I had my own Community summer during high school when I took an Intro to Psych class at the local community college. I wish I could say I was a cool Britta, but I have to admit, I could have gone head-to-head with Alison with regard to the level of zeal and naive “bright-eyedness” I brought to the class. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. In fact, today, I find that I recall those concepts from 8 years ago much more readily than the topics I studied less than a year ago, which just further goes to support my theory that my IQ peaked right around high school, and it’s been a downhill ride ever since.
One of the topics I remember from that summer has to do with memory and memory prompts. They told me during that class that smell is one of the strongest provokers of memory and recall. I like to think they were wrong … taste is. My one argument against this relatively well-established theory is simple: mochi.
Take last Saturday for example. The rain had been holding us hostage indoors all day. Restless fingers had prompted me to undertake a simple but labor-intensive project: mochi. After half an hour of making a delightful mess, I used the one clean spot on the back of my hand to brush my hair from my eyes, and I picked up a piece of mochi by my fingertips to take a triumphant bite as a puff of corn starch covered my lips.
Nearly imperceptibly but immediately, the winter air turns humid and warm. There is a faint buzz of a fan revolving, and the embroidered flowers of my grandmother’s blanket underneath me are etching patterns into the backs of my legs. I feel the coolness of a soft piece of mochi in between my fingers, and I sense my grandmother’s watery eyes watching me as I cut the mochi into small, bite-sized pieces. It is another weekday summer morning in Korea, and I am chatting with my grandmother by her bed as I serve her tiny bits of her favorite chewy mochi before I head off for work. My lively chatter rises above the ambient noise, as my grandmother sits, holding my hand and listening to me talk about my students, my friends, and occasionally, the relationship I have traveled around the world to forget. She laughs at times and nods as I brush her hair with my fingertips. And sometimes she sighs.
These were simple moments. But these memories of quiet mornings with my grandmother are among those that I fight to grasp onto, even while time threatens to wrestle them away.
And so at times when everything gets to be a little too much, I like to make mochi and recall those humid summer days in Korea that were illuminated by morning chats with my grandmother, tandem bike rides through mud and thunderstorm, and gleeful trips to Kim’s Club with my best friend. And while those moments can never be recreated in exactly the same way, I will always have mochi to remind me of those blissful summer days.