I ran out tonight to skate through the empty
aisles of Hannaford in the desperate moments before
the eleventh hour when they always lock their doors
for good. I stopped first at the ethnic section,
where you find the matzo, (I moved to Maine and
became an ethnic, go figure). I wasn't there for the
unleavened good stuff, however, but rather for a
yarzeit candle, by means of which we ethnics, once a
year, commemorate our departed. It was on an amber
Halloween morn 25 years ago today that my father and
sister ran and bike rode (respectively) past me as I
walked up North Street towards the Great Neck Music
Center and my first ever drum lesson. The colors of
the day are emblazoned on my memory not so much from
my 11-year-old perceptivity as from the photo that my
sister took, one which wound up being framed and
copied and framed again and distributed amongst
immediate family for wistful rumination at all our
ritual gatherings. You've figured how the story turns
out. I get home from the lesson and find a locked
house and no-one in sight, and cool my heels with the
neighbors until hours later my aunt pulls up with my
sister and "there's been an emergency." The resulting
fog of teary and understanding adults, plates and
plates of whitefish, visits from rabbis and
relatives, followed by plummeting grades and
eventually a move out of town, and then college, grad
school, marriage, unclehood, job, blog and a rain of
discomfiting and unpleasant All Hallows Eves marked
by a particular aversion to Jack-o-Lattern carving
and costume reckoning preceded my scammering through
the shelves of our local supermarket, ethnic
commemorative glassed wax in my hand, searching for
Mallomars. Because we ethnics
mourn with our hearts, yes it's true, but even
more profoundly with out digestive systems and
our noses, and dear old dad would - I'm guessing
- be tickled to think that his gustatory legacy
lived on in his progeny most profoundly as a
holy reverence for that dark chocolate,
marshmallow and graham cracker concoction sold
in the plain white boxes with the yellow outer
wrap. They're sold only seasonally, because the
thin outer coating, the darkest of matte browns,
takes unwell to the summer elements. And the
vast majority of them are sold in the New York
metropolitan area, a fact proudly proclaimed on
the box itself. And in my desperate searching,
with the clock ticking on towards eleven and
banishment, the only yellow boxes I found housed
Fig Newtons and I needed to search out the store
manager who took me right to the spot,
considerably narrower than those allotted for,
say, Oreos or Chips Ahoy, where the Mallomars
ought to have been and let me gaze all the way
back to the peg board. Sold out. Sold, I
imagine, to other raving and wild-eyed ethnics,
transplanted and homesick, lonely for lost
fathers, toting yarzeits and heavy hearts and
yearning just for that transportative
commingling of bitter sophistication, cloudy
white goo and the perfect hint of crisp. We
would keep them in the fridge, two separate
white rectangular boxes (that have since been
replaced by a single box), and Nina and I
understood that parental writ was required for
tresspass into that sacred realm. They were
daddy's Mallomars, housed apart, doled out
piecemeal and appropriate for those fleeting
moments of familial wholeness that were able to
make special occasions out of ordinary sections
of ordinary afternoons. Only arriving when the
cold wind begins to blow and the leaves swell
and then fade and fall, when the spirits poke
their cold noses, redolent of times past, into
the comfy and organized present and urge us to
grieve and howl and mount strange holidays. No
transcendent goo tonight. Just the flickering
flame on the stovetop and the gusts of wind
banging up against our rickety and porous
windows. No Mallomars, but spirits abound all
the same. Neil Stephen Sonenberg, present as
you've always been, reclaim thy rightful place
in the search engines of the here and now.
*Addendum - apropos this blog post I've finally
updated the
Vault.