Serendipitous Eggs

I’m not much of an eggs person.  Sometimes eating them gives me a stomachache.  They can be kind of bland.  Sometimes I get to thinking of their biological potential and…well, better we leave that there.

I used to be an eggs person, however, and that was due to my father.  There was a period in my youth when, in an attempt to get me to stop nagging at him to spend more time with me, he took me with him on Saturdays into the city, to follow him to whatever jobs needed stopping into.  Some days we’d stop at DeWitt Clinton High School, where he was the assistant principal, and I’d sit across from his large wooden desk and watch him work in peeks while turning pages.  Always, always, I had my books with me.  A large canvas bag, laden with an assortment of books, because one never knew what one was going to want to read next, right?  Somehow, I thought I’d get through more than one of them but I rarely did.  Still, it was nice to have options.  Back to this office.  Sometimes he would make phone calls, sometimes do paperwork.  He gave me tours of the building, took me out back to the football field.  He told me about how one time he’d received a call from the third floor telling him there was someone with a gun up there, and how he’d heaved himself, gentle heft that he carried, out of his Administrator’s Chair and headed up the stairs – only to get to the second floor and stop midflight, realizing what he was doing, and then head back down to call the police.  But that was him – first instinct, step in.

Then he might take me to Columbia University’s Bakersfield Campus, where the athletes worked out.  He was the Head Coach for the Track and Field team.  When I was younger, he would take me up to the locker room and hide me in his tiny office, but as I aged, he made me stay downstairs.  In nice weather, I’d sit on the base of the stone lion out front of the field house.  In colder weather, I’d read on the long bench that housed the poles for the pole vault.  In the winter, we’d go to practice inside “the bubble,” a large dome covering a track and all the various pits, sand and sponge, and I’d watch the boys go through their practices, listening to the echoes of their voices as they grunted and called and whooped.  Sometimes these echoes lulled me to sleep in the high jump pit, where I’d nap until the high jumpers very kindly asked me to leave.  Some of the athletes flirted with young me.  I felt like a little sister to others.  But I blushed no matter who spoke to me, and they laughed and went further than I knew how to recognize.

In the fall, we’d go to Columbia University home football games, and watch the mess of a marching band scramble into place.  I thought they were the only college band in existence to ever do this, but I was shaken of that naiveté later when I went to college myself.

And then there were cross country meets at Van Cortlandt Park, where my father let me hold his extra stop watch and he pretended I was doing something official for him.  And away meets at Princeton or Rutgers, taking the bus with excited boy athletes, eating with them in college cafeterias, riding back in a quieter, stinkier bus, the sun already down.  There was a Greek diner around the corner from Bakersfield, and sometimes we’d go there for lunch – my father with his cheeseburger, me with my BLT and fries, which he’d always steal.

Sometimes he’d have insurance calls to make – his third job – and somehow we’d always run into someone he knew on the street, and they’d talk and talk and talk.  I didn’t mind, though, because I was with him.  And then those trips ended, but the reason behind that is for another time because it wasn’t pretty and has no place here.

You’re wondering, where the hell are the eggs?  Here they are.  On the way into the city, barely on our way at all, we’d stop at the Nanuet Diner.  I’d have the same thing every morning:  two eggs over easy, hash browns, bacon, chocolate milk.  Sometimes I didn’t want the same thing, but he made such a big deal about my having the same thing every time – whenever he’d tell stories about these trips to friends, this was a point he’d never skip – that I hated to disappoint him.  He’d always steal a piece of bacon, a bite of home fries.

I hated that.  Had he asked, no problem.  But he never asked.  It was his joke.  So I let him do it, and I seethed – but how lucky was I to be doing this in the first place, how could I not let him?

When I grew past these trips, I grew away from eggs for breakfast, and it was decades before I started eating them again, usually in another form, until finally I gave in and tried it again – tea instead of chocolate milk – and have had it some times since.

