“So, if food isn’t love, what is food?” said the skeleton.

Look, fine, if you’re eating, and you see somebody who is starving, and you give them your food– food is love.   Nothing really more to the point you can do in that moment to express love.  Preparing a delicious meal for your loved ones, I’d say in that case the food is love.   Patiently spooning soup into the mouth of a weak, sick person– love.  Stuffing an overfed dog with steak?   I’m sorry, that just seems the wrong example.

“Well, maybe it’s a lot for me to expect you to understand, never having been hungry yourself,” said the skeleton.   

As you recall, my sister and I were pampered little middle class bastards.  It was a beautiful and horrible arrangement for you.  You could point to your virtue in never letting us know hunger or any kind of material want, and at the same time, you could be bitter because we had so little appreciation of the things we learned to take for granted.  You remember what you used to tell me when I thanked you as we came out of a restaurant?   

“You never have to thank me for food,” said the skeleton.

Food was many things when we grew up, few of them healthy.  Overeating was the norm, and eating in anger.  Literally, eating to choke down feelings. I recall you equated being able to put away a large quantity of food with manhood.

“Well, I saw that in the army,” said the skeleton.

I recall how proud you seemed to be when I downed maybe a half dozen hot dogs at the end of the Wading River Fourth of July parade.  I must have been eight or so.  The volunteer fire department had a big pot of free hot dogs and I kept going back.  The fireman would dip a long fork into the steaming water and pull out another one, put mustard on it, hand it to me.  I remember your smile, and your pride, at how many I ate.

Food, perversely, was also held up, mostly by mom, as a sign of personal bravery, a daring willingness to try things that looked and smelled repellant. She was not consistent with this in her own eating, but she always praised my sister, who was more apt to try new foods than I was.  “Your sister is a trooper,” mom would say, as my sister put something disgusting in her mouth.   

“Well, you had the last laugh on that one, didn’t you?” said the skeleton. 

We went for sushi after you died and I ordered eel.  Mom was horrified.  I got to chide her for not being a trooper.  Quite delicious, the way the Japanese prepare it, though I don’t know if, even at the height of my omnivore days, I’d have tried it boiled in a creamy sauce with onions.   

“Well, on the other hand, you were never trooper enough to try herring, Elie,” said my father.   As he said it I felt a sick feeling in my stomach.  Man, that stuff looks and smells disgusting.  Even my sister was not trooper enough to try herring.