Good Memory Food. 

This is what I call food that I eat, enjoy, and savor as memories float back from other times.  This could be popcorn that we made by the bowl with salt to cover the bottom of the bowl. Fresh veggies dipped in ranch dressing. Salty cheese flavored chips that make your fingers orange. Bright pear sorbet that melts in your mouth. And potatoes. 

What are each of the memories that these foods bring back? 

 Popcorn goes with movies and laughter.  Veggies go with discovering new things to eat. The chips, usually cheese flavored, were eaten long after they were supposed to be yet showed individual choice. Pear sorbet will always mean learning and being adventurous in a city filled with music, new friends and little known restaurants. 

And the potato. Can I get to the potato in a minute? 

Thank you.

The thing with food is that I have been known to connect food to emotions and then label them as that emotion.  

One example is that in the past I would say ice cream was a way to get calcium! 

What?  Did you smack your hand to your forehead with me? 

How much ice cream do you need to eat to get your daily intake of calcium?  I never figured out that part but it sure was tasty while it lasted.  When I realized that ice cream could be eaten and each spoon actually tasted with a pause, it was like eating it for the first time.  Whoa!  Delicious all over again.  I did not need to eat it for calcium and it was yummy! Ice cream is a Good Memory Food. 

Food came to represent one more thing to me last year when I had this experience.  

3-2020 7:09 pm I was sitting in Wendy’s with Brandon eating a baked potato and salad after visiting my niece for her daughter’s 3rd birthday when a group of kids came into the restaurant with their parents. The noise and chatter of kids laughing and talking suddenly sent me back to when Dallin and I would be eating inside a Wendy’s and others would come in. Tonight I looked around for the door, looking for how many chicken nuggets were left (which no one was eating!), how close we were to the door, was there something to look at outside to distract…. 

and then I realized what I was doing. 

I had gone back in my head to what I WOULD have done a decade ago…How I would have helped Dallin feel he was safe so he could continue eating or how he could tell me he was finished if it was too noisy and he needed to leave quickly. 

 Dallin died 8 years and many months ago now. And I have not been to Wendy’s with Dallin for probably ten years. As I realized THAT I started to physically shake and my eyes began to leak at a steady stream.  I had stopped eating. Brandon was watching me.  He had no idea what was going on and truthfully, neither did I. He asked if I was okay and I did not have an answer. 

All of these things were happening before I realized that my emotions, my physical body and my subconscious had been activated in a very real way.  This all happened in a matter of seconds.

I sat still. Brandon was with me. I was at a table with a potato, salad and drink in front of me. Watching. My eyes were leaking with memories.  Good ones for the time at Wendy’s we had, for the things we knew to do to support Dallin those many years ago.  Difficult memories of missing him. I felt all of it. 

It took many hours for me to think and process and hold hands with Brandon, talk about and be with what had happened. 

Back to now. And the potato.

Potatoes are what I choose to eat with a good memory and, yes, even with this one moment that was quite intense.  

I have the power and the ability to decide how I remember and see the stories in my world. 

What are your Good Memory Foods? See if you have them, my friends. You might be sweetly surprised at the pause it brings to you today!