Potatoes, eggs, mustard and mayo. People think the secret ingredient is the parsley, but it’s really the dill in the chopped pickles.
Nowadays 19 is fairly young but back in the early seventies, 19 was old enough to join the Navy, meet a nice fella, get married, get knocked up, start raising a few kids. And so on a nice summer day in Wichita, Kansas a bunch of years later, one boy on the front porch reading a book, the other in the back yard swashbuckling with ninjas, the husband catching up on some paperwork, why not break out those old 3X5 cards with your mother’s recipes on them, bright blue ink in a flowing cursive.
Boil potatoes just enough that they’re still firm. Use that creaky chopping machine on them, and on the boiled eggs too. Mustard and mayo, give it a stir, starts to make that sticky sound and the smell is family, nice weather, full bellies, quiet hearts. The pickles have to be chopped by hand. Toss them in, sprinkle in dried parsley, mostly just to give it color. Salt, but no pepper. Now put a few hot dogs in the new “micro-wave.” A lot faster than boiling them, and the cancer’s still five years away.
Call in the kids, tell the youngest to set the table, the oldest to make a pitcher of lemon kool-aid. The youngest fetches out those Looney Tunes collectible glasses, the ones from McDonald’s. He always chooses Daffy Duck for himself. He’ll grow up, join the Navy too, but he won’t meet a nice girl; Nothing bad will happen to him, but life will take a little longer to get started.
The potato salad goes in an enormous green plastic bowl. That bowl has seen some action. That bowl was purchased at a Tupperware party in Springfield, Massachusetts, made its way across the country to Bainbridge, Washington, then down to San Diego, California. Now it’s here, smack dab in the middle of the country, smack dab in the middle of the supper table, heaped to overflowing with potato salad.
The youngest has that permanent grin on him, eyes wide, trying to grab ketchup for his hot dog and a spoon for the potato salad and a glass of lemonade, all at the same time. He says, who’s birthday is it, because he associates potato salad with parties. The oldest smirks, cause he knows better, and because he’s a little smart aleck. He’s going through a phase; no ketchup or mustard for him. But plenty of lemonade, and heaps and heaps of potato salad. Growing boys.
The husband gets the lion’s share, though. He’s a good 210, working on 230, and his desk job doesn’t help any. In a few years the cancer will knock him down to 175. But they’ll catch it early, it’ll back off, and never return, not for thirty years. Potato salad will put the pounds backs on. Potato salad and nice weather and quiet hearts.
He says, oh, it’s probably somebody’s birthday somewhere. The youngest laughs at that. Everything delights him. The oldest smirks again. He’ll come into cynicism, the smart ones always do, its own kind of cancer. But he’ll get over it. How can anyone be a cynic, for very long, with potato salad likes this stored in the memory banks?
He’ll get a copy of the recipe, more than a bunch of years later. His own wife will make it for him. Will it be as good? Of course it will. The recipe isn’t difficult.