SOUP STORY EXCERPTS

Spring, 2007, Feature Writing Class

 

I can remember my first bowl of chicken and double vegetable soup. At the time, I had no idea why we were eating bowls of soup for supper. After I grew up, I learned that my father had been robbed, and his entire check had been stolen. We didn’t have any money, not even for groceries.

 

My mother proudly put the bowl of steaming soup in front of me. “Eat up, baby,” she said. I was too young to notice the tears.

 

***

 

One soup that every woman in my family learns how to make is stew. The stew recipe has been passed on from generation to generation. Every generation adds and subtracts different items to make the stew their own.

 

The last stew that I had was prepared by my grandmother. That cold winter night, I sat at her kitchen table with the stew and a saucer of crackers. I am not much of a stew-eater, but I grew excited to be included in this tradition.

 

Each ingredient represents several generations of women. The stew represents the love, compassion and servitude the women have for their families. The stew is an outpouring of love and nutrition.

 

***

 

On cold, wintry days in Oklahoma there seems to be only one thing that really warms me up inside. Situated on Main Street in Norman is Bison Witches Restaurant.  The menu boasts over 25 different sandwiches.  But on cold days, the most important offerings are the soups.  

 

My favorite is the Cream of Potato Bacon.

 

A rich, creamy soup is ladled into a bread bowl with the center cut out.  The cutout top is left to the side.  The soup is topped with shredded cheese and bacon.  Big lumps of potatoes sink to the bottom, so you need to stir the soup before every bite to get just the right mixture of potatoes, cheese, bacon, and cream.

 

There is a particular way to eat this soup for maximum satisfaction. First, stir the cheese and bacon to melt and meld the cheese into the soup.  Next, tear the bread cap into pieces and dip them into the soup.  Sop up the soup, blow on it to cool it off, and pop it into your mouth.  

 

Any regular person would think that after the soup is gone, lunch is over.  No way.  To get the maximum out of your meal, take the spoon and scrape the sides of the bread bowl to extract the bread that has been saturated with the precious soup. Not until you have finally dug yourself a hole in the bottom should you feel that lunch is done.  

 

***

 

Grandma’s stew saves a cold wintry day. Hours are spent rolling around in the snow, building snowmen, and having snowball fights. After a while, clothes are soaking wet from melted snow, hands and noses are bright red, and icicles have started forming on the ends of hair. So much energy has been wasted that filling the stomach with food and warming the body up are imperative. Grandma has a cure for both.

 

Grandma brings everyone inside and swaps warm clothes for wet ones. Steaming bowls of soup sit at the table waiting to be devoured. Steam is rising from the big brown bowls with small spoons dipped inside. Mounds of pot roast sit between floating carrots, celery, corn, green beans, and onions. The broth is simply water with a hint of salt and pepper. The most important ingredient is the pinch of grandma’s love that is added in.

 

***

 

Since before I can remember, my favorite soup has been New England Clam Chowder. My mother and I used to eat a full can every Saturday afternoon that we spent together, with some saltine crackers and iced tea. The tradition started when I was 5 years old. My mother and father had just gotten a divorce, and I lived with my father. I always longed to spend time with my mother, and every time I had the opportunity to see her she would have a bowl of steaming soup waiting for me. We would spend time, sometimes hours, mulling over our food and talking about whatever was going on in our lives. As I grew older, the topics of our conversations matured from toy trucks and finger painting to cars and girls, but the soup was always there.

 

***

 

I don’t really like soup much.

 

I do, however, like the idea of soup. On a rainy fall day when I don’t have anything to do but read a good book I have found myself wishing a steamy mug of soup sounded good. But it usually doesn’t.

 

I’m not sure why I don’t like eating soup. (Would you call it “eating”? Perhaps “drinking” is more appropriate.) Maybe it reminds me of being sick. My mom always makes me eat soup when I’m sick, even though I tell her it’s so gross that it’s only making me sicker. Or maybe it reminds me of the times I was little and my parents were out of town. Those were times I didn’t have any choice of food but soup.  Or maybe I don’t like soup because of all the disgusting kinds they make (Cream of Celery, Chunky Cream of Shrimp, Creamy Beef with Mushroom, Cream of Asparagus, etc.). Who really eats/drinks those?

