Any family story has multiple versions: what I remember, what you remember, what really happened.
There’s the film in the minds of those who were there, a different editor’s cut for each mind. There’s the magnification and decay of what happens to a story as it is handed down by telling and retelling. There is what’s lost when main characters die. And there is the hybrid, revisionary, even multimedia tale when someone who wasn’t even born yet enters the story.
Where is the truth?
Maybe it’s the journalist in me that makes me approach poems partly wanting to know, “Did that really happen? Is that true?” Of course, in a good poem, it’s all true, but not necessarily strictly factual truth.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about since reading Luci Shaw’s poem “Eating the Whole Egg, ” from her book Writing the River.
Eating the Whole Egg
For My Great-Grandfather
Oral history tells us you went through
three wives. One story is that
every day you breakfasted with
your current spouse on toast
and a three-minute egg,
chipping off its white cap in the precise
British way, and in a grand gesture,
spooning to your wife that minor albumen,
watery, pale as her self. That was her meal;
you feasted on yolk, rich and yellow
as a gold sovereign, and crushed the shells,
feeding them by gritty doses to
your offspring lined up along the table—
a supplement to stave off rickets and
accustom the family to patriarchy.
Nourished thus on remnants and rigor,
your tribe multiplied to twenty-two.
The legend astonishes me still. And I
still bear, along with traces of those women’s
genes, a vestigial guilt
whenever I cook myself a breakfast egg
and then devour it, white, yolk,
protein, cholesterol, and all. Like
seeing the sun after generations of moons.
Like being the golden egg and eating it too.
—Luci Shaw
The story (which she calls a legend) astonishes me too. While the one great-grandfather whose stories I know was nothing like the man described here, I know what it is for a giver’s magnanimous to be a receiver’s stingy. So many people, even now, have been “nourished … on remnants and rigor.”
In the end-of-year top-heavy time of family gatherings, probably some stories got told, and some versions were held in silence, and hurdles had to be leaped to eat an egg or fruitcake or meat or pumpkin pie. In the beginning-of-year retrospection and forward-spection that marks January, it might be ripe time to tell an old story in a new voice.
Recipe: Eggs and Soldiers
1. Put eggs in a medium saucepan, cover with cold water and place over high heat. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 3 minutes for runny eggs.
2. In the meantime, toast some bread well done, and cut into narrow strips.
3. Prepare egg cups. If you don’t have egg cups, cut off a corner of the egg container, or nestle in a cup filled with rice.
4. With a slotted spoon, carefully remove eggs and place in the cups. Tap each shell gently with a teaspoon and remove the tops.
5. Dip toast soldiers into drippy egg. Enjoy.
Photo by Rebecca Krebs, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Laura Lynn Brown. Poem used with permission of the author.
Read more Eating and Drinking Poems
- Pandemic Journal: An Entry on Pencil Balancing - August 4, 2020
- Between Friends: Wordplay and Other Playful Bonds - July 25, 2019
- The Power of Curiosity: “Can I Touch Your Hair?” by Irene Latham & Charles Waters - May 29, 2019
Megan Willome says
“I know what it is for a giver’s magnanimous to be a receiver’s stingy.”–Boy, that’s a line! I’ve known it on both sides of the equation, too.
Laura Lynn Brown says
Truth be told, so have I.
Donna Falcone says
Mmmm. Your recipe for eggs and soldiers is my family’s recipe for soft boiled with choo choos. 😉 Little trains dipping into the runny mixture was a special treat – like grandpa ate. Then, as time went on, my mother made the eggs once over easy, but still provided the choo choos now and then. Funny how toast can bring up a memory.
Loved this post, and the way you started it made sure rang some bells: Any family story has multiple versions: what I remember, what you remember, what really happened.
Laura Lynn Brown says
I wonder whether people name these things cute names to get kids to eat something that at first might be unappealing.
Donna Falcone says
Maybe!
Or maybe they are just being playful and feel they need a kid for an excuse. 😉
I wonder what else these toast strips have been called?
SimplyDarlene says
Laura,
Personal “truth” is an interesting and somewhat strange creature! Have you read “What Your Childhood Memories Say About You” by Kevin Leman? (I think I mentioned it in Charity’s essay class) Near the beginning Dr. Leman says, “In fact, all that’s needed for you to hold on to a memory is an emotional spark-some catalyst to help store the experience into your brain’s long-term memory.”
And, though I’m eggstatic over the entire piece, I really like the depth you’ve portrayed in that last paragraph, especially these two phrases: “top-heavy time of family gatherings” and “ripe time to tell an old story in a new voice.”
Laura Lynn Brown says
Thank you, Darlene. I haven’t read that book, but it looks interesting.
L.L. Barkat says
Sometimes I wonder if “what I remember” and “what you remember” are both “what really happened,” at least in the sense that this is what gets carried forward in the psyche and makes actual things happen (or not happen) in a life (depending on the gravity of the event in question). Also, maybe there is a Venn diagram, where the overlaps of “what I” and “what you” even become their own thing. And then the retellings become revisings, together.
As for the eggshells, I’m just thankful I’m not the beneficiary of such generosity ;-). How privileged we all are, who have the simple gift of eating the whole egg. Nice perspective-shifter. Good for the soul.
Laura Lynn Brown says
In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion writes about the truth of what’s remembered, even and especially if it’s full of details that contradict factual truth. She writes that the truth of her notebooks, the truth she was especially interested in, is the “how it felt to me” truth.
https://www.penusa.org/sites/default/files/didion.pdf
I like your Venn diagram idea. Revisings, together — my brother and I did some of that when I was writing my mom book. And I wonder whether such revisings (including the factual truth, if the facts are still available) can help in making unhappened things happen in a life.
Sandra Heska King says
My mom lived with my great-grandparents when she was young–or they lived with her. I’m not sure of that detail. But every Sunday morning, Grandpa would boil eggs soft, slip them into cups, chip the shells, and slice the strips… and then serve Grandma and my mom in bed. One year I found some antique egg cups for my mom for Christmas. I don’t know whatever happened to them, but now I want some. So much more elegant that smacking the egg with a knife and scooping the innards onto a slice of toast. Buttered for me. My mom would occasionally go on diets that revolved around soft-boiled eggs on dry toast three times a day.
I wish now I’d written some of the old stories down because I forget the details. And some of the stories about my childhood antics? I can picture myself in the scene doing the thing as if I remembered it. But do I?
Laura Lynn Brown says
It’s not too late to write those old stories down, Sandy. You might be surprised by what you re-member through the act of writing. You can deal with that “Do I remember, or do I remember being told later?” in a sentence if you need to.
Luci Shaw says
Such wonderful family memories. My mother, in her British way, would make toast, smear it with butter and Marmite (!) and slice it into strips, stack them crosswise and call it a “lorry load of logs.” Perfect for dipping into a soft-boiled egg. My mother preferred what she called “a warmed egg.”
Donna Falcone says
What a sweet story! Lorry load of logs… another way to describe these appealing little strips of toast! 🙂 d