Recently, I’ve been feeling the desire for scrambled eggs.  I know what you’re thinking – just make some.   But no, I have to admit, I cannot make the kind of eggs I want.  The best scrambled eggs in the known universe, hands down, belong to my former mother-in-law.  How I miss her.  The saddest part of letting my marriage go was losing her.  Not just her eggs, either, or her other incredible dishes – best cook in the world, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Generous to a fault, kind, stubborn, loathe to accept help and quick to offer it.  I resented her for a time because she knew about my ex’s affair for several months and didn’t tell me, and she sided with him – of course, she did – when we parted, and she accepted his side of the story as the truth without asking for clarification.  She had been my mother for close to 30 years and it felt like an abandonment to have her just leave, though now I understand why she had to.

I could never figure out the secret behind her scrambled eggs.  I’d watch each time we went to her house for brunch.  It didn’t seem as if she did anything special, but there they were, the best eggs you could imagine.  I’d lean through the cut-out between the kitchen and the dining room and we’d talk and I’d spy.  On everything she did.  Everything.

As I said, recently I’ve wanted scrambled eggs.  I take my son Ian to breakfast every week at the same diner, where they know him and make a fuss over him and it warms me to see him so happy which is why we return week after week.  The food isn’t spectacular, but it’s decent enough.  And a few weeks ago, I asked for scrambled eggs, envisioning a pile of the puffy bits of cloud-warmth and love I’d had at my mother-in-law’s table.  I was so disheartened when instead was put before me what looked like an omelet without its heart, a flat and egg-colored.  Clearly, this was pre-mixed omelet egg – nothing wrong with that – poured onto the grill and left to cook until it was done.  No scramble involved.  I was so sad.

Which brings me to today.

I’ve been home recovering from surgery this past week, and while I have had the best of friends who have brought by food and love and have texted and emailed and Facebooked their love and support to me, today is quiet and I was feeling alone and achy and a little worried about going back to work tomorrow.  I haven’t been hungry but I knew I had to eat something in order to keep mending so I went down to the refrigerator to see what I had.  Well, I had plenty:  leftover Thanksgiving food from friends and my son David, takeout and homemade foods also brought over by friends, foods I’d gathered before the surgery.  Nothing looked remotely appealing.  I stood there – you know the stance, the one that says if you stand there long enough, something will appear that will solve all your problems and send your taste buds, and your mood, to nirvana.  Nothing appeared. 

But I could see in the back of the refrigerator a container of leftover canned gelled cranberry sauce that had been there for more than a month.  Remembering – was it last year or the year before? – having food poisoned myself on the same thing when I’d eaten in late December or even January the cranberry sauce I’d created from scratch for Thanksgiving, I determined it had to go.  I reached in back, pulled the container forward, and brought with it three other containers which fell to the floor.  Of these, two were takeout containers – nothing lost there – and the other was a six-pack of eggs, three of them left after last week’s pie-baking.  Tentatively, I turned the box over and opened it.  Two of the eggs had small cracks in them, the other was untouched.  Lunch was decided.

I stood at the stove.  I threw in a little clarified butter – just a little, because I no longer have a gall bladder and don’t know how my body will react to such things yet – added the two eggs, and scrambled.  I thought about my mother-in-law.  I thought about my father, and our outings, and how everyone brings to the table the summary of their experiences.  I thought about how impossible it was that our country could have elected to the Presidency a man who could make fun of the disabled.  But mostly, I scrambled.

Were they good?  Yes, and they satisfied that need I’d been feeling.  Were they as good as my mother-in-law’s?  Not by a baker’s dozen.  But that’s okay, because I’ve had them.  I have the memory of them.  Maybe someday, fingers crossed, I’ll have them again.

I miss my father today.  I miss my mother today, and my sister, and my in-laws, and my family of children at all their ages.  I miss having someone here to make sure I’m taking care of myself, or who is taking care of me and making me feel safe.  And I feel cared for by my family of the heart, the friends who have stepped up to ask, to offer, to bring, to collect, to shelter.  And I’ve had my scrambled eggs.