Free Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times by Suzan Colón Page A

Italian bread and hand you half, or of splitting a cupcake, or of being served a croissant with your morning coffee (complete with full-fat milk). I reacted to these previously forbidden fruit pies by devouring them like a starving locust. A few months of this, and I felt like a chubby locust.
    I went back on the weight-loss plan, suddenly declining bread at dinner, and Nathan reacted as though I’d refused to make love:
Not tonight, honey, I’m on a diet
.
    One rainy afternoon in April, Nathan wanted to go to a shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that specializes in exotic flavors of rice pudding with names like Sex & Drugs & Rocky Road. We’d shared our first kiss there the year before, and I could still remember how Nathan’s mouth had tasted of cream and oven-roasted cherries.
    Now he ordered up a large dish of Coconut Coma while I calculated how many crunches it would take to keep my belly from turning to pudding.
    “Let’s eat it now,” he said.
    “Right after lunch?” I asked, stalling. “I thought we’d save it for later, at home, for dessert.”
    “C’mon, let’s have some now.”
    I was about to argue, but it was ridiculous to have a fight about rice pudding. So I let Nathan feed me a spoonful, and then he handed me a tiny bag. Inside was a jewelry box with my engagement ring.
    I had almost messed up his proposal.
    The wedding date approached, and now there were dress fittings to think about. I felt schizophrenic in thecompany cafeteria, bouncing indecisively between the salad bar and the pork tacos. “I can’t diet again,” I said to one of my coworkers. “I love food too much.”
    “Of course not,” she agreed, because she was the food editor at the magazine. “But then again, you’ll be looking at those wedding photos for the rest of your life.”
    I remembered the single beautiful black-and-white portrait of Aunt Midge and Uncle Eddie on their wedding day, he so handsome in his sailor uniform and she prim and pretty in a suit. A very tiny suit, because at the time Aunt Midge had a nineteen-inch waist.
    • • •
    These days I can make an unemployment check go for miles at the supermarket. I can save even more money by baking. What I can’t do right now is diet. I’m already cutting back and counting every penny—I just can’t face counting calories too.
    “How did Nana stay so slim?” I ask Mom one day as I fold up yet another pair of skinny jeans and put them in the back of the closet.
    “She ate half,” Mom says.
    “Half of what?”
    “Anything delicious. If it was a liverwurst sandwich—I know you don’t like those, but she loved them—she’d eat half of it. If it was a piece of cake, she’d have half, or just a bite. She’d have one drink, not a couple. She did pretty well that way.
    “Also,” says Mom, “Nana always said that a thin woman should gain a pound or two every year as she got older to smooth out wrinkles in her face. Besides, she wasn’t so skinny. She was a size ten, but she was tall, so she looked curvy.”
    Gain a pound or two a year? A size ten? All of this is music to my hips. I take out some photos of her, and in them she looks … womanly. Satisfied.
    That night, on the couch, the news of the day is not so good. But it’s buffered by crisp, light butter cookies, which taste especially good when shared with Nathan.



10

HOW LONG WILL IT KEEP?

Aunt Nettie’s Clam Chowder
    1½ dozen chowder clams
    ¼ lb. bacon, in one piece
    4 large onions
    Bunch curly parsley, celery, leeks, parsnips
    3 carrots
    3 potatoes
    1 large can tomatoes
    Thyme
    Clean clams; cook parsley, celery, leeks, onions, parsnips, in enough water to cover. Add salt. Cook one hour. Fry bacon in small cubes. Put clams, bacon and fat into water
strained off vegetables. Add thyme. Add tomatoes and diced carrots. Then potatoes. Simmer
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    • • •
    DECEMBER 2008
    HUDSON COUNTY, NEW JERSEY
    “Why’d you throw that away?” I ask Nathan, pointing to the half-eaten banana in the