when i was happy

I bit into the first big tomato from the garden this morning. I'd sliced up two of them ~ magnificent, lush, vine-riped beauties ~ while frying bacon. The first bacon and tomato sandwich of the season is a ritual for us. The tomato has to come from our garden. The bacon has to be absolutely crisp, not limp, not too brown. The only suitable architectural support for the magnificence that is bacon and tomato, is white bread. With Miracle Whip. Really.


As a snotty elitist liberal, I should abhor eating Miracle Whip, but it is the only option in creating this food of the gods. Most of the time I whip up my own mayonnaise with olive and walnut oils, an egg yolk, a squeeze of lemon, a little mustard and a pinch of salt. But bacon and tomato sandwich, along with the purist's tomato sandwich, requires white bread and Miracle Whip. These are not optional. And don't fuck it up by adding lettuce. That's an unnecessary distraction from the glory of this perfect combination. It's a way to soothe one's guilt over eating the kind of food that would throw a health nazi into convulsions. Forget the lettuce.

It is mandatory to prepare two sandwiches (yes, a nap post-sandwich is recommended) for each person and don't think about skimping on the bacon. The Whip goes on thick, both pieces of the bread. It's debatable whether one should add the bacon first or the tomato. Adding bacon first seems to keep the bread from getting entirely soaked, but tomato-first people argue that juice-soaked bread is the best part of it.

This is not eaten with side dishes of any kind. The ritual is just this: bacon and tomato white bread Miracle Whip sandwiches on a Sunday morning from home grown tomatoes served with plenty of napkins. Iced tea or water are optional. Side dishes, just like lettuce, distract from this perfection on a plate, this orgasmically delicious, absolutely addictive pleasure.

When I was happy, before George Bush, before Iraq, before Wall Street thugs, before the ascendancy of corporatism, before people starving in Haiti, before Mexican farmers displaced by NAFTA, before Biblically "justified" hatred, before all of that, when I was happy, it was in moments like these.

I forget to live in the moment. I find it almost impossible these days. Life seems too grim, too hopeless, but this one day, this morning, following an old ritual I've shared with my husband for 16 years, there was a moment. One moment of mindfulness, one moment present in the delicious little pleasures of life. One moment in which I found myself with tears in my eyes, wishing for everyone the small joy of one of life's perfect things. One moment is enough to hang on to today.