Food and Love

Most of my memories of my childhood are negative.  This is not uncommon for people with depression.  We tend to focus on negative things and, although I had a pretty typical upbringing, my brain seems to have a superhighway to the negative areas and there is a toll bridge, guarded by a mean and ugly troll, to get to the land of positive thinking.

This evening, I participated in the fourth of six modules of a class at my synagogue.  The class is called Ayeka and it is focused on exploring where G-d is in our lives and how we can seek him out.  This is a very enjoyable class and I look forward to it each Tuesday evening.  Tonight’s topic of discussion was food.

During the class, I recounted a wonderfully positive memory of my childhood as it relates to food and my father.  My parents were Hungarian and spoke mostly Hungarian in our home.  Most of our friends and relatives were Hungarian as well so I understood pretty much anything I heard.  My father truly enjoyed food, whether he was eating it or feeding it to me.  I remember how much he enjoyed preparing food for me and watching me eat.  After my first bite, he would usually ask me if it was good (jó? which means good? or finom? which means delicious?).  He used to just love seeing my enjoyment, which may explain why I was overweight!

I remember he used to cut up some kind of smoked bacon and rye bread and give me a plateful.  A piece of bacon atop a piece of bread, all of them lined up on the plate.  I really loved it.  He called it katona.  I grew up thinking the the word katona was the Hungarian word for bacon.  Seemed to make sense, right?  Until one day, my father was talking about himself when he was a young man and he said that he was a katona.  He was a piece of bacon?  I was so confused.  So I asked him what he meant, calling himself a bacon.  He told me that katona was the word for soldier.  He called the bacon and bread katona because he lined them up like a platoon of soldiers.  I had quite a laugh over that.

I usually don’t think about G-d before I eat.  I don’t say blessings or prayers.  I just eat, taking the food for granted.  Tonight’s class, and this memory of my dad have changed this.  I thank G-d for the gift of food – and my father’s love.