BRATTLEBORO — When I was a kid, there was a pretty little popular song called “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” I was just young enough when I first heard it not to really know what that meant. But the image it conjured up still resonates with me.
I don't know what it says about me (and if you know, keep it to yourself!), but truth be told, I never see a bowl of cherries without singing that number in my mind. I might even give whoever's around the gift of one of the seven tap steps I know how to execute. To “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” of course.
Cherries therefore have always been a very 1940s fruit to me. They belong back in that kitchen in our second-floor “railroad” flat on West 12th in Bensonhurst, a neighborhood in extreme southwest Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
And I've been revisiting my borough lately in the form of studying its demographics for an ad campaign for Brattleboro. Starting on June 17, Brooklynites began finding a selection of three ads on the social media they most frequent, including some rather popular websites.
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So here I am, preoccupied with Brooklyn again after all these years. I must confess to a Brooklyn dream: a little place, with a patch of Brooklyn large enough for a tree to grow on. (And were that tree to offer cherries? Wow! Who could ask for anything more?)
A couple of weeks ago, one of my favorite bakers at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market, Beth-Ann Betz, had told me that she wouldn't be there the following week because she'd be going to Brooklyn - Bensonhurst, as a matter of fact. She was going home to celebrate her mother's 96th birthday.
Beth asked me if she could bring anything back for me from the old neighborhood. I phumphered, stuttering in that way we do when we have a secret list yea-long, yet don't really want to start.
She jumped in with, “How about halvah?”
“Sure,” I responded. “Halvah would be great.”
“With pistachios?” she asked.
“What then?” I replied, suddenly hearing that my accent had slipped back to the street talk of my youth. (That's “youth” pronounced without the final “h.”)
Figuring that Beth would be back at her stand, I stopped at the Farmers' Market several weeks later to see if, in fact, she'd remembered her sweet, casual offer of halvah. It turned out she hadn't, which was just as well, as Donald and I are counting calories these days.
Conveniently forgetting about that, I bought my usual quarter pound of Beth's world-class rugalach, and we got to talking.
l asked how Bensonhurst looked, and she replied that it was beautiful. Wow! I thought. Bensonhurst was never what you'd call beautiful, even by Brooklyn standards.
It was orderly. Well-kept up (love that expression). Neat. But it was no Flatbush. No Midwood. Nothing like some of the nabes around Prospect Park. Nor like the star of the borough, Brooklyn Heights, with its strand offering the most divine view of the Manhattan skyline this side of the one from Hoboken, N.J.
“Beautiful?” I asked. “How so?”
“Well, you should see Seth Low Park,” said Beth.
“That was on the corner of the street I grew up on!” I jumped in.
Which she knew.
“It's all Chinese! Everyone is Chinese! They're doing tai chi and tae kwon do, and they have food carts - and it's fabulous and it's beautiful!”
“Chinese? You mean Bensonhurst has become a Chinese enclave?”
“Well, you might say that,” she answered.
I recalled that the major shopping thoroughfares - Bay Parkway and 86th Street - had always catered to the local Italian and Jewish populations. The bakeries. The delis. The sausage shops. The pizza parlors. (I've never known why they're “parlors.”) The knish stands. And of course in winter, the chestnuts roasting on an open fire and in summer the Italian ice.
The only evidence of anything non-Eurocentric in those days were the Chinese restaurants so prevalent in most Jewish neighborhoods. It's just one of those things. My people love Chinese food.
Beth and I mused that we'd be surprised if we'd be able to recognize any of the dishes the local Asian population would be eating. That lobster Cantonese and almond gai ding and roast pork fried rice would likely not be found anywhere. Nor would any Goldberg I knew have a clue how to navigate their menus, which might as well be in Chinese.
I bade Beth farewell and said to myself: So, it's gone from kreplach and ravioli to dim sum, from blintzes and manicotti to wontons, all in the time of my life. And in other ZIP codes in that miraculous borough, they're downing empanadas like the best of 'em.
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To Forrest Gump, life was like a box of chocolates. “You never know what you're goin' to get.”
To me, life is more like a dumpling. It's about getting a handle not on what's already inside but rather on what you're going to fill it with.
It's about change - the filling, the wrapping - yet never the meaning of what it holds for us: the wonder of discovery, the adventure of tastes, the surprise, the constant surprise, that comes with the culture of the other.
It's about change.
And oh, it's a bowl of cherries, too. Always was. Always will be.
Flap, flap, flap ball change.