Sometimes the conversations we have with people around us reach a certain resonance, as if the stars have aligned to produce a moment of meaning that may not have occurred at any other time. A singularity of sorts.
This afternoon, as I sat at my desk working, Mary Beth, my wife, appeared at my elbow holding a cast iron pan with the handle broken off. “This is grandmother’s biscuit pan,” she said, with more than a touch of reverence. “I found it in the kitchen when I was there last week.” She had recently gained possession of her grandparents’ farmhouse, which had sat unoccupied for decades, and she had begun the process of sorting out the furnishings and household goods that remained.
She turned the blackened pan in her hands as if it were a sacred object. She described how her grandmother made biscuits—a daily ritual for Mississippi country women of that generation. She described the process. It started with the wooden biscuit bowl that held flour that was replenished as needed but never emptied. Her grandmother would make a little hollow in the middle of the flour, then drop in a generous dollop of lard (and in later years, shortening), followed by a pour of sweet milk from their own dairy. As Mary Beth continued, she let her hand do the talking as she made the motion of her grandmother’s hand—suspended in the bowl and stirring and squeezing the flour and lard and milk together in her fingers until the biscuit dough was right, and then pinching off a portion that she rolled and patted between her palms until it was just right to place in the pan. The final touch was to knuckle it down in the pan. And again, and again, until the pan was full.
“That’s exactly how my grandmother made biscuits,” I said. We commented on how no other biscuits have ever been as good. “When are you going to make some?” I asked, but her answer was wistfully noncommittal. We both recognized that our grandmothers’ biscuits were not to be recaptured. Even if we were able to make them exactly as they did, they would not be the same. “The proper home for their biscuits is in our memories,” I said.
Later that evening, a TV show we were watching with her sister Rachel ended with strains of some melancholy piece of music. Mary Beth said it reminded her of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” and how evocative it was for her of sadness and at the same time comfort. She talked about how that in years past, when we lived in Hannibal, I would go to my desk in our bedroom—which was in a lower level in our house—to work for a while before going to bed and would play opera on the stereo. The strains would drift up and she could hear–not the details but just the emotion of the music. I knew the pieces she meant—one was Mascagni’s Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. Another was Puccini’s Nessun Dorma, from Turandot. I quickly found Intermezzo on YouTube and played it.
At the end, they talked about how moving the piece was. I said, “I remember it the way I heard it back then, but I can’t hear it that way now. It just sounds flat.” I should explain that I have some hearing loss, which has for several years interfered with my enjoyment of music. Some notes do not sound true, making much music I used to enjoy sound distorted—more noise than music. What a downer.
Rachel wiped away some tears and said she felt sad anytime she was reminded of my diminished enjoyment of music. She also talked about how much she missed playing the piano. She is a gifted pianist but has lost a lot of control and strength in her hands and can no longer play. I said something about what it must have been like for Beethoven, who, even after losing his hearing, continued to compose music.
The gift of memory—never to be taken for granted—is a storehouse of tastes, sounds, images, and physical sensations. The sensory impressions stored there carry precious moments that can’t always be recaptured in contemporary experience. Rehearse them in private moments. Cherish them in the dark reaches of sleepless nights. Voice them in stories. And keep making new ones so you will never run out. I just hope young Ludwig had a grandmother who made biscuits as good as the ones we remember.
Garry Breland 