collaborative storytelling that is equal parts critical and creative

I have a conversation at a party about that familiar breakfast formation that goes by many names; “egg in a hole”, “egg in a nest”, “toad in a hole.” I call it “gashouse eggs,” a name I got from my Grandpa Sidney, my mom’s dad.

 

I am in my Grandpa’s kitchen, in the house he used to live in, in Memphis, Tennessee. My brother and I sit at the kitchen island in tall chairs where the light is warm and yellow. Grandpa feeds us saltines and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter for a snack. He stands at the stove, cracks an egg into a hole in a piece of toast and calls it a “gashouse egg” with no explanation of the name. He teaches us to flip an egg without a spatula, by practicing instead with a piece of toast in the pan. He gives it a little shake and jolt and it flips and then we try.

 

Every now and then I have my own jolts of memory that revolve around Grandpa, around Memphis. When I would stay over and come downstairs early in the morning, I’d see him praying, a tallit over his head as he swayed. I remember the awe of experiencing a pop-out foot rest on the chair in his living room. And I can feel the heat of the days there, warm with leisure, instead of the city busy heat that I knew.

 

These memories of my own mix with the photographs I’ve seen and stories I’ve heard of Memphis, where my mom comes from. There’s this photo that hangs in the apartment where I grew up in New York City, of mom with her three brothers, their dad kneeling. She has on one of those thick headbands and her dad holds a big fish that they caught together. As I picture it, I see my own 10 year old self in my mom’s place. Yes, we looked alike as kids, but so many of my own memories meld with photographs, with stories I’ve heard. It becomes hard to tell the difference.

 

My friend once explained to me that if you were told over and over a story about getting lost in the grocery store and then finding your mom by the tomatoes, that even if you never got lost and there were no tomatoes involved, that that would become your story, and the next time someone asked you about getting lost as a kid you’d say, “Oh yeah, I found my mom by the tomatoes.”

 

And on the one hand that freaks me out, that a story that isn’t mine might seep its way into my memory. And on the other hand, I am so grateful for that, that stories infiltrate and memory remembers into experience.

 

My Grandpa Sidney is now losing his memory, such that present encounters hardly take shape, beyond a greeting and his classic phrase, “Are we having fun yet?” He does, however, recall the stories of his youth, and young adulthood, that I have heard over and over. When I ask him about his father’s grocery store, about the army, about his days playing clarinet and saxophone in a band, I hold out hope that when he answers, he is all there, present in those experiences he calls upon. And when he tells his classic stories a little bit differently each time, I wonder, who am I to say that isn’t what happened? I who have heard the story hundreds of times before.

 

At this point, Grandpa likely doesn’t remember, really, those stories he tells. Perhaps these stories, rooted in his own experience, are now more like getting lost in the grocery store for him. Perhaps, told again and again they stay stuck in his brain, but this time they are just at the surface.

 

So many of my interactions with Grandpa, throughout my life, have been based on his memories, on his sharing them with my brother and me. When I think of my memories of him, I think of childhood. My nostalgia for my time spent with Grandpa as a kid melds with my nostalgia for his own youth. I feel sad to write this for myself, admitting that I don’t really know him in the present, that there has always been the separation of time between us, a focus on the past. 

 

Where Grandpa lives now is bright with bluish light, and the chair with the pop-out footrest is gone, but a pale yellow chaise longue from his old house is there. Colored glass bowls rest on the shelves, and it is clean in a way that the apartment I grew up in never was, and that makes me hesitate to sit on the fluffed up couch or take a jellybean from the bowl on the side table. It is easy to feel like I missed the moment to make new memories with him. I’m not sure how present he is, and this new house doesn’t fit in with my collection of nostalgic images.

 

At the party where the “gashouse eggs” came up, I’m asked to call my Grandpa to find out where the name came from, and so I do. He has no idea why a gashouse egg is a gashouse egg, but is glad I called, and asks me to look it up for him and report back. I’m glad he doesn’t know this one, so I can find out, and give him something in return.