These Memories are as Sweet as Butter

It’s true what the rabbi said this morning during the yizkor portion of the Simchat Torah/Sh’mini Atzeret service: We miss loved ones who are gone every day, but all the more on holidays and happy occasions.

His words reminded me of these pictures I took last Saturday.

It’s an elevator in a building on 91^st Street in Manhattan, but it’s exactly the same as the one in my grandparents’ building in Sunnyside, Queens, in the 1970s and 80s (and probably long before then).

When I posted the photos on Facebook, I added this comment, tagging my sister and one of our cousins: Amy and Ted: Check out these photos from the elevator I rode in today. Do they take you back to your childhood??

And then this conversation ensued:

Ted: Nice!

Amy: I am afraid of that elevator even in a picture...

Ted: Who gets the New York toast? (A delicacy from childhood, it was toast spread with Breakstone’s unsalted whipped butter that was leftover from my grandparents’ breakfast. Aptly named – and quickly devoured – by their New Jersey grandchildren, nothing tasted quite like it!)

Me: Whoever gets there first! But beware the moldy leftovers in the margarine container in the Frigidare! (My grandmother called every refrigerator a Frigidare, even if it was a Westinghouse or a Kenmore.)

Memories truly are a blessing and these are as sweet as Breakstone’s unsalted whipped butter on New York toast.