Personal essays
When the past comes back for a minute or two
It’ll come back
One of the women behind the counter at one of the coffee shops I visit was wearing overalls.
As I took my small, quick-cup, for here to a table I saw a second woman with overalls with one of the straps dangling.
Hmmm, I thought, I guess they’re back.
Oh please, don’t take my word for it. I couldn’t say if a particular fashion is really back or not - but I saw two instances of this thing that we wore fifty years ago and it made me think.
For me, these outfits were tied to a particular time.
There are some things, like clothes, that it takes someone cool or influential to bring back.
It’s not like I could just start wearing earth shoes and they’d be a viral hit.
But there was those cool kids at any school who could set a trend even if you didn’t really like or pretended not to notice them.
It’s the scene in “The Devil Wears Prada” where the Meryl Streep character explains to the new employee who eschews fashion that the blue in her cheap sweater from a consignment store was the result of a decision by a particular designer for a particular line of clothes.
Things change.
Sometimes things come around again and sometimes they don’t.
Foods
There were dishes we ate when I was growing up that you don’t find anymore.
Some of that is because we now eat fresh or frozen vegetables. I can’t remember the last time I opened a can of green beans, rinsed them off, and brought them to a boil.
Fresh vegetables are more available year round and once you’ve had green beans picked fresh at the height of the season you’re not about to opt for the greyish canned version.
Unless.
Unless that’s what you’re going for. There’s something about canned green beans covered by cream of mushroom soup baked into a casserole topped with those fake fried onion rings.
It feels retro and midwest. It belonged to a particular time and location.
I don’t feel as if I’m eating green beans. It’s a different food. It’s green bean casserole.
I think of a lot of items that we ate during specific times that we don’t eat anymore.
Fashion comes and goes in restaurant cooking.
Remember all of the food that was created inside of metal rings so it looked pretty on the plate once the rings were removed. Little circles of food presented in the center of the plate or slightly off center with some sauce painted on.
What makes something come back and what keeps something securely in the past.
The parade
Maggie came home this weekend for Memorial Day.
She helped me continue to clean up and clean out our house and Monday we went to our city’s Memorial Day parade.
I’m sure it happens across the country. To me it feels very midwest and small town because that’s my association with it.
At the front of the parade was a police car followed by the high school marching band. Behind them the police department had one of their vintage cars being towed from one of their current cars.
Behind them was group after group either in a car waving or walking. There were various youth soccer teams, dance troupes, the school board, the baseball teams, the girl scouts and boy scouts, and a group from the League of Women Voters.
There was a group of librarians promoting a summer reading program. They pushed carts that are used to reshelve books and every once in a while broke into a coordinated routine.
It felt timeless and, although rooted in a specific community, like it could have taken place almost anywhere.
The closet
One of the things I’d asked Maggie to do when she was home was to sort Kim’s clothes into piles to keep, to give away, and to throw away.
So many of the items were very specific to Kim and her style. They aren’t really things that many other people would wear now. In addition, Maggie and Kim have very different body types so Maggie can’t wear a lot of Kim’s clothes even if she wanted to.
The clothes brought back so many memories. I remembered Kim wearing one dress on these sorts of occasions and this shirt - oh that was one of her favorites we bought it in New Orleans. There was her old flannel bathrobe that she wore every morning when she came downstairs to feed the dog and make coffee.
Each item evoked an image. Each made me smile. Each made me a little sad. Each was tied to some specific memory of my time with Kim. I watched to see which ones Maggie would keep and which she would giveaway.
Maggie looked up to see me watching her fold one of Kim’s summer dresses and put it in the keep pile.
She saw the look on my face.
“I hope,” she said, “that you’re not about to tell me how hot my mom was.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you that,” I said, “but she was.”
Maggie rolled her eyes.
“I was going to tell you that Elena probably could have fit into all of this.”
Maggie nodded.
There wasn’t much more to say. We’d just observed our own Memorial Day in our own way.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 269. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe