Chawclit

3797 …

I awoke to my usual Sunday morning fanfare — Wynton Marsalis. ‘Sunday Morning’ — and made my way downstairs to the kitchen.
“He lives!” My wife thinks she’s droll.
“Any coffee?”
“Just made some. Want an egg or something?”
“Nah, just one of my breakfast bars” She went over to the pantry, that’s what we call it, it’s just a tall, white cabinet in the mud room and returned with —
“What’s this?”
“It’s your breakfast bar”
“Were they out of mine?”
“That is yours”
“Where’s the chawclit?”
The what?”
“Chawclit” A blank stare. “Y’know . . . My bars have a strip of —” The stare holds. ” — You’re kidding, right? I’ve been eating these things like for . . . ever” She snatches the thing out of my hand and proceeds to read the ingredients.
“Look, it’s got your almonds and your raisins and that granola oatsy — Whatever that shit — It’s the one I always buy. Believe me, I’ve made that mistake once before and I never heard the end of it”
“But —” She shoves it in my mouth. Paper and all.
“Shut up and eat your breakfast, Robert”
“Hey, Pop!” Our daughter, Lizzie.
“Hey Baby, look at this” I hold the dubious breakfast bar under her nose.
“Yea? So?”
“No, look at it” She squints.
“It’s one of your ‘healthy’ . . . Cardboard thingy treats. That reminds me, I gotta feed Hardtack. Hardtack lets out a hapless ‘what am I? Chopped liver’ whoop.
“What’s missin’?”
“Ehhh . . . Taste?”
“And . . . “
“I don’t know. Vitamin . . . ‘Who gives a —‘”
“Elisabeth!”
“Mother?”
“Chawclit! There’s no chawklit!”
“Mom! Where’s Daddy’s . . . Chawc lit?” My mother’s from New York, Hell’s Kitchen. The Dead End
Kids . . . Chawclit is just one of many woids I inherited from her. And my loving wife and children are merciless whenever Huntz Hall comes channeling out my mouth. “What’s chawclit?” My wife goes full white coat.
“You know, dear, the stuff they used to put on your father’s granola bar” Lizzie nodded, very big and slow nods. Don’t spook him nods.
“Yea, Pop. Yea. What are they trying to pull anyway?”
“That’s right, dear. I’m going to write them a letter!”
Those two love verbally boxing my ears but I sense something very different about this round of good natured mockery. In the past they’d make fun of how I said a particular word, but at least they understood . . . What I was talking about. The nuance was unsettling. I felt like Napoleon at the battle of Bellevue.
“C’mon guys. That’s enough. I mean . . . ‘Chawclit’ or ‘Chocolate’ . . . What difference does it make?”
“Right . . . Right. . .” Those big, slow nods again.
Were they really gonna make me try to explain chocolate? Could a mere mortal do justice to such nectar of the gods? I know they’re gaslighting me but how far were they going to take this? Well, the joke was on them. I could no more explain what chocolate is than give a lecture on quantum mechanics. Truth is, I really don’t know much — anything about the stuff. Never really gave it much thought. Except when I was gnawing away on one of my breakfast bars. I took my bar and my coffee and left them to their devious pleasure.
“Oh, Honey, don’t be like that!”
“Yea, Pop. You’re such a baby!”
Seeking refuge in our home office, slash den, slash . . . Y’ know, every house has one of those rooms . . . I plop myself down at the computer . . . Chocolate . . . Chocolate . . . It’s a bean, right? Like coffee and vanilla and . . . The cacao bean. And they do something to it. Roast it or boil it or . . . And they get cacao butter or fat . . . They add something to it. Milk . . . And sugar . . . There’s semi-sweet . . . And white . . . And dark . . . And . . .
‘Chocolate’
‘Cacao bean’
‘Chocolate bar’
‘Hershey’s ‘
‘Chocolate Mousse’
‘Hot choco —‘

Me and my buddies headin’ up to Jack Frost. None of us know how to ski. Just a bunch of city kids. I don’t remember who came up with the idea — Big Ed probably. He was the closest thing we had to a social director. He’d see something on the tube or in a movie and the next thing we know — We’re
all jammed into my ’92 Taurus heading up to Jack Frost.
We all thought it was gonna be a lark. I mean, how hard could it be? We all saw them doin’ it on tv. Just stab those polls into the powder and — Of course, none of us bothered with the complimentary mini lesson on the Bunny Hill. Straight to the lift and up . . . And up . . . To the ‘Sidewinder’!
It was ugly. We looked like a bunch of busted up barrels of bootleg whiskey being hurled down a Tennessee mountainside by axe wielding revenuers.
After our baptism of fire we all came away with a newfound respect for this lightning fast and scalpel sharp mode of transportation. Most of the guys took their humble pie and Ace bandages back to the Bunny Hill and that mini lesson. Big Ed turned out to be a natural. Who would’ve guessed? And me? I spent the rest of my day in the lodge, burrowing my frozen ass cheeks deep into the cushion of a big leather recliner nestled by the grandiose granite fireplace. It was just a sprain but I was grounded. But I was fine with that. What was I missing? For a couple of weeks I couldn’t do something I couldn’t do anyway. Orders from the crack medical staff at Jack Frost Mountain — Nurse Pam.
In fact, I was kinda diggin’ it. It was like one of those old Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon movies. Robert in the lodge . . . Hot cocoa and checkin’ out all the ski babes . . . ‘Hello Ladies’ . . . And then I see her. She’s hobbling in on her crutches. Not just a sprain.
She’s looking downward, carefully, pensively placing the rubber stoppers onto the wooden floor, one after the other. Down, down . . . hop. Down, down . . . hop. Down, down . . . I stand up and offer her my recliner. And for the first time she looks up — Startled — Then a smile. A crooked smile. Her smile.
“Oh, thank you but I couldn’t . . .”
“I insist” I insist? Where did that come from? When did I get so grown up?”
“Oh, well . . . That’s very kind. Frankly I was starting to wonder how much longer I could stay vertical”
“This is for you too” My coco.
“No, that’s yours”
“No. No. You look like you need it more than I do — I didn’t drink it. Or anything. I’ll go get another one”
And that was it. Everything. Every . . . thing I have today. Everything that’s good in my life — My life , traced back to a crooked smile and cup of hot chocolate. And that day was only a few days away. Our anniversary, the day Jack and Jill fell down the mountainside. How was I gonna get through that day? How was my wife gonna tell our kids, for the umpteenth time, how we met — Without chocolate?
It’s a small thing, I know. A minor detail. Like leaving out Santa’s pipe . . . Or . . . Blitzen. Does it change the story of Christmas? Does it change Christmas? I mean, what’s one reindeer more or less?
When me and my kids pop in ‘Willy Wanka and the . . . Caramel . . . Factory’? Will it somehow alter the experience? Will there be something missing? Of course, but will it . . . Lizzie, Max and me scrunched up together on the sofa transfixed by Gene Wilder and ‘Pure Imagination’ . . . Will it really be any different? Is ‘Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory’ even about chocolate?
Of course there is the chocolate experience itself. Chocolate ice cream. Chocolate donuts. Chocolate chip cookies — But if you were to ask me right now, ‘What exactly does this thing called chocolate taste like?’ I’m not sure I could tell you And it’s only been one day! What time is it?
“Babe! I’m headin’ over now, okay?”
“What? Okay!”

I was her lifeline to the world, from her world. Whenever she found herself in a panic, she’d beg the nurses to call me and I’d come running, so she could look at my face — The only face she could still recognize — And try to find some comfort in it, and maybe, just maybe, wrest a small piece of a memory from my eyes or my smile.
And then, one day, she didn’t recognize my face. The heart cannot bear such a pain as this. You can feel each chamber being boarded up one by one. In her mind I was no longer her son. I only existed when I was sitting in front of her. And when I left . . . I wasn’t even a memory. And yet there I was — Here I
am — No matter where I am — Every bit, every beat of this wounded heart, her son.

We were in the cafeteria. She was staring out the big picture window. Across the nursing home lawn there’s a house, the back of a house, and the back yard of a house. A big silver maple tree, a long, long rope reaching up into its limbs. A swing, or what used to be a swing, dangling in the weak breeze. Her gaze was fixed. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her gaze fixed on anything, her eyes venturing beyond the lenses of her glasses. She actually looked . . . engaged , curious.
“No one lives there”
“What?”
“No one lives there” I squinted, studying the old Victorian, looking for some sign of life until . . . Really? She might’ve been right. She might’ve been wrong, What did it matter? All she was for sure, was lost.

Her neighbor heard her car door slam. Same time every morning, like clockwork. Set your watch to that slam. About twenty, twenty-five minutes later she’s passing through the living room and out of the corner of her eye catches a glimpse of her neighbor’s car. Back already? She doesn’t recall hearing the car starting up or driving away. She shrugs and gets back to her housework. Another pass through the living room — Something’s wrong. There’s someone in the driver’s seat, flailing around. She rushes out to find my mother in a state of panic.
The cops show up and gingerly talk her out of the car and back into her house. By the time the ambulance arrives she’s surprisingly self possessed and lucid again. She knows who she is, where she was going, and how to get there, who she was going to meet there, and why. What she didn’t know, was how to start her car.
Is that how it happens? You don’t lose a memory. You lose a piece of one. And then another piece of a different memory. Little things. Details. That’s what makes it so confusing. Frightening. If the whole memory were to dissipate you wouldn’t have any reason to nervously slough it off — ‘A senior
moment’ — Or after a series of those ‘senior moments’, to start to panic.
Like a computer, our brain meticulously records and files everything entered into the system, our search engine, that monorail snaking through the dry cleaners, its clean, dried and pressed memories wrapped up and sealed in plastic, waiting to be summoned. Press a number and wait for your confirmation suit to come roaring down the rails right up to the cash register. But our brain isn’t a computer, and our search engine isn’t a monorail. It doesn’t methodically seek out specific data. When we access our mind’s cloud, it opens up and rains memories — Joyous, wonderful memories — Tragic, heartbreaking memories. The biggest and best notions we’ve ever dreamed, right alongside the most licentious and petty.
They’re not organized. Alphabetically. Chronologically. By subject matter. Or even by importance. And they keep coming, all the time — Hundreds — Thousands — Every second. Every nano second. And like children in the rain we can only catch so many drops on our tongues while millions hit the ground, splash in the grass and soak into the garden soil, or run down the gutter in the drive to the inlet in the street, lost forever.
We forget more memories than we could ever remember. Make up as many as we forget. And each time we retrieve one it’s different. We edit. Amend. Shape it to fit the space in our soul we need to restore or appease. You can’t make a hard copy of a memory.
We like to believe our most treasured memories are etched into a gold, heart shaped locket, pressed tightly till you hear the neat click, and always at the ready — Our most harrowing and haunting, stuffed into an old Cunard trunk forsaken among the cobwebs in the attic. But memories have no stake in our happiness or well being. Your first kiss. The birth of your children. The death of your parents. The theme song to ‘Gilligan’s Island’. Each and every one is as vibrant and as vulnerable as the next.

It was Sunday. I used to visit her every day. And whenever the nurses would call. I was ‘on call’ twenty-four seven. But, selfish son that I am, when I found myself no longer the center of her universe, every day became three times a week, and then two, and then . . . Sundays.
“Mom” I pulled her around to face me. “Do you remember when we were kids and you’d take us shopping at the Acme?” I might as well have been asking her to recite the Preamble to the
Constitution or the names of Santa’s eight reindeers. “We’d all get a cart — Jimmy would climb in
and . . .” It was such a happy memory — Not one of hers anymore, but I wanted to share it with her, even if it was in vain, I wanted to share it with someone who was there, someone who helped create it. I wanted to savor it, hang on to it for as long as I could before . . . Before it wasn’t one of mine anymore either. “. . . And at the checkout you’d reach over the cart, and Jimmy, and grab us a Hershey’s bar — One of the big ones with almonds and break it up into three pieces and Eddy would always —“

My mother’s eyes flashed.

“Chawlit!”

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