Irene

Although I do not comment very often, I want you to know that your stories leave me smiling every week because I don’t know whose parents and home you are describing. Not mine, that is for sure. But I guess that our parents and our life at home just made radically different impressions on us and left us with our own memories that the other does not share. It is bizarre. The most important food item in our home, from my memory, was bread. If we had bread, we had sustenance enough. I don’t remember a meal where bread was not the main attraction. Milk was an after school treat with a black and white, a chinese cookie, a devil dog, and all those other Hostess healthy baked goods. You loved milk and I think that is why you are so tall. You finished a quart by yourself every day.

As for succotash, I remember the very first time I ever had it. Esther, whose firm I worked for when I was 14 years old, took me and some other young people out for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in NY at the end of the summer to thank us for doing a good job. I had never been to a restaurant that was so elegant. I noticed something called succotash on the menu and I ordered it with whatever else I had. I don’t remember anything else about what I ate that afternoon but I have never forgotten the succotash. The word itself was so exotic that it made a lifelong impression. The succotash served that day was made solely of bright green lima beans and corn and probably butter. I remember the brightness of the colors of the two vegetables and how beautiful it was. That was 50 years ago this summer and I have not ever been back to the Algonquin. I think it has since closed. It was a every exciting afternoon for a very unsophisticated young woman from the Bronx. I hope I wore something pretty.

I love your stories because they bring back a wonderful time in my life even though our stories are not always the same but who cares. We are entitled to our own memories. That is what makes us “unique” as you have told me many times. The other reason I love your stories is that you really write well. There is a book in the making in these stories. I hope that one day you will do something about it.

With much love, your shvester Anita

Shabbat Shalom and thank you Rachel!!

Irene