Vignettes

I took my mom to O-Nami today. The best thing there was this tuna salad—fresh, uncooked tuna chunks with romaine lettuce tossed in a sauce of soy sauce, vinigar, sugar, spicy red bean paste (guessing) and sesame oil. That last ingredient wafted from my nose and palette up through my subconscious mind where it mingled with a tenuous web of vignettes of past scenes from another time. My mother broke me away from my reverie when she teased that I must be full. “No, just thinking,” I told her. When I was an undergrad a special lady captured my heart. We used to cook together, making such things as “potato mess” and a Korean cucumber salad with a sauce similar to the one from today’s tuna salad. It was the sesame oil that did it. I think I’ll always associated the taste of sesame oil with those salad days (oh man, that pun was right there for the taking!).

So with my mind still metabolizing that weird potion concocted of bittersweet memories and the aftereffects of last night’s sleeping pills, I was driving down Carson Blvd. when I noticed a couple sitting at a bus stop, the man sporting a Hemingway beard, the woman wavy blonde hair like someone’s I knew. She was lying supine on the bench with her head on his lap. He had one hand on her waist and his other hand weaved through her hair. They looked happy, I mean really happy. And then I noticed their clothes were shabby and dirty. I assumed they were homeless. Were they really as happy as they looked given their circumstances? The romantic in me wanted to nurture the kernel of a love-conquers-all story that was beginning to germinate somewhere in here…but then the light turned green and I drove off.