My recent colonoscopy and EGD was 40 minutes long, and my blood pressure responses necessitated use of ketamine. This is a dissociative drug related to Phenylcyclidine (PCP). It is good for short procedures. I did not do very well with it, not feeling alert and well until some 6 hours after I came home. When I was able to eat, and hungry, my wife made me cinnamon toast.
Everyone has what I call the shards of Narsil. This is a reference to The Lord of the Rings. Narsil is Elendil's sword that broke under him when he fell at the hands of Sauron. The shards were kept through 3200 year because it was said that the sword would one day be reforged. We all have little, precious things we keep in our shelves and desks from our past. Some are in our memories and actions. Cinnamon toast is one of those. So are trains.
I have a long memory. In the case of my childhood this is not always a good thing. My earliest memories are from age 2 and 1/2. I recall clearly being told not to touch my 6 month old sister at her first Christmas, wrapped in a blanket, on the couch, in the living room of our first house. I recall getting up at 5 in the morning and coming downstairs on my own to look at the pictures in magazines in the living room, as I could not read yet. I have many, many memories of ages 2 and 1/2 to 5, when we moved. And I remember cinnamon toast.
For the uninitiated, cinnamon toast is made by toasting ordinary bread, then buttering it liberally. Onto the buttered toast is sprinkled a sugar-cinnamon mixture. This gets bound to the toast by the butter. It is essentially a quick, cheap version of a cinnamon roll. An even more authentic imitation can be had by using raisin bread, but I digress.
I loved cinnamon toast as a child. I recall my mother cutting it into squares in the kitchen of that first home. My mother was not an eager cook (she had accidentally started a fire while cooking eggs at her mother's apartment, the fire killing her mother) but she was certainly competent, and she loved sweets. Cinnamon toast was made with real appreciation and love, and I loved it. It was throughout my childhood a treat. As I got older I learned to make it myself. I 'discovered' making it with raisin bread, and it is a delicious way to have an english muffin. Properly made cinnamon toast (as opposed to the fried and massively overly gooey monstrosities masquerading under the same name) looks like this-
Not everyone knows about cinnamon toast. In my internship year in New York the OB team went to a typical New York coffee shop. These are much like the one portrayed in SNL's 'chee burger chee burger' skit. Here, in a place accustomed to grinding out eggs, sausage and bacon, and white, rye or wheat toast, I asked if they had cinnamon toast. My chief did not know what it was, and when I described it he cracked up at the waiter's almost disdainful look.
Trains are another prominent memory of childhood. My father, when not experiencing uremic psychosis (he left my mother 17 times in less than 2 years, confusing her with a very promiscuous woman with whom he had dallied in Greece, also named Peggy) was a kind and playful man. He would 'make magic' by having us close our eyes while he pulled a few pieces of penny candy from his pocket. The first present he ever gave me was a set of snap-together wooden trains that ran on wooden tracks, just like these-
I was fascinated to have my own train, and have enjoyed looking at and riding trains all my life.
He built a small S gauge layout on a piece of plywood in our basement. It fell into disrepair with disuse. When I was 12, just after Christmas of 1969, my father took me to Tom Thumb hobbies, where he spent 100.00 dollars on N scale trains. That was a fortune then, equivalent to more than 800.00 today. He gave me my choice of a train set, and we picked out a plan book and some buildings. By then he was too ill to climb the stairs to my attic bedroom, and could come only twice to see what I made of his gift, laboring up those stairs in a silent homage to fatherhood and his son. He died 8 months later.
Trains had to wait until I was older, and we had our first house. I went again and got N scale trains of my own. That first layout was, shall I say, amusing. I sheared off the tip of my thumb with a hammer, reattaching it with a bandage. That little layout went rapidly the way of all flesh, until we got to East Tennessee. I then built an N scale layout with my son, then 5. When we got our home in Farragut I built a very large N layout, with 4 controllers, some 60 cars, an entire town, and multiple other buildings. Michael, my son, showed his hand skills and artistic abilities, carving many of the rocks out of styrofoam and painting them. He also built some of the buildings. Here is a picture of it during construction. It curled around the wall to the left and made as second S turn.
When we came to Chattanooga that layout too was lost, although I have all the buildings, engines, and cars.
There are clear directives here, ancient imprints from 60 years earlier. One is that fathers bring trains. I am sure, at some level, that I built layouts to satisfy what I saw, unconsciously, as my fatherly obligation to my children, and I am equally sure that I longed to hear a ghostly voice tell me 'well done'. Regarding cinnamon toast, the taste of cinnamon has been, all my life, a taste not simply pleasing to the palate but to my soul, an ancient smell and taste association of comfort and love from a time when there was little enough time and energy for either. Following my EGD/colonoscopy I did not want cinnamon toast for my gut, I wanted it for my soul, as reassurance after a procedure that scared me.
For those who have not seen Citizen Kane, I will not spoil it by saying what Rosebud is, only to say that it was and is for me intensely touching and real. Near the end of the movie, in the midst of an ugly break-up, he trashes a room in his enormous home, pulling up short when he finds a child's snow globe. He looks at it and says quietly "Rosebud". You can see the scene here-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT083GhycM
The shards of Narsil. Rosebud. I learned this week of the many forms they can take, and the many meanings cinnamon toast has for me. Always, when making it, I have thought of my mother. It was only this week that I realized I associate it with her comfort and love.
Ted
Everyone has what I call the shards of Narsil. This is a reference to The Lord of the Rings. Narsil is Elendil's sword that broke under him when he fell at the hands of Sauron. The shards were kept through 3200 year because it was said that the sword would one day be reforged. We all have little, precious things we keep in our shelves and desks from our past. Some are in our memories and actions. Cinnamon toast is one of those. So are trains.
I have a long memory. In the case of my childhood this is not always a good thing. My earliest memories are from age 2 and 1/2. I recall clearly being told not to touch my 6 month old sister at her first Christmas, wrapped in a blanket, on the couch, in the living room of our first house. I recall getting up at 5 in the morning and coming downstairs on my own to look at the pictures in magazines in the living room, as I could not read yet. I have many, many memories of ages 2 and 1/2 to 5, when we moved. And I remember cinnamon toast.
For the uninitiated, cinnamon toast is made by toasting ordinary bread, then buttering it liberally. Onto the buttered toast is sprinkled a sugar-cinnamon mixture. This gets bound to the toast by the butter. It is essentially a quick, cheap version of a cinnamon roll. An even more authentic imitation can be had by using raisin bread, but I digress.
I loved cinnamon toast as a child. I recall my mother cutting it into squares in the kitchen of that first home. My mother was not an eager cook (she had accidentally started a fire while cooking eggs at her mother's apartment, the fire killing her mother) but she was certainly competent, and she loved sweets. Cinnamon toast was made with real appreciation and love, and I loved it. It was throughout my childhood a treat. As I got older I learned to make it myself. I 'discovered' making it with raisin bread, and it is a delicious way to have an english muffin. Properly made cinnamon toast (as opposed to the fried and massively overly gooey monstrosities masquerading under the same name) looks like this-
Not everyone knows about cinnamon toast. In my internship year in New York the OB team went to a typical New York coffee shop. These are much like the one portrayed in SNL's 'chee burger chee burger' skit. Here, in a place accustomed to grinding out eggs, sausage and bacon, and white, rye or wheat toast, I asked if they had cinnamon toast. My chief did not know what it was, and when I described it he cracked up at the waiter's almost disdainful look.
Trains are another prominent memory of childhood. My father, when not experiencing uremic psychosis (he left my mother 17 times in less than 2 years, confusing her with a very promiscuous woman with whom he had dallied in Greece, also named Peggy) was a kind and playful man. He would 'make magic' by having us close our eyes while he pulled a few pieces of penny candy from his pocket. The first present he ever gave me was a set of snap-together wooden trains that ran on wooden tracks, just like these-
I was fascinated to have my own train, and have enjoyed looking at and riding trains all my life.
He built a small S gauge layout on a piece of plywood in our basement. It fell into disrepair with disuse. When I was 12, just after Christmas of 1969, my father took me to Tom Thumb hobbies, where he spent 100.00 dollars on N scale trains. That was a fortune then, equivalent to more than 800.00 today. He gave me my choice of a train set, and we picked out a plan book and some buildings. By then he was too ill to climb the stairs to my attic bedroom, and could come only twice to see what I made of his gift, laboring up those stairs in a silent homage to fatherhood and his son. He died 8 months later.
Trains had to wait until I was older, and we had our first house. I went again and got N scale trains of my own. That first layout was, shall I say, amusing. I sheared off the tip of my thumb with a hammer, reattaching it with a bandage. That little layout went rapidly the way of all flesh, until we got to East Tennessee. I then built an N scale layout with my son, then 5. When we got our home in Farragut I built a very large N layout, with 4 controllers, some 60 cars, an entire town, and multiple other buildings. Michael, my son, showed his hand skills and artistic abilities, carving many of the rocks out of styrofoam and painting them. He also built some of the buildings. Here is a picture of it during construction. It curled around the wall to the left and made as second S turn.
When we came to Chattanooga that layout too was lost, although I have all the buildings, engines, and cars.
There are clear directives here, ancient imprints from 60 years earlier. One is that fathers bring trains. I am sure, at some level, that I built layouts to satisfy what I saw, unconsciously, as my fatherly obligation to my children, and I am equally sure that I longed to hear a ghostly voice tell me 'well done'. Regarding cinnamon toast, the taste of cinnamon has been, all my life, a taste not simply pleasing to the palate but to my soul, an ancient smell and taste association of comfort and love from a time when there was little enough time and energy for either. Following my EGD/colonoscopy I did not want cinnamon toast for my gut, I wanted it for my soul, as reassurance after a procedure that scared me.
For those who have not seen Citizen Kane, I will not spoil it by saying what Rosebud is, only to say that it was and is for me intensely touching and real. Near the end of the movie, in the midst of an ugly break-up, he trashes a room in his enormous home, pulling up short when he finds a child's snow globe. He looks at it and says quietly "Rosebud". You can see the scene here-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT083GhycM
The shards of Narsil. Rosebud. I learned this week of the many forms they can take, and the many meanings cinnamon toast has for me. Always, when making it, I have thought of my mother. It was only this week that I realized I associate it with her comfort and love.
Ted
Since I am your sister we share those memories (though I stuck with the wooden trains and went to town with Brio with my kids). It is no small bit of irony that an allergy to cinnamon has become dangerously troublesome to me in the past few years. It was always a comfort food and now it has similar associations to the most disquieting aspects of childhood instead, and the memory of comfort is stolen by an immune system diminished to save my life. It seems to have taken a left turn.
ReplyDeleteCinnamon toast! OMG; there is MY childhood too. Only for me, it was my Boston grandmother, who truly could not cook to save her life, so she made cinnamon toast for breakfast and butter sandwiches for lunch. Dinner as 'out'.
ReplyDelete