 

***

 

As a child, I guzzled and slurped tomato soup down my throat faster than my heart could thrust blood through my veins.

 

Simple yet satisfying, facile yet full-flavored – tomato soup still evokes memories of a simpler time when rushed lunches and elaborate dinners were overshadowed by a hunger for something more.

 

A relaxing snack with friends. A warm welcome from the cold. A reminder of a loved one.

 

After having my wisdom teeth removed last Christmas, I bought a few cans of Campbell’s condensed soup at the local supermarket. Excitedly fumbling with the can opener to pour out the memories, I was dismayed by what I saw.

 

The can was filled with chunky tomato paste. It was like a bland tomato sauce – a forgotten, flaccid blob of catsup. Scooping out the guts of the container, I began to fill the can with water when it suddenly hit me.

 

My mother didn’t use water. She used milk. She said it made the soup creamier.

 

And I remembered. I remembered how I’d be enraptured in front of the television, my eyes never noticing my mother silently placing a warm bowl in front of me. I remembered coming home from elementary school, chattering and jittering away, only to be silenced in my mother’s affection – and spoonfuls of thick, zesty soup.

 

I never noticed any of this as a child. In retrospect, I realize that tomato soup is as practical as it is palatable. Open. Add water. Stir.

 

But it’s the aesthetic that warms my heart and my stomach. The way the edges of the spoon and bowl dance with a thin orange froth. The way I can feel the comforting heat through the bowl. The way I can I always expect a consistent smell. A consistent taste. A consistent consistency

.

But the true beauty of tomato soup isn’t its regularity.  It’s its ability to change forms, to adapt, to improvise. It can be gulped from a mug just as easily as it can be scooped with a spoon; it can be sipped cold from an expensive restaurant just as easily as it can be set down in a sloshing bowl with two wedges of a grilled cheese sandwich.

 

And even now, I always make sure to leave a few cans in the back of my cupboard – hiding in the darkness, gathering dust while I go about my busy day, reading and writing and studying and socializing.

 

Perhaps one day in the near future I can heat up a can and present it to my roommates. I can make it with milk. And I can make it with grilled cheese sandwiches. And perhaps, I can create memories.

 

***

 

My family is Jewish.  Sort of.  We make lots of food on the Jewish holidays.  That’s about the extent of it.  But the food is so good I hope the sort-of-Jewish traditions carry on forever.

 

Last Thanksgiving, we decided to make matzah ball soup.  It’s the soup we make whenever we want to really enjoy a happy meal.  It’s a remedy we use sparingly.  It keeps it special.  For Thanksgiving, my grandparents flew in from New York.  My grandma is not Jewish, but somehow, her help with my mom’s soup, always makes the soup taste the best.

 

I hate to cook.  I hate the kitchen.  I hate the clean up.  Really, I just hate it all.  I like to hang out near the kitchen while my mom and my grandma cook, which is precisely what I did Thanksgiving weekend, while they made the soup.  I sat on the family room floor playing with my cat, Lucky.

 

I was fascinated with the way that cat would react to catnip.  I grabbed the catnip from the kitchen spice cabinet and brought it back into the family room.  I grabbed a handful and sprinkled it over Lucky’s scratching post.  He went wild.  So did my grandma.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

 

“Putting catnip on the scratching post,” I said.

 

She looked worried.

 

“I thought that was basil,” she said.  “I put it in the soup.”

 

I kept the stuff in an unlabeled Tupperware container.  When she confessed to my mom what she had done, we all gathered in the kitchen around the soup pot.  We decided to continue making it and not tell the rest of the family what had happened.  When we served the soup that evening, it was the best it had ever been.  We revealed the truth to the family.  Mostly, they laughed.  (My sister was mad. Typical.)

 

My grandma died last month.  Lucky ran away.  The catnip still sits in pantry, useless.  I don’t know when we will make matzah ball soup next, although, we could probably use a good batch now, more than ever.  I don’t know what the soup will taste like anymore.  Probably not the same.  But it will always be my favorite.  It is a memory of sadness that she is gone.  It is a memory of happiness, watching her in the kitchen with my mom.  It is a good laugh for the family, which I’m sure somewhere, somehow, she is participating in.

 

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