Mother and Food Reunion

Friday afternoon after work, while running errands in the blazing hot, gritty streets of Allston a song lodged in my brain, hopped onto the old internal jukebox and went all perma play on me. It was Mother and Child Reunion, off Paul Simon’s first solo album. I loved that tune, loved the whole album.

God knows, I didn’t hear the tune on the radio so why/how did it come to mind? Eh, why does anything creep into my head? There’s some serious random action spinning up there.

In this instance though there was actually a logical progression (hey, it happens on rare occasion!). I’d just visited with my parents last weekend.  Memories of youth ridden insurrection came to mind.

Generally speaking I was a pretty good teen. That is, I kept my big fun activities (you know, the usual -- sex, drugs, drink) fairly quiet, private and definitely out of the house. Like most fifteen year olds, I figured I knew what I was doing (MASSIVE eye roll here) and didn’t want to worry them OR have them curtail/restrict my play time.

My in house rebellion, my huge act of adolescent defiance took the form of refusing food. Nope, I wasn’t anorexic AT ALL -- just trying to avoid Mama Cass comparisons. That and it was the only way to get back at mi madre for real and imagined mother crimes. Cooking and otherwise providing food was her way of showing love. So I refused.

Yeah, we had a painful, difficult relationship.

In any case, here in 2012, Jen and I arrived, last Saturday, at Haus Maderer in time for lunch. Muti was having a simple salmon and pasta dish while I noshed on salad with loads of yummy raw broccoli (MMMMM!).

Mother is 85 now -- mostly blind, completely deaf and in a wheelchair. She’s a slight, gossamery old bird but, boy howdy, she can still push the food. What’s different now is that I’m also pushing her to eat. There we were, signing ‘eat, eat’ back and forth, solicitously asking if the other wouldn’t care for a wee bit more salmon/salad/tomato or ‘how ‘bout a little more pasta or maybe a nice cookie?’

We each managed a few more bites than we would have otherwise -- both of us making an elaborate, grinning show of it to the other. ‘See, look, I’m eating -- see?’ We were lunch table Abbott and Costellos, Burns and Allans, Cheeches and Chongs.

Appropriately enough, the song title Mother and Child Reunion comes from a Chinese/American chicken and egg dish. Off the same album is Paranoia Blues with this lyric:

Once I was down in Chinatown
I was eating some Lin's Chow Fon
I happened to turn around
And when I looked I see
My Chow Fon's gone

Apparently Chinatown was Mr. Simon’s preferred dining destination back in ’72.