Memory

When I was a little kid, every other Sunday we would go to my grandparent’s victorian house in Hillside, New Jersey for dinner.
The water in that house had a nasty taste and my grandmother would keep some of it in a jar with lemons in the refrigerator to try to improve the flavor. That didn’t work very well.
In 1947 we moved to California and never returned to New Jersey.
In 2005 my husband and I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Grass Valley, where we had bought a modern house.
When we moved in I was surprised to discover the water tasted exactly like the water in my grandmother’s house had tasted!
The water heater in our new home needed to be emptied and cleaned out and, once that was done, the water no longer had that unpleasant flavor.
But, amazingly, I had recognized the flavor of something I hadn’t tasted for 68 years!
Of course, during the holiday season, we usually eat things that remind us of holidays in years past. Since many of us won’t be able to celebrate with others because of the covid virus, I hope we’ll still have many familiar flavors to help us connect, even if only by memory.