“I’m going to bring the caviar up that I bought.” This from my youngest son.
He and his middle brother love fine things. Their older brother was less inclined to quality and more towards quantity. But then he never really had much money. Things might have been different if he had. Or not. He might have just bought more.
Josh had been experimenting with various little pots of the black, gelatinous goo for the last several months.
“Josh, I am not too crazy about caviar,” I said, thinking about swallowing stinky fish eggs on toast.
“Do you have a mother of pearl spoon?” he asked.
Some might think that a ridiculous question if its asked of someone who has already made their stance on fish roe clear, but it wasn’t. I wandered through my mental inventory of estate sale finds. I wouldn’t have picked it up for the reason Josh asked for it, metal and salty roe not mixing. No, I would have chosen it for it’s nacre.
“Has Grandmother ever had caviar?” Josh asked.
“I doubt it,” I answered.
We sat at the dinner table, the small jar sitting in it’s ice cocoon. I made toast points and chopped some chives from Grandmother’s little herb garden that grows lushly between the house and the driveway. We had no creme fraiche. We used sour cream.
My sweet Mother, something of a drama queen, off camera mentioned that she actually thought it tasted good, the little sturgeon eggs popping in her mouth in a buttery, salty mess. And well, I got to say that just short of 20 days to 84, its hardly a bad thing to sit with family and try fish egg goo. And laugh. And experience something new.
“Tomorrow we are going to try Jose’s Corn,” Josh said. “I will fix it for you, Grandmother.”
“I hope I’m not too full,” said the drama queen, who will do and say almost anything to make sure we spend time convincing her.
And he did. And we did. And we liked it.
It was a good weekend.
And like Emily said, “Forever is composed of nows.”
“Forever is composed of nows.”
― Emily Dickinson
