Next Tuesday morning,
after the three Hannigan boys have pulled and dragged each other all over the
living room in the quest for presents, I will go rooting beneath the tree.
There, I will (hopefully) find a long, thin rectangular-shaped box with my name
on it, just like I have on every one of the last 12 Christmases since we moved
to New York. I will pick it up and shake it gently just to be sure it is what I
think it is. Then, while the children are otherwise occupied, I will stealthily
carry it to a safe corner of the house, tear off the paper, rip open the box,
inhale the scent of chocolate, and start salivating.
This is what a
Cadbury’s Selection Box can do to a grown man in exile. It forces him to
regress to childhood. The responsible father of three is transformed into a
starving bear who has happened upon an abandoned picnic hamper after three days
without food. Before Christmas breakfast, sometimes before dawn, and definitely
before any of my greedy cubs can ask me to share, I will scarf down some
Buttons or carefully pick apart a Flake. I will close my eyes as I do so and,
for a few precious moments, I will suddenly be three thousand miles away, in
the Cork home of my childhood. A little boy once more.
This is what food can
do when you live away from home. This is the power it retains even after more
than a decade. It has the ability to dredge up memories and to transport. The mere
sight of the Selection Box my wife sources each year, never mind the taste of
the delightful contents within, inevitably brings to mind my own father and
mother. I can still see them bleary-eyed on the couch, embers smouldering in
last night’s fire, as they watch their sons and daughters tear into Santa’s
bounty every one of those magical Christmas mornings that now seem so, so long
ago. Some of the people from that room have died. The rest of us have changed.
In many ways, only the Selection Box endures, a link to a time past.
The news earlier this
week that Toronto’s first Irish food store is doing a roaring trade would have
come as no surprise to the longer-serving members of the diaspora. Absence and
distance make the heart and the palate grow fonder. Especially at this time of
year when, no matter how much you’ve put down roots in another place, the very
mention of a Cork Yuletide delicacy like spiced beef can start you waxing
nostalgic and wondering about home. Not just about Christmas either but, by
extension, about what life might have been like if you’d have never left.
Like so many emigrants,
I was warned before my departure that exile can have strange effects on people.
One person assured me that the moment I got on the plane I would start to
develop a curious affection for maudlin Irish folk songs. I laughed in his
face. Of course, today I have several CDs in the car and an inexplicable
fondness for the poignancy of “Spancil Hill” that prove my friend right. The
same lesson applies to food as it does to music.
The newly-arrived Irish
in Canada will wander into that shop in Toronto and find themselves undergoing
the oddest experiences. The very presence of familiar brand names on the
shelves will be enough to spur them into emotional rather than rational
purchases. They will end up going back to houses and apartments they do not yet
call home, laden with foodstuffs they never even touched when they lived in
Ireland. There is no scientific reason why they will do this. They just will.
I know this to be true
because, over the years, I’ve developed a bizarre taste for Erin Potato Soup.
Never ate it when I was in Ireland. Never would have thought of making it when
I was in Ireland. But, I saw it in the international food aisle of a
supermarket here one day and I found myself drawn to the packaging that somehow
reminded me of accompanying my mother to Dunnes Stores in Bishopstown every
Thursday night until I was old enough to refuse to go. Now, a steaming bowl of
this soup is a beloved staple on refrigerated Long Island winter days when the
snow is piled up outside.
Over the years I have
found myself going through customs on the way back from Ireland carrying all
manner of produce: sausages, rashers, salmon, Taytos, a loaf of Brennan’s
Bread, Mikado Biscuits, Cadbury’s Roses, and, of course, boxes and boxes of
Barry’s Tea bags. Indeed, I’ve also been known to pay $8 for a small box of Barry’s
Tea if I spot it in a supermarket around here. Even in a recession, there are
occasions when you just have to splurge. You aren’t buying food. You are buying
a piece of who you used to be.
One time I brought my
wife some Hunky Dory Sour Cream and Onion crisps from Dublin. Aside from the fact
they were a lot cheaper than perfume, I knew they would take her back. And they
did. The second she opened the first packet, she was reminded of a time in the
early years of our marriage when hangover-beating crisp sandwiches were
considered the perfect Sunday brunch, when home was a childless, carefree,
rented basement flat off the main drag in Dun Laoghaire. She devoured them,
surrounded by noisy children, wondering why Mommy and Daddy were sitting in the
kitchen with such faraway looks in their eyes. Processed food as sense memory.
As we were leaving the
eastern Long Island seaside town of Montauk after a day out last summer, I was
getting ready for the long drive home when I spotted that a shop on the main
street had a sign advertising Irish produce. I pulled over and nipped in but
the shelves were kind of bare, save for a box of Crunchies. The holy grail. I
grabbed it and came back to the car where the natives were growing restless.
Until I handed out these bars of gold.
There followed half an
hour of contented oohing and aahing. Where normally there would be fighting and
arguing and name-calling, there was just the pleasant sounds of children
savouring the chocolate honey-combed magnificence in their hands. That the
18-month old was painting his face a fast-melting brown didn’t bother me in the
slightest. It was such a wonder to hear them all being quiet.
“Why are you guys being
so good?” I asked.
“We love Irish candy,”
they chorused in their 100 per cent proof American accents. “We just love it.”
As they’ll discover if
they catch me secretly wolfing down the Crunchie from my Selection Box on
Christmas morning, so do I. So do I.
(This
piece first appeared in the Irish Daily Mail on December 21st)
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