The Olive Branch
by
Jeff Stimpson © 2007
Jill doesn't like some food. She doesn't like
Twizzlers, for some reason. She claims to like clam chowder, but has
to eat it as if nibbling through a minefield because she doesn't
like clams. Fair enough. Lots of people don't like stuff. I don't
like the New England soda Moxie, for example, a sort of bitter Dr.
Pepper that my grandmother loved. I don't like mustard. I used to
not like olives.
I hated olives for years, all olives, because for
years olives were bad and Twizzlers were great. Not even gazing at
olives as they bobbed up and down in a pitcher of beer with my
brother, years ago in a tavern with a fireplace on a cold Maine
night, could change my mind.
I ate a few olives after I met Jill, usually in
pasta or on pizza, and always black olives. Black as Twizzlers. By
the way, don't anybody else say "black Twizzlers." There's no such
thing, technically, as red licorice; licorice is black. Also, "clam
chowder" refers to New England clam chowder. I have never had the
red New York stuff. I hear it's okay. I do notice the tomato-based
chowder is never cheaply thickened with flour the way New England
chowder is in crappier "restaurants." Hell has no fire hot enough
for somebody who'd ruin New England clam chowder by thickening it.
Jill loves olives. She didn't convert me to
olives, though. Rather, I was sitting at her folks' dining room
table the about four hours after her mom had died. We were all teary
and wiped, knowing that we had a hard few days ahead, and her
step-dad brought out a bowl of green olives, and I ate a few. Just
like that. It wasn't a transposed-spirit thing, either, because
Jill's mother didn't necessarily love olives. Jill's mom did love
licorice.
I used to stand by the olive bins in upscale
markets, waiting for Jill to pick up my good old American Boar's
Head at the nearby deli counter, and I'd keep myself from
intervening as one shopper after another paused by the bins and
furtively popped olives into their mouths. Sometimes they bought
some. I could understand these people no more than I could
understand methadone users.
"5.99 a pound?!" I
said at the olive bins of an upscale market the other night. I
popped one of the huge Greeks in my mouth. I didn't like the
Sicilians. Not enough body.
I've had a bit to learn. Figuring out a fair
price, for one -- amazing how foreign some prices look if you've
spent 45 years never buying a certain item in the grocery store.
Figuring out if I want anything stuffed in my olive. Figuring out
that that salad olives fall apart when I dig them out of the jar
with a fork. Figuring out if "pitted" means with or without the seed
that could break my molars. Figuring out when they became "my"
olives.
"I bought us some olives," I announced when I got
home.
"You bought who some olives?" Jill replied.
Texture delightful to the teeth, just enough
resistance and just enough surrender, somewhere between nuts and
gum. The resonance of the brine. Savoring the aftertaste, knowing
you're finally sophisticated after 45 years. And what's better with
a martini, aside from no Elmo in the TV?
Jill is happy I like olives. I'm waiting for
enough time to pass so I can start denying that I ever didn't like
olives. She's still trying to convert me to mustard. She'll succeed
about the time she eats a Twizzler, and I don't mean a red one.
Copyright 2005 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
