Childhood Memories 1

This summer, my sister and I spent most of our spare time emptying out the house that we grew up in. I don't know if you have ever had this experience, but, if you have, it is one you will never forget. Sifting through the objects of your childhood bring back a flood of memories of youth. The day you dug up a tree in the woods across the street and dragged it down the street to plant it in your backyard. Shopping for a Christmas tree early on Christmas Eve, a tree that has long thin branches and gaping bald spaces that have to be turned toward the wall before you decorate it. Memories of Easters, Mom's new floral hat and Dad's brown Fedora flood the mind. And then you find the chrome kitchen table with grey formica top, buried under cartons and plastic tubs on the back porch.

I looked at this table this summer, and my mind whirled with memories of thousands of weeknight dinners. Not Sunday dinners. Those dinners were eaten on the "good" furniture in the dining room. And they were almost always roast beef, Yorkshire Pudding, pan-fried potatoes with brown gravy and brussel sprouts. (My mother's family came over from England in the mid-sixteen hundreds, a fact she never seemed to forget and memorialized every Sunday.) But it is not these dinners that I am talking about. I am talking about the weeknight dinners in the kitchen, sitting around the grey formica table, eating what we now call "comfort food", food only found in the 1950's or when your aunt brings a casserole dish to a holiday dinner. It is about these dinners that I wrote the following poem.

Comfort Food
Christopher Bogart

Whenever a dribble of processed yellow cheese,
Once trapped
Between two pieces of grilled bread,
Escapes,
Sizzling onto the hot pan,
An aroma rises,
Coaxing errant memories
Of the comfort
Of youth.

In the simple steam
From a bowl of cream of tomato soup,
Images arise.

The fortunes of my childhood
Appear before my eyes
In the ruby-red of creamed chipped beef.

I mine my dreams
In lumps of oatmeal,
Studded with raisins,
To enrich my soul
On cold, dark February mornings.

Fifties food fills
The swirl of gray Formica,
Contained within deco chrome edges.

Fifties food,
Followed from recipes
Taken off cans and boxes
Of name brand products,
And baked in Pyrex
With Tender Loving Care.

The legs of the table were bowed with the weight
Of rivers of liver,
Smothered in onions,
And mashed potato volcanoes
That staged gravy eruptions
At the slightest touch of the fork.


The warmth of these smells
That assailed my nose then,
Sail through my mind now
Giving off new comfort
In a world,
Sometimes mean,
Like a bowl
Full of cold
Lima beans.

Published on Poetsonline.com