Assignment Due Thursday 4/3/2014

Mint Snowball

I loved this story. Like the little girl hanging around her grandfather's shop as a child I too was raised as a child mainly by my grandparents. I think time, irreversible, is tempting to anyone who has not experienced something. In this time technology and speed consumes our society, and this becomes truer with each passing generation; I think what we sometimes crave is simplicity. The old fashioned store with a shiny counter, hearing nickels clink, milkshakes being sold along with other old fashioned, once enjoyable, now forgotten, treats (like cherry cokes). We are always on the go-go-go. 

Very rarely do we experience things like this. We hear about our grandfathers, great-grandfathers, even parents lives; and how drastically ours have changed in what seems like no time at all to everyone else. Sometimes a treasured, simple, irreplaceable, lost family tradition is craved so deeply by us. We have never and will never get to experience certain lost treasures. This made me think of my bachi's home cooking. Bachi (in polish) is grandmother and Jodge is grandfather. My Bachi used to make THE BEST home made stuffed peppers (with home made tomato sauce of course) that my mother still raves about to this day, no polish restaurant even comes close to the taste that once was created by my Bachi. At the time, it seemed like something so small and meaningless; but nothing will bring it back and it is dearly missed. This story reminded me of just that. Some things of a quite meaningless value to the rest of the world, but enjoyed by family and friends or even a community, once lost and known to never be coming back, we just wish we could try it one time. It's like these things are artificially deep-rooted within our history and existence even though we have no idea, essentially, what they are. I have no idea what my Bachi's home made stuffed peppers with sauce taste like-but I have had amazing ones elsewhere and if my mother says they don't even begin to compare; they don't. 

"The crisp flush of cities makes me weep, Strip centers, Poodle grooming and Take-out Thai. I am angry over lost department stores, wistful for something I have never tasted or seen". This is the essence of that craving for something lost and for simpler, slower, times.