arts&life

essay

Love

For The
Of Produce

W

hen I was growing up, my grand-
parents hatched mangos.
At least, that’s what it seemed to
me: When I was 8, they added freshly sliced
mangos to our usual brunch repertoire. It was
my first time tasting the sweet, slippery fruit
and I finished the entire family-sized bowl.
While my mom schooled me on sharing,
my grandparents made sure that from that
day on, I always had a healthy supply of man-
gos. They’d buy them in bulk, coddle them
like dinosaur eggs until they were perfectly
ripe, and then gift them to me. When I went
away to college, I’d come home to mangos.
In my 20s, I moved to New York City, and
I’d come home to mangos. Even now, with
two kids of my own, my 94-year old Poppa
is always sure to have a mango in hand. (To
admit aloud that my fondness has quelled
would break more than one heart.)
It’s said that relationships help nourish the
soul. If that’s true, my Grandma
and Poppa provide a very literal
example: While my parents
devour their grandchildren
with kisses and cuddles, I don’t
remember my own grand-
parents being huge on hugs.
They always showed their love
through food.
It makes sense when you
consider their beginnings. My
Poppa’s family owned the pro-
duce department in the Dexter
market in Downtown Detroit. As
the story goes, my Grandma was
sent there to buy garlic for her
mother. It was the early 1940s,
and because she was just a teen-
ager, she was thoroughly embar-
rassed to ask the handsome,
blue-eyed son of the owner
where she’d find such an unap-
pealing vegetable. Apparently,
my Poppa was undeterred: He
TOP: Grandma and Poppa (aka Norma and Phil Layne) presented her with the garlic
picking strawberries in the mid-1980s. ABOVE: Norma and his love. They would have
(Reisig) and Phillip Layne (in uniform) in the photo celebrated their 72nd anniver-
used for their engagement announcement.
sary in June.
My Grandma passed away a
year ago. My Poppa lives alone
now, but like an ancient relic, a butter-yellow
refrigerator still wheezes in their garage. It
used to be packed tight with USDA prime
steaks and sesame bagels; stocked with

SARA STILLMAN BERGER
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Vernors and Diet Squirt — always on the
ready for an impromptu family meal. It’s
empty now, but if excess love could be stored
like leftover food, I imagine that’s where it
would live forever.
Just past the refrigerator, a door in the
garage opens directly into my grandparents’
unassuming kitchen. Straight ahead are
white Formica countertops that, to the casual
observer, appear to be nothing special. But to
a more trained eye they represent the passage
from conception to consumption — where
simple ingredients transform into something
as abstract as love.
They are where my Poppa devoutly
chopped and peeled bushels of freshly
picked apples — each one a prize — for my
Grandma. He would climb to the tops of the
trees to pluck them, even after he was too
old to be doing such things, even after my
Grandma was walker-bound and had to wait
for him in the car — because (he was sure)
the prettiest, biggest apples were the highest
ones. Accepting the pale, fragrant slices from
her devoted sous chef, she would bake them
into flaky apple pies for Rosh Hashanah and
cinnamony apple sauce to serve with latkes.
My Poppa’s adoration for good-looking pro-
duce was second only to his adoration for his
beautiful wife. Nothing makes this more clear
than the three giant boxes stuffed with the
love letters they sent each other during WWII.
The letters remained untouched in my grand-
parents’ dusty basement until my Grandma
passed away. Only then did my Poppa finally
let his children read their private thoughts.
Letter after letter they professed their faithful,
long-distance love, doted over their engage-
ment, daydreamed about married life and
planned their modest wedding — which took
place during furlough, with only their moth-
ers by their sides.
Recently, I was looking through the fragile
pages, mindful of my Poppa’s longing as he
waited to see my Grandma — knowing he
must feel the same way 72 years later, now
that they are apart once again. Mostly the let-
ters read like this:

Dec. 14, 1943
I love you terribly. It’s tough to get back in the
grind (knowing) that I’ll have to wait at least
three months before I see you again. Gosh
darling, I love you so much. I never thought
that I could ever love one girl — as much as

I love you — and I’m all yours my darling …
Dearest we can’t neglect ourselves because we
have such a beautiful future in store. So dear-
est, please take care of yourself…
~ Your Phil

I stopped and read again when I hap-
pened upon this passage:

April 16, 1944
My Beloved One,
Well here’s your own guy again … Say! The
mess sergeant wants me to become a cook. It
all started when I asked if I could prepare the
salad for about 200 fellows — and they glad-
ly let me do it. I had swell ingredients, lettuce,
tomatoes, onions, radishes (made roses out of
’em) and green pepper. It was “rally fawncy.”
The fellows couldn’t believe that they were in
the army. I was told I’d make a fine wife —
da noive! (i.e. the nerve!) I’ll be a wonderful
husband. And once in a while, I’ll help you to
prepare the salad.

It was all there, in that one little para-
graph nestled between I need you terribly
and Well honey, I’m going to close now. My
Poppa, ever the nurturer, lovingly prepared
a meal for his family of army “fellows.” Even
when he was a young man of 20 — even in
the most unusual of circumstances — he
was showing the people closest to him that
he cared in the best way he knew how:
through food.
Nevertheless, he turned down the oppor-
tunity to become an army cook — instead,
when he returned home he opened a
very “fawncy” (and successful) shoe store
Downtown.
Over the years, he kept his promise and
then some: He helped my Grandma prepare
many salads — not just for his doted-upon
wife, but for his four children, and then
his eight grandchildren and now six great-
grandchildren, too.
And I savored it all: I learned to score
cucumbers with a fork before slicing them,
so that they look like pretty ridged rings. I
learned to garnish with nasturtium — deli-
cate, edible flowers. I learned the difference
between mineolas and tangelos, when to
tell if a cantaloupe is ripe and how to slice a
whole pineapple so it looks like four yellow
canoes. But above all, my Poppa taught me
that love can turn radishes into roses. •

jn

July 20 • 2017

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