thanksgiving, I was undone when her mother announced we’d have swordfish steak for dinner.  I imagined the fish’s long, wide snout and bill displayed in the marine version of a suckling pig, with God knows what in its mouth instead of an apple. But I’d been taught to be polite and knew I’d have to eat and smile simultaneously.

The divine texture and flavor of the fresh grilled swordfish changed my life.  

I know now that much of taste depends on smell, that beyond sweet, sour, salt, and bitter, flavor is actually odor.

Small wonder that standing by the ocean now, my scent-memories awaken a souped-up palate.
 

(From Autobiography Passed Through the Sieve of Maya)