Proust is famous for his lengthy ode to his memories of a pastry from his childhood. For the famous author, each time he tasted "petite madeleine" he was instantly brought back to his grandmother's house in Combray and his childhood there. I have my own madeline memory, though its origins are far murkier and took most of my adult life to properly identify.
   At first, when I was in grade school, it was more like a smell that would waft through the back of my throat, followed by a hint of a taste. It resembled peanut butter, at least that taste is close to what most people would recognize. More accurately, it resembled  a strange concoction made of sesame seeds that my mother would sometimes acquire from the foreign gourmet section of the grocery store in Rapid City. We lived in Edgemont, a town of some 2500 souls then, but now a nearly abandoned relic of 774 idle stragglers. Rapid City was the closest thing to a city in the western half of South Dakota of 1958, a couple of hours drive through prairie lands where once grazed millions of bison. Rapid City had a population 40,000 then (and even now only 70,000), and seemed quite altogether a city.
   Mother called it "helva" and she had tasted it when the family lived in Türkiye when I was an infant. I remember the first time she saw it in the supermarket she cried out in surprise at finding it in America.
   "I haven't had helva since we left Turkey," she exclaimed when she saw the can in the meagre import section. "I must have this!" she said as she placed several cans in her shopping cart. About ten years before the family had lived in the back woods of Turkey, where father was a consultant to the government of Turkey. Mother took the mystery cans home and hoarded them carefully for special occasions or particular guests, but I knew where the stash was and found the mixture strangely compelling. Among the ranching folk of Edgemont, my parents were considered cosmopolitan because they had lived in a foreign county, and this constituted proof of their elite status, for me and for the community.
   The ground sesame seeds evoked for me a strange sensation. It reminded me of some similar but distinct taste from my earliest memories. I tried to concentrate on how that mystery food from so long ago tasted, but I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it. I would let the candy-like fibrous mass slowly melt in my mouth and try to squeeze from it the memory of what it reminded me of. At ten, I was no longer a baby, and was beginning to develop a sense of nostalgia. I begged my mother to buy "Pablum" for breakfast cereal, even though it was marketed for infants. To adults, I suppose, it signified "something that is trite, insipid, or simplistic," but I had a tangible and sentimental attraction to Pablum. The mild cereal taste and soft pasty structure brought me into a feeling of being coddled, like having my back scratched. This emotional space was situated somewhere near the dawn of my conscious mind.
   Helva scratched away at a deeper part of my subconscious mind, a time even before Pablum. With the Helva, I couldn't get all the way there, there was some intermediary that Helva reminded me of, but I didn't have a name for that deeper morsel of the ultimate comfort food. If I closed my eyes as a the dollop of Helva dissolved into fluidity on my tongue, I could almost get there to grasp the taste of what I craved. Once the Turkish treat had all been eaten, I found that I could conjure the taste of the secret unknown potion purely from my memory. That memory would come to me throughout the years that followed, often unpredictably. I would be sitting there in an idle moment, midpoint between my last intake of victuals and the one to come. Astride memory and anticipation, their corrupting influence was minimal when that taste would once again begin in the back of my throat and linger there taunting me with questions of its identity. Sometimes months would pass between the intrusions of these sensory memories, but they never actually left me. The solution to its identity came slowly, mediated by a protein shake.
   In Houston there has been a significant Middle Eastern here presence for decades. When I first came to town I shopped at Antone's Deli where I would find "Halvah" as the imported bilingual label spelled its product. I would eat falafel there from time to time, or gyro sandwiches. Later a student of mine from Lebanon introduced me to Baba Ghanoush and Hummus, and in a few more years these could be found at the Whole Foods grocery store. Eventually, I learned that hummus was easy to make and I resolved to try my hand at the recipe. It was a simple set of ingredients: lemon juice, garbanzo beans, tahini and garlic. I became fond of hummus and thus tahini became a staple in my refrigerator. Like Halvah, it is made from sesame seeds, but tahini is far different in texture. Halvah is like the inside of a Butterfinger candy bar, but less dense and more fibrous. Tahini is more like runny smooth peanut butter. There is no sugar added, so it can't be mistaken for candy. Helvah can be spooned up and eaten like a confection, but tahini seems to be reserved for recipe concoctions or spread on toast like its American cousin.
   Then one morning I was out of the walnuts that had been my healthy-fat contribution to the protein shake I had been having for breakfast. I substituted tahini and was pleased with the taste of the new additive. It soon became a staple for my shakes, even when I had walnuts on hand. Some subtle flavor in the mix was strangely soothing, familiar and comforting. As I made these morning shakes, it became my habit to lick the tahini spoon of the remnants remaining after I allowed the spoonful to slide onto the blueberry-apple-banana-oat mixture. Gradually, I came to realize that the tahini was the mysterious taste from my childhood I had been looking for. The  realization was slow, and depended on changing brands from Biladi to Joyva, the latter roasted with a nuttier flavor. The mysterious taste reached deep into my childhood and lingered on my palate, infusing the back of my throat with a distinctive roasted nutty flavor. Eureka!
   But why tahini? I moved to Turkey when I was just beginning to walk. I suppose I was eating baby food, probably made from fresh ingredients pureed through a Foley Mill, a strange kitchen implement used to make applesauce. I still have that same Foley Mill my mother must have used in Turkey; I use it to strain cranberries for my cranberry-kumquat compote. Mother considered the Turks rather primitive, and eating in Turkey for her was a dangerous international adventure. I doubt there was any peanut butter there, and in those days peanut butter was one of the first solid foods brought into a toddler's diet. I suspect that tahini was substituted for peanut butter and may have been my first favorite food. So now it is back, and my early childhood is now brought into my geriatric present.
   As from the poem by T. S. Eliot:

   ... the end of all our exploring 
    Will be to arrive where we started 
    And know the place for the first time

Here is a Facebook posting that cost me a friendship of a dozen years.

The link was from The Right of Way, a right wing website authored by "The Compassionate Conservative" with a tagline: "Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end." LMAO, I learned, is: "Laughing My Ass Off," but this corny, juvenile humor is not very funny to me, tinged as it is with a clear sense of meanness. The site is full of rather sophomoric jibes at Democrats and finger-pokes at Obama in particular.

Well, I took offense.

Some history here. My friend and I met at an art school 12 years ago. She seemed intelligent and well informed, and we could talk for hours on end without tiring of the conversation. She truly listened and was a great conversationalist. She was very well read, and I trusted her insights into human nature. Her politics became clear early on when she vigorously defended George Bush after some careless remark I made against him, and after that we seemed to make a mutual decision to avoid topics of a political nature. We had lots in common to talk about: botany, history, cemeteries, genealogy, art, travel, cinema, books, photography, cooking.

The 2000 election of George Bush became the first thorn in our friendship. I felt that the presidency was stolen from Al Gore by the Supreme Court, and couldn't understand how America could have elected such an inarticulate president. 9-11 shocked us both, but our opinions on the Bush entry into Iraq were diametrically opposite. She was not a person to change her mind, and I had learned not to argue against Bush. Throughout eight long years of the Bush presidency, I bit my tongue whenever politics was mentioned, however tangentially. My only lapse was when we made a bet that there would be no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. She never paid this off, and kept insisting that they would be found eventually; she may still believe this myth. Gradually she bought into the various pieces of the Bush anti-science agenda. Our mutual agreement to avoid political discussions expanded to exclude all mention of: Billy Carter; Bill Clinton; Al Gore; Dick Cheney; George Bush; Global Warming, Public transportation; Urban density; Free Market economics; Health care in America.

Then Obama was elected. I expected she would have the same respect for me that I had shown her, and she would avoid railing against our president in our exchanges, but this was a mistake. Soon, I was cautioned that Obama was ruining America, that he was a Socialist, and could not be re-elected. By this time Facebook was everyone's social media, and her posts were a countdown to the end of the Obama administration and the election of a Republican president. Hardly a day went by that there was not a picture of Obama with a mean-spirited and small-minded message of disapproval. For a time her profile picture was Obama with numerous cigarettes dripping from his mouth in a mockery I did not quite understand.

But on April 16th 2012 with the above posting, I had finally had enough. First, I unfriended her; then I reported her to Facebook for posting offensive material. I didn't have long to wait for a response. She claimed her post was "satire," that defriending was serious and held implications. Despite my defense that I did not think Facebook was a place for that kind of vitriol, she blocked my emails and phone calls and said our friendship had run its course.

Well, now I really miss her. She was in some ways a beacon, my closest friend yet a Republican. As long as we were friends there was hope that Americans could co-exist with radically polarized politics. It used to be that political affiliation was no barrier to communication, compromise was the touchstone of politics, but no longer. Congress has became unable to act, unwilling to bend. And now my friend is an epitome of that confrontation. If we can no longer talk, what will happen to America?

I can't apologise for unfriending her. It would set a brand on our friendship that would be untenable. An apology would constitute de facto approval of her postings; I would forever relinquish any right to protest her jabbing pokes at Obama in particular and liberal politics in general. I wish things would go back to the way they were before I unfriended her. Maybe I should have simply blocked her messages like many of her liberal friends may have already done and to pretended our friendship was still strong. But it wasn't; and now it is over. I'm very sad about that. I will miss her, but at least for me Facebook is a far friendlier place now. No doubt I am being spared such postings as those below from the same "satirical" website:

By the way: This is satire.

   "Well, Mr. Webb. Are you interested in renting here?" It was March of 1984, and I was looking for a new apartment. The old fellow facing me was quite elegant, a Southern gentleman who presented himself in a dusty tweed jacket with stylish oval patches on the elbows. He peered at me through pale green eyes still lively and energetic. His hat rakishly perched atop his white hair was clearly vintage 1940’s, the brim shielding his tired eyes from the bright light from the windows needing a good cleaning. I looked past him into the courtyard at the circle of grand old oaks. The brick walls enclosed the courtyard on three sides in a cool white embrace. I imagined my children playing hide and seek under the leafy canopy, "Ready or not, here I come!"
   The price was right at $282 a month, but the complex was a coming apart at the seams from neglect. Clearly maintenance was not a priority here, and the management was aged, if picturesque, and almost certainly ineffective. It might be nearly impossible to get anything repaired if there were a breakdown of the window unit air conditioners or dangerous gas space heaters. But there were two large bedrooms, and when the kids came to visit there would be ample room for them to have a semblance of the family life that had been so recently withdrawn from me. It was so peaceful here, perhaps the serenity would put at bay the virus inside they said would kill me. Here I might have more time than the two years they predicted.
   I formulated how I would say, "No, not right now. Can I get back to you later?" But I knew that if I didn’t take it now, it would be gone while I looked for a smaller but more comfortable apartment. I was taking a bit of a chance, but I spit out, "Yes, Mr. Hammond, I’ll take it."
***
   Now, in March of 2009, twenty five years later almost to the day, I stood in my empty apartment once again and looked out onto the courtyard through the same window. It was little changed. The oaks shaded even more of the court, and the sidewalk had buckled still higher from the encroaching roots. Stained and rotting curtains shrouded apartments long vacant and the multiplicity of broken windows testified to the sad final dilapidated state of Wilshire Village. I remembered Mr. Hammond, now long dead, just as I thought I would be when I told him I would take it in 1984.
   My gamble had paid off. Instead of dying here in my bohemian Xanadu, I was walking away alive, although feeling a little bewildered. Here I had faced down AIDS and defeated the disease through sheer force of habit. Here I had created the only real stability that my children knew from their peripatetic childhood. This place was their anchor through their mother’s many moves, their summer retreat with an eccentric but loving father. It was my retreat, too, my refuge from fears of mortality, and yes, my excuse not to expect more of myself.
   I thought I would be despondent at leaving this place that sheltered me through much of my adult life. Instead I was leaving here eager to face the future. For the first time in a long time I wondered what the shape of my life would be. It made me a bit giddy to contemplate, but I knew whatever I became, it would be shaped by my years here. I will miss Wilshire Village, but at least I took a lot of pictures (Click on the oak tree for more images).

I had always thought Zinnia would die before Basil. She was tiny, by comparison, barely bigger than a kitten. She was more of a long-haired tabby, whereas Basil was short haired. She was more dynamic than her brother, bouncing about, always focused on her mission, whatever that might be. “Got to get to the porch, hurry!” Or, “Litter box, now!” She was prone to skin abrasions and seemed to have an allergy to flea bites, and scratched vigorously even when the systemic flea-poison was newly administered.

She had a purr like a hummingbird, so soft it was hard to hear, but high-pitched and somehow rather insistent. She had an engaging way of standing on her hind legs, balancing herself with one front paw while reaching up with a the other toward your face, as if to caress your cheek. Then she would rub her head against your skull in a sort of Eskimo-like rubbing kiss with her snout.

As Basil lay dying in Terry’s chair on the porch, she seemed unconcerned at first. I really didn’t think she understood what was going on, but maybe she comprehended more than I thought. Near the end of Basil’s life when he struggled to breathe, she seemed to stare at him from a few paces away, a curious expression crossing between her whiskers.

After he died, at first she didn’t seem to miss him. At least she didn’t appear to be looking in vain for him. But she definitely sought us out more often, and came to sleep atop Terry’s hip, or cradled in his arms. She wasn’t moping that I could tell, and still ran around the house on her various missions. I never heard her leave the sleeping porch before I was up and out of bed, but by the time I sleepily made it to the kitchen, there she was looking up at me expectantly to do the right thing.

Now when Zinnia would sit beside the heart-shaped water bowl for extended periods, we knew what that meant. I tried to joke around and tell Terry, she was visiting “The Lake.” She began to shed profusely, leaving bare patches on her legs and flank. She stopped grooming and clumps of hair clung to her sides. She left them there, but I pulled at them and tossed them in the trash. You could not touch her without having to wash the hair off later. Her face changed color dramatically, becoming dark as the lighter hair vanished from her cheeks. The look in her eyes was often vacant, but when we approached, the light came back into her eyes, and we knew she was still with us.

“Stoic,” Chris said, “Cats will put up a brave face, and seem to be trying to look healthier than they are.” Chris was our cat-whisperer, a plain-spoken woman who loved cats and to whom we had often turned to for cat advice. She didn’t tell us outright what we already knew: Zinnia was dying. Our feline companion was stoic indeed, and kept up her daily routines like a good soldier, but she spent most of her time under the bed, where Terry placed a towel in case she peed. Basil had hidden out only a few feet away on the pile of clothes in the armoire, but his nest of clothes had long ago turned cold.

She said it was time. We knew from Basil that it was cruel to wait it out. We needed to act while she still had her dignity. We called the vet and asked her to come out to euthanize our Zinnia. She couldn’t come until the next day. So we waited. Terry spent her last night mostly on the floor beside the bed, his arm stretched out to comfort her. I stepped in from time to time to check on the both of them, but Terry had it covered, and seemed to need this parting gesture.

June 21, 2017.

Just six weeks and a day had elapsed since Basil died, and the vet and her assistant were at the door. I wanted to shoo them away, but knew that this hard thing must be done. I had stood by while Basil failed on his own, and I was resolved to give Zinnia a better death. Eu-thanasia. A true death, a good death. As a moral actor, this was far harder than being a dulled out bystander. It is one thing to stand by while Nature takes its inevitable course. It is entirely a different moral character to be the agent of death.

When I was about twelve we went camping on Lake Sheridan in The Black Hills of South Dakota. Ethel, my sister sixteen years older, came up from Texas bringing Luke, her husband, and the kids, Kay, Debbie Sue, Marty., and she was pregnant with Peggy. We spent a couple of weeks in midsummer nearly every year. The Texans needed relief from the scorching summer season in Midland, TX. Kay and I had found a magpie nestling fallen from the nest and abandoned by her mother. We adopted it and fed it the entrails from our fish catch. Kay and I were the official fish cleaners. It was an opportunity for me to do scientific explorations and report on what the fish were eating so Daddy and Luke could adjust the bait. The magpie got fat on our more than ample diet, and Kay and I thought we were giving life to a baby creature that would otherwise have starved to death. The magpie followed everybody around cheeping loudly for food. But one day somebody stepped on the bird and broke its neck. Daddy insisted that it “Would have to be put out of its misery.” I cried out, “No,” but Pappa took his fishing knife and cut the tiny thrashing bird’s head off. I was devastated. I sulked for days, and would not speak to my father for the rest of the time on the lake. I was mean to Marty, who I blamed for stepping on our magpie, and even now he probably doesn’t know why he doesn’t like me. I eventually forgave my father, and accepted his wisdom if not his method of euthanasia.

Zinnia had hardly moved from Terry’s knee for many hours, and she took up her position there on the floor of the bedroom for her final moments. The doctor had some trouble finding a vein for the sedative that prepare Zinnia for the coup-de-grace. A few minutes later she went slack, and the final shot administered. First she was quiet, and then she was still. The Doctor checked for a heartbeat and pronounced, “She is gone.” I could not hold back the tears and fled to the porch. I found the clock under the chair, and saw that it was 12:51. How long was it since Zinnia died? Maybe three minutes, I thought. That means Zinnia died at 12:48. It hit me like a thunderbolt! Again the minute was marked at 48. Basil 5:48. Zinnia 12:48.

I returned to the bedroom, brought out the Paul Smith shoebox Terry had set aside, and the doctor’s attendant gently helped me cradle Zinnia’s lifeless body into the bed of soft white packing paper. I wondered if she noticed the wish bone I had put there that morning.

After the doctor left, Terry picked a bouquet of flowers while I removed the litter box to the garage, and brought the feeding and watering dishes there as well so he would not have to be the one who did this. Together we took the box to the hole beside the graves of Basil and Rufus, placed it in the bottom and shoveled the dirt down into the hole. Terry brought his vase of Zinnias and placed it on the grave.

Surrounded by the splendid garden that Terry had brought into existence, I said to him, “Here we are, two gay guys weeping over our dead pets. Somehow this seems very fitting. They are now forever in this garden they loved to watch over from the porch. I am so, so sad to see them gone, but so glad we had them in our lives. They were brought here, two foundling cats, born with FIV, so that two gay guys, living with HIV, would adopt them and and give them a good life nobody else would have done.”