TIME AND A SLICE OF BREAD

Seventeen years ago today, dad died.

What strikes me as I see this on my calendar is that it seems like it could easily be 50 years.

Because my memory plays with time, and the 90s seem like yesterday, until you stop to think about it and contrast the past to the present - who I was, where our family life was and what the world was then and now.

Seventeen years ago, the kids were still in high school, living with us and going through teen things. We were in between cats. Pocono died in August, the year before and Calypso (my first act of grandfathering when Sharon got the boot order from her college residence) did not yet arrive on our doorstep. We had a station wagon in our driveway and I drove a honda to my job with J&J, still depositing mounds of traumatic stress into my PTSS account and wondering if becoming a chef would be a good mid-life career switch.

Thinking back about dad, it's like, 'dad who?'.  It is difficult for me now, to understand how I was never able to break through to him. Because I look at myself now and imagine having different conversations and creating something, even if it was only a different understanding. We never had anything that resembled an adult relationship. He was gone - as an active participant in living - long before I grew up. Checked out on life and growth and fathering somewhere along the line for reasons I can surmise but can't understand.

Last year, I wrote a song for dad. It includes music and exists in MP3 format (but not to be included at this time). Although the song relates to one of the positive aspects of his collective activity - as a man who had some skill in the kitchen, it is also littered with my own attempts to resolve ambivalences and mixed emotions. He was always living in the tense of a 3rd person, not as a "you and I" figure. The song is about an activity that should be passed on through family lines in an active sense - baking traditional ethnic foods. But as with all things relating to dad, I learned by watching and emulating what I thought I saw, or in most cases, by doing the opposite.

The bread is called hzympka - a simple, peasant bread, filled with swiss cheese or mashed potatoes. No one has any idea how to spell it, so I put this spelling together as a phonetic representation of my memory of what I heard. There is no written recipe for it and I've never been able to find anything similar in a cookbook or through the internet. Later, I'll publish the actual recipe but for now, here's the words of my song.

Hzympka  © 2009 C.Pronchik

First you have a smoke

It's gotta be a Pall Mall (pall mall)

Then don't wash your hands

You want to keep the tobacco smell (the tobacco smell)

Flour, yeast and water

Mix it up and let it soak (let it soak)

This will give you time

To step aside and catch another smoke (catch another smoke)

pomollo,  pomollo katskia

When it sponges up, add more flour and some salt

Go grease some pans;  ashes fall in - it's no one's fault (it's no one's fault)

Pull the dough into the pans

warm and soft and somewhat wetter  (it should be somewhat wetter)

Chop some cheese and mix it in 

Swiss is good but Switzer's better (switzer's better)    (don't forget the ground pepper !!!!)

Wet your fingers with your mouth; pull the dough, edge to middle

Seal it up and let it rise; you forgot the pepper, didn't ya?  (Jesus Christ, you forgot the pepper, didn't ya?)

Egg and water, glaze the top

In the oven three hundred and fifty degrees (that's 350 degrees farenheit)

Catch a smoke, pet the dog

drink a couple Balentines for me (don't forget to make the 3-ring sign for ballentine)