I just finished reading Academy Street by Mary Costello. It's a novel about a quiet life. Almost nothing happens in it, yet everything does: a haunting portrait drawn with exquisite detail of the ordinary.
And because of her minute reckoning, from time to time my mind flew away with a detail from my own life. Sometime the description was about food aromas. The one that replaced the book's in my own mind was the aroma when we walked through the back door of the kitchen coming home from church on Sunday noon. Immediately we were greeted with the browning smell of roasting meat and our hungry stomachs would sigh with anticipation. Before services, Mother would brown some excellent cut of meat - all from the local butcher - and set it to a low roast. So all the while the hymns were sung, prayers offered, instruction set forth, sermonizing unraveled, and after church socializing took place that meat was roasting to a melt-in-your-mouth doneness. And with a magician's quickness, mashed potatoes graced with butter and pepper, and if the gods were truly smiling - tender lima beans from the garden (that bear no earthly resemblance to the large mealy hateful things you buy from the frozen food section of your modern grocery store), and gravy- lovely smooth, shining - were all "dished up" and the table burst into action.
That browning smell triggered the whole scenario of family ritual - click, click, click the childhood picture slid into place.
I remember with joy - and hunger pangs